Looking for any advice/recommendations for cameras in remote area.

Here’s what I’m looking for:

  1. Doesn’t need to be connected to any type of network like WiFi or cellular to record video.

  2. Solar powered or battery operated

  3. Stores video locally. No cloud storage requirement.

  4. Can connect to phone via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to access videos.

My preliminary searching has pulled up reolink but those are cellularly connected. I don’t want to have to rely on a company being in business for these cameras to work. Let me know your setups.

  • @[email protected]
    2•1 year ago

    Early wyze cams with openmiko/dafang or wz_mini_hacks will do what you want.

    Both have options for local recording. openmiko and dafang are complete firmware replacements, so no internet needed at all. wz_mini is a overlay on top of stock firmware, so it may call home (and not work properly if it can’t) if you’re using that.

    Wyze Cam v2 is stupid cheap rn ($17 shipped from wyze above), and run off usb, so bring your own 5v otherwise, through whatever method you want (large battery, solar charging brick). Add microSD for the local recording. You even get some night vision with it. Openmiko is easy to install and configure, so it scales well.

    As far as #4, nothing is going to connect directly from phone to camera to view videos without some cloud service or intermediary. You can access whatever on the cameras via SSH/SCP, but that isn’t “simple”. And either way, it will “need to be connected to any type of network like WiFi” for this access, so #1 and #4 are mutually incompatible for the most part.

    I haven’t seen anything that has a bluetooth connection for access.

    If you want to get really fancy and can leave them connected, you can use a (free) aggregator like iSpy (NOT Agent DVR, their paid replacement) to get it all recorded and in the same place. Then you can use stuff like motion detection to reduce recorded video to useful footage, and save money on the SD cards.

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•1 year ago

      This is a lot of good information thank you!

      Things like go pros and dash cams have wifi to phone capabilities to access video which is why I was hoping there’s a security cam with a similar feature.

      Thanks I’ll look into openmiko and dafang.