WIFI range booster? Help?

[Slouch]

Greetings. 
I have a logging road where somebody keeps dumping trash. I'd like to set up a surveillance system yet I'm having a hard time selecting a camera. Part of my trouble is I need the photos captured sent to me, so I need either a cellular service option or WIFI connection. The road isn't far from the house, I'm thinking a WIFI connection might be an option. (might not) 

I don't know much about WIFI signal/range booster devices. Any advice is appreciated. I'd say the camera's location is roughly a 2 min walk from the house. Maybe 500 feet or less? 

[jagdtigger]

You still have to get electricity there so there would be a wire anyway, i'd say go for PoE.....

[Granular]

Do you have a specific camera in mind and how are you going to power it?

[Slouch]

15 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

You still have to get electricity there so there would be a wire anyway, i'd say go for PoE.....

I was thinking the house was close enough to plug in a wifi booster. If it's plugged inside the house closest to the road that is.
I don't know how limited wifi boosting is..

[Slouch]

6 minutes ago, Granular said:

Do you have a specific camera in mind and how are you going to power it?

No. I've looked but decided I need to figure out my wireless options first. 
It's either wifi or cellular. Trying to rule out one before diving into cellular  

From what i'm finding Wifi cameras are much cheaper with higher quality, so it's worth a look. 

Power the camera? Probably batteries, whatever works. Even if I have to change them once a month it's worth it if I get a plate number. 

[Kilrah]

Would have to be outside the house on the wall, and maybe with a directional antenna on it it might work.

But the point of an extender is usually to have it somewhere close to the middle between source and destination. 

[Granular]

A wifi booster is basically the same as router/access point. If you can't pick up signal from your existing wifi devices anywhere near where you wan the camera, then you won't be able to pick up signal from the booster either.

If you've decided you want to go with wifi, you could consider instead a cheap (~$50) wifi radio with integrated directional antenna that focuses the signal into one direction as opposed to how an access point transmits in all directions with equal power.

Ethernet with power-over-ethernet is the standard for connecting IP cameras, but 500 feet is a lot of cable to lay, especially if you don't plan to keep the camera there for long. Also, powering something with comparably small voltage over a 500 feet cable isn't exactly optimal.

[Falcon1986]

8 hours ago, Slouch said:

No. I've looked but decided I need to figure out my wireless options first.

No.

 

You need to figure out power first. If you want a decent camera that will be able to transmit a feed wirelessly, you’ll need a reliable power supply. Any good quality camera being used for surveillance might have P/T/Z functions, all of which will draw more power than a battery can provide.

 

On the other hand, if this is going to be a temporary setup and you don’t need a fancy PoE camera, you can look into one with a built-in battery. Keep in mind that the duration of the battery will depend on how active the camera system is. I immediately thought about a Blink XT2 for this application, but then realized that the camera would still need a powered sync module. But I’ve also come across some Reolink solar-powered cameras on Amazon that you can check out.

 

The last thing to do would be to supply the camera with WiFi connectivity. However, standard omnidirectional antennae are not going to give you the best range at 500 feet. You’ll need something that can produce a directional signal.

• The simplest method is to just “throw” a WiFi signal in the direction of the camera, but the wireless connection between the antenna and the camera might not be the most reliable. If you decide to go this route I suggest mounting a UniFi-AC-M with a UMA-D outside of your house directly wired into your router and pointed in direct line-of-sight to the mount point of the camera. A less expensive alternative is to use a TP-Link outdoor CPE (either 2.4GHz or 5GHz) which claim to work just fine in AP mode for this purpose.
• The more advanced setup is to create a PtP link. This requires 2 directional antennae, but the one connected to your router will be configured to be the AP and the other (which is wired to the camera) to be the client. You get the benefit of a very reliable PtP wireless link (better than the previously-suggested option especially in poor weather), but you’ll now need to power an additional device at the camera station. The TP-Link outdoor CPEs can be configured to run this way as well.

[Kilrah]

44 minutes ago, Falcon1986 said:

You need to figure out power first. If you want a decent camera that will be able to transmit a feed wirelessly, you’ll need a reliable power supply.

Or you just take something like an Arlo >=2 and don't need to care about power.

There are many perfectly fine off the shelf battery-powered security cameras.

[akio123008]

500 feet can be done quite well with wifi, outdoor wireless APs are pretty good, and 500 ft should be well within range (given clear line of sight)

 

As for power, that's kind of a tricky one. If you want to power it from a battery, the battery may need to be quite big for it to be able to run for a long time (which you may want to do, given apparently you don't know when the trash is going to get dumped)

 

You could power it from a very large battery (some large car battery for instance) but you may not be comfortable leaving such an item out there, and it's expensive too, so I'd say run a cable to the camera. The power usage is low, so it can be a thin one.

 

If you do decide to run a wire, you may as well scrap the wifi and use powerline networking for the data.

 

Edit: why do you actually need real-time surveillance? If you just need a number plate, you might as well use one of those stealthy wild-life camera's that just saves the pictures/video to an SD card

[Kilrah]

Surveillance cameras like the one I mentioned run a month on their small built in battery since they only activate themselves when movement is detected.

[Donut417]

12 hours ago, Slouch said:

I don't know much about WIFI signal/range booster devices.

They dont work the way you think. These need to be placed in a place that gets good WiFi signal. They also will cut your bandwidth in half. Thats why no one suggests ever using these. 500 Feet on WiFi is a stretch without using the proper equipment.