Solar powered security cameras

To install a security video surveillance system outdoors, two conditions are required for the camera to work normally. One is to have a power supply to supply power to the camera, and the other is to have a network that can transmit video signals. The signal transmission of the network camera can be wired (network cable, optical fiber), wireless (4G, 5G, Wi-Fi or wireless AP) and so on. In addition to the conventional way of laying power lines for power supply, you can also consider the use of solar + battery power supply. It is a very good choice to use a solar-powered 4G surveillance camera to deploy a security video surveillance system outdoors without electricity or grid.

Because the concepts of environmental protection and low carbon are generally accepted, the development of new energy technology, solar energy, wind energy and other clean energy power supply are widely used. In the field of security, solar power is used to get rid of the shackles of wiring, camera selection, installation is more flexible, convenient, fast, and to some extent more cost-effective.

I once dismantled and introduced a solar 4G camera (Xiongmai solar 4G camera dismantling), which is different from ordinary surveillance cameras mainly in three aspects: low power consumption, solar panels, and built-in batteries. These three aspects summarize the solar-powered security cameras.

Low power consumption

When using solar panels + batteries for power supply, the power consumption of the camera is an important factor that must be considered. Of course, this factor should be considered in the product design stage, and it has little relationship with ordinary users, but understand this clearly and use it for user selection. Solar-powered surveillance cameras are not without their benefits.

When the security surveillance camera is running, the power consumption in different states is different. For example, the power consumption of normal work, standby, gimbal rotation, remote access connection, local TF card recording, and night fill light activation are different. The solar + battery power supply mode has limited capacity, which is definitely not as good as constant electricity, so it must be considered to save the power consumption of the camera as much as possible in any working state. Considering different working states, the solar camera can generally be divided into three power consumption modes: sleep, low power consumption, and full power consumption.

hibernate

In this state, all the functions of the camera basically stop running (remote access to preview the camera screen, local video storage, etc.), only keep the heartbeat connection with the network, the camera system is always in a dormant state, and the typical power consumption is about 400mW1–700mW2.

Low power consumption

Through the mobile phone APP or triggering the alarm (PIR or microwave infrared human body induction, wake-up button, etc.), the camera can be woken up, and the camera can enter the working state from the sleep state.

Remote access to preview the real-time image of the camera requires a continuous network connection (Wi-Fi or 4G), and the camera is in normal working state. At this time, the power consumption of the camera increases.

However, if the camera has no remote access and is always in low power consumption mode, when there is an abnormal situation in the monitoring scene, there is no local recording of the TF card, and there is no remote connection to the NVR or back-end recording, then there is no point in deploying monitoring. The solution is very simple, connect the camera to the human body induction alarm device, when there is a person in the monitoring scene, the alarm will be triggered (general wind and grass will not trigger, avoiding false alarms), and then wake up the camera to make it work normally ( Push the alarm information or store the alarm video to the local TF card).

Considering that the power consumption of the device is low, the human body induction alarm devices of surveillance cameras are mostly PIR human body induction or microwave radar human body induction. In order to make human body detection more accurate, PIR human body induction and microwave are sometimes used at the same time and appear on the same camera. In the article "Xiongmai Solution Solar 4G Camera Disassembly" article has introduced PIR and microwave radar human body induction, you can refer to it.

PIR Body Sensing and Microwave Radar Body Sensing on Camera

The camera is usually in a dormant state. When there is remote access by an app or someone appears in the monitoring scene, the camera will wake up and enter the normal function mode (according to the settings, the alarm information will be pushed or the alarm recording will be stored locally). When the remote access connection of the camera is disconnected or the alarm information disappears for a period of time (according to the setting, several seconds to several minutes), the camera enters the sleep mode again and waits for the next wake-up. It should be noted that in the low-power working mode, the camera cannot be set to 24-hour or timed recording, only alarm recording.

In order to avoid being in sleep mode for the first time, the camera will be set with a wake-up button, which can wake up the camera from sleep mode and enter the normal working state, so as to facilitate the installation and configuration of the camera. That's all for the camera running in low power mode.

full power consumption

The so-called full power consumption, relative to the low power consumption, is the same as the constant current camera, which is in a continuous and normal working state. At this time, all the functions of the camera can be turned on normally.

solar panel

material

The basic principle of solar panels is to use the photoelectric effect of silicon and certain metals to convert solar energy into electrical energy, which is then stored in batteries to provide electrical energy to corresponding equipment. The raw material silicon used can be divided into single crystal silicon and polycrystalline silicon. At present, single crystal silicon is mostly used, with a service life of more than 25 years and a photoelectric conversion efficiency of about 20%.

110W solar panel for a certain brand of solar camera

Install

According to the installation location, determine the inclination angle of the solar panel installation to obtain the maximum solar energy. The general principle is that the northern hemisphere azimuth is due south, and the southern hemisphere is due north. The following are the recommended tilt angles for solar panel installation in typical regions in China.

Battery

The batteries used in household solar cameras are mostly 18650 batteries and 21700 batteries. 18650 batteries are divided into ternary lithium-ion batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries. The maximum capacity of a single 18650 lithium battery is generally not more than 3400mAh, while the maximum capacity of a single 21700 battery can be increased to 5000mAh. The voltage of a single battery is generally 3.7V, and the voltage required for the camera to work is mostly 5V or 12V, so generally multiple batteries are connected in series and parallel to form a battery pack. For example, a certain home solar camera uses 6 18650 batteries to form a battery pack, its maximum capacity can reach 20000mAh/3.7V, and the discharge efficiency is generally higher than 95%.

However, professional solar cameras mostly use batteries, because considering the need for larger capacity power, batteries are more cost-effective. However, the size of the battery is larger and the weight is heavier, which is not suitable for the lightweight requirements and trend of home cameras.

Selection calculation and use

Calculate the working time of the solar camera in rainy days and the time it takes to charge with the load. Camera power consumption, battery capacity, discharge efficiency, solar photoelectric conversion efficiency, solar panel power and other parameters need to be considered.

Different usage scenarios and usage habits will lead to large gaps in the calculated data, so there is no specific example for calculation here.

Regarding the use of solar cameras, you can refer to the data consumption of 4G cameras, the use of 4G network cameras, and the aforementioned article on the dismantling of solar 4G cameras in Xiongmai’s solution, so I won’t go into details here.