Harsh Conditions & Weak Cell Signal

[DevonTT]

I'm with a volunteer lost dog team and we are researching video cameras to use for monitoring the traps we set to catch skittish dogs. Often these locations are fairly remote, and cellular coverage can be weak. Also, we are often out in freezing or even sub-zero weather.

My question is whether the Arlo Pro 2 will perform reliably in very cold conditions, particular with regards to battery life. Also, is there a way to boost the cellular signal if it's weak? We would probably get the Verizon version, as they seem to have the best coverage in our state.

Thanks in advance.

[jguerdat]

The Pro series cameras have NO cell capability - only the Go cameras do.

The battery life in the cold doesn't vary much with the temp but will decrease - it's just chemistry. You'd need access to the cameras so batteries can be changed proactively. How long they last depends on not only temps but also the cell reception and how many total minutes per day of recording and live viewing are used - <5 minutes per day, on average, is what get you spec life.

There's no way to boost cell signal strength other than exact positoning relative to the signal or maybe a cell booster which would also somehow have to be powered.

[st_shaw]

Something like this would work well for you. It's rated for -40F to +140F. I have four of their non-cellular cameras, which I leave outside 24x7, and they are reliable and perform excellently. Customer service is superb also.

[DevonTT]

Thanks. We have been using cellular trailcams for a while, but you miss a lot when you only get stills. We are hoping to upgrade to live video over internet if we can find a technology that works for us.

[DevonTT]

Can the Pro be used with a Verizon hotspot?

[st_shaw]

These cameras can be set to record 5 stills per trigger, and their triggering doesn't miss much of anything.  If you are trying to detect something entering a trap, I think it would work well.

Reconyx sells video cameras, but they don't sell cellular-enabled versions.  The bandwdith would be too low, the data usage would be far too high to be economical, and the power requirements would be way too high to be practical.

Good luck.

[DevonTT]

Verizon offers unlimited data now for $110/mo for the first device and $20/mo for all other devices on the plan, which makes it economical for us to use video. Now we just need to find a camera that will work with the Verizon Jetpack and, ideally, will accept a booster antenna of some kind.

[st_shaw]

Read the fine print carefully.  Verizon's "unlimited" plan is not really unlimited. Jetpacks drop back to 600 kbps after using 15 GB of data, and 600 kbps is not adequate to view live video at a usable resolution.  Your upload speed will also be slower on LTE than your download, because your Jetpack has lower transmit power and smaller antennas than the cell tower.

LTE is not very good for live video, especially if your signal is so poor that you need a signal booster.

If you can get by with less than 15 GB, and you don't need to view a live video feed, then you might get by OK with it.

[DevonTT]

That's good info. Our cameras are deployed as needed, and some will be used only a few days in any given month, so we may not hit that 15GB cap. If the camera and Jetpack are running but nobody is viewing, is it still uploading live video? I'm wondering if there's a way to have it send stills until we need live video, to reduce usage.

[st_shaw]

Cameras like the Arlo will upload everything they collect to the cloud, but not live video unless you have a paid plan and explicitly set that feature.

You might take a look at the M series camera from Reconyx.  It has built-in WiFi, and records video and/or stills. The Pro and Security models can be set to email you still photos via WiFi. You can power this from a solar panel.  This should work if you can place the jetpack close enough to the camera. I have one of these cameras but do not use it with a jetpack. The image quality is 720P, though, so it's not as good as the other cameras.

The other challenge with an LTE jetpack is you cannot remotely access devices from the Internet using port forwarding, like you can with Fiber or DSL. So, I don't know if there is any way to access the video remotely.  You could call and talk to Reconyx support.

[DevonTT]

Thanks. We are using Spartan GoCams now, which can also record video and email still photos. To view video, you have to get it off the card, and you have to choose whether to have the camera in video mode or photo mode. So these cameras have not been practical to use for video. You can read so much more in a dog's behavior when you have video instead of stills. You can make a much better assessment of why a particular dog isn't going into a particular style of trap--when he glances at an overhead door, for example, or refuses to step over a threshold, or balks at approaching a large enclosure. This kind of information tells us what we need to do next, but these are subtle behaviors that are often missed when all we get are still photos. That's why we have been wanting to find a video camera that will function in the conditions we work under.

[st_shaw]

Interesting.  I better understand what you are doing now.  If you primarily need the video to make trap adjustments, which requires you to be onsite, then it sounds like you don't really need remote video.

If you have the Spartans and they work well enough to notify you of activity, then you might consider keeping them but adding a second non-wireless camera to capture the video. Then you could view the video when onsite.

I also use a Reconyx UltraFire, which will take both stills and video for each trigger, but is optimized for video. Here's a sample video (at 720p versus the original 1080p).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=12oySRxKeI0AZOyTwK7prB2TuT7sZqIYo

[DevonTT]

We are developing a method for arming/disarming and triggering traps remotely, using a little Raspberry Pi computer. Ultimately, we would be able to monitor a trap and leave it disarmed if we are seeing lots of wildlife getting into it instead of the dog. With live video, we could see when the dog is near and then arm the trap. Then we could either trigger the gate remotely when the dog is inside the trap, or use our current method in which the dog steps through a beam (like a garage door sensor), which releases an electromagnet and drops the gate. This triggering technology has been working well for us, but you can understand the advantages of being able to disarm the trap remotely if the dog isn't there but a passel of raccoons are. And that's another case in which live video would really help.

Here's more on our group if you're interested:  www.theretrievers.org