We get calls everyday about wireless cameras. When you hear a few seconds of silence after you ask about wireless cameras, that from me rolling my eyes. Hey I understand, the thought of running wires is daunting, and on the surface the thought of having a nice clean easy wireless install is appealing. And more and more people are exposed to wireless devices everyday, like cell phones, wifi, etc. So you’ve been exposed to these wireless devices, you hopefully understand surveillance has to ROCK SOLID, you still want to do wireless? Sorry to be cruel here, but are you crazy?
Let’s start with the facts. The government gave away the “good” part of the wireless spectrum a long time ago. They gave that spectrum to TV & radio. TV & radio signals are fairly good at traveling long distances, and going through obstacles such as trees & walls (even then many people still subscribed to wired service called, oddly enough, cable, to get the best picture). And that was pretty much the end of it. All that was left was, excuse my French, is the shit part of the spectrum, that nobody wanted. The part of the spectrum that can be disrupted if you do something like, oh, I don’t know, turn on your microwave. However industry persuaded the FCC to let them use the shit part of the wireless spectrum, and I have to hand to them, they made very good use of it. Wifi, cordless phones, cell phones, many products have been created on a part of the wireless spectrum that everyone considered useless. But have you ever had a dropped call? WiFi cut out? No? Stop lying!
So ok, for the convenience it gives you, you can put up with your cell phone cutting out a little, or that wifi connection briefly sputtering while you’re watching that YouTube video, but do you want this happening while someone is say, robbing your house? Because you were too lazy to run some wires, you miss that money shot you need to catch the criminal.
But even putting aside the lack of reliability of wireless signals, consider the practical side of it. Sure the video & audio can be transmitted wirelessly, but you are still going to have to power the camera. Most cameras are not conveniently mounted next to a power outlet unfortunately. People ask about batteries… Sorry not going to dignify that with a response. You want to worry about keeping batteries charged, and think you can depend on them 24 x 7 good luck to you.
The ultimate proof is in our experience selling wireless cameras. Due to continued demand from our customers we briefly sold wireless systems for a few months. People don’t believe me when I say this, but our return rate on wired systems is almost zero. In the two years that we sold 4, 8, and 16 camera wired stand alone DVR systems, we got 1 return on a 4 camera system, zero returns on 8 & 16 camera systems. We got some returns on DVR card systems where you had to install the DVR card in your own computer, but this was almost always due to the customer trying to install a DVR card on a PC which was running 64 bit operating system when our cards used to only be compatible with 32 bit. Putting that aside the return rate on those systems was almost zero as well. Our return rate on our 4 camera wireless camera system was about 40%. Yes almost 40% of them were returned. I explain all this to our customers, but it never sinks in. Just think about it, if you are doing surveillance you have a good reason for it, and it has to be rock solid. That level of reliability can only be achieved with a wired system, powered by the grid, hooked up to a UPS. If you don’t want to run wires, you can fairly cheaply hire an electrician or handyman to do it, it’s not that hard. And once it’s done you won’t have to worry about it again. Wired surveillance is surveillance done right. Everything else is just playing around.
