Solar powered 4G IP Camera

Now a day, The CCTV cameras are essential for surveillance and monitoring of places. But many of our CCTV systems installed at public places gets failure due to discontinuation of power source.

To avoid this type of failure, we have analyzing the some of the renewable energy technology to incorporate with CCTV systems.

Objective of the Project:

In this design, we plan to integrate CCTV system with solar power system. The solar panel produces DC electricity during sun hours. In our country average sun hours is 10 hours per day. So we calculate the average current taken by the equipments and also battery charging.

In day time the solar panel produces sufficient electricity, to power up the equipments and simultaneously charging the Lithium –ion batteries. These batteries capacity have decided to power up equipment on night time.

Challenge of the Project:

In this design, different operating voltage of the equipment is one of difficult and also integration of the 4G cameras from the multiple remote location to recording location.

Parts Required:

1. Raspberry pi Zero w or Raspberry pi3 B+ with min 1GB RAM

2. 32GB Class 10 Micro SD card

3. Arducam 5MB IMX219 with M12 mount camera module( IMX is model name of Sony sensor and OV5619 is Omni vision sensor)

4. 4G outdoor Router (Brand: COFE)

5. 4G SIM card with unlimited data

6. 12v-36v DC to 5V DC 5Amp Buck converter

7. 5v DC 3W IR LED with lens – 4 nos

8. Solar Panel – 12v 100 watts – 2nos

9. 40Amp Charge controller

10. Samsung INR18650 Lithium ion Battery – 3.2v 6000mAh – 4 nos

11. BMS – 4S 40Amps

12. Camera Outdoor Enclosure – Metal

13. Mounting Structure – As per design mentioned

14. Static IP internet Connection at Central location.

Knowledge Required:

1. Basic soldering knowledge

2. Using Putty on windows(SSH Login)

3. Windows PC with internet

Making of Camera :

In Indian market many type of cameras available, but it required 12v/3A DC power and also has separate Ethernet port for communication. In this project, we choose Raspberry pi3+ board , Arducam camera module and Buck converter may used to prepare a camera.

Step1: Raspberry pi OS installation procedure, Link

Step2: RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) camera software installation , Link

Follow these two steps carefully and without omitting any steps, the RTSP camera is ready.

Making of Li-ion Battery :

Please follow the steps , Link

Achivement of Static IP from 4G Dynamic IP:

In most of the 4G camera has one QR code printed on its body , this QR code has embedded with SSL and RSA key of the vendor media server. To scanning the QR code with vendor Android app that camera paired with server and video feed directly connect to vendor media server. So the Mobile app or Client software is get live feed from this media server.

This same protocol is to be followed in our conversion. So I proposed to install one Wireguard VPN server at central location with Static IP internet connection. The procedure to setup wireguard server is given in the Link. After setting up this server I achieved static IP connection from Dynamic IP connection.

Central Monitoring at Control Room:

In control room for monitoring the remote cameras feed is achieved by Video management software installed at One higher end PC and also camera feeds are stored in the PC. So calculate the retention of data period it may be define the size of the hard disk required in the control room. Some linux based and windows based freeware VMS is available with limited feature.