Member is looking to provide video surveillance to remote areas of golf course, i.e., on the greens relatively far away from buildings.
Anyone with experience here? Trenching? Wireless? Add Poles for cameras? Thanks.
Member is looking to provide video surveillance to remote areas of golf course, i.e., on the greens relatively far away from buildings.
Anyone with experience here? Trenching? Wireless? Add Poles for cameras? Thanks.
Where? I have done some golf course and other remote utility company work. You need line of sight, power or (solar) and poles, along with some creativity. I find most golf courses are not willing to make the investment to do it right.
A site survey is a must. Fortunately we are booked till spring.
This is basically what got Sun Surveillance started, a remote camera on a golf course.
Solar panels, battery, low-power cam, Ubiquiti or similar wireless. The nice thing is they usually don't need video at night (unless there is a severe vandalism problem), so you can get by with a smaller solar panel and battery rig.
From the Club House and/or the turn you can normally see much of any given course. These are obvious places to install thermal cameras (motion) and trigger solar light packs on poles via 900mhz mesh... The sprinklers are an obvious deterrent too.. That would be fun.
I have assisted on a few similar projects. One, 4g modems were installed at the remote locations. The cameras recorded to SD cards, and the 4g was for remote monitoring and video playback. The issue we had here was the modems kept reverting back to 3g, and the video was then slow. Once we go the modem firmware upgraded and set correctly to stay in 4g mode, that worked great.
Another location, they were able to get ISP cable drops to various out buildings, and the cameras were recording locally to small NVRs, and then viewed by a CMS at the main location. This worked great, as long as the ISP is providing the correct upstream bandwidth, and you have access to the modem/router firewall/port forwarding.
In these locations, power was available at the out buildings. They were recording on motion/analytics.
Dome cameras were installed on buildings and roadways or bullet cameras as needed.
"I find most golf courses are not willing to make the investment to do it right."
Totally agree. But there is nothing cheaper and more efficient than a physical connection, when possible.
And I think that's the case, as it's the greens in almost everywhere, it would be easy to bury fiber optics cables in the ground. Grass is easy and cheap to repair and fiber optics are cheaper than radio links.
Regarding the cameras, I suggest some speed domes working together fixed cameras.
For power supply, I would go with solar panels.
Tell them to wait until solar powered drones are available!
Thanks, Keith. But I'm not talking about copper, but fiber optics. I like copper too, but not for exposed areas and long distances.
I used to work for Siemens Building Technologies, where we had a very bad experience in using copper in a condo with several fixed cameras and 35 speed domes installed in a 7 miles perimeter.
Something always burned at every lightning storm, despite we were using surge protectors everywhere (video, power and RS-485 connections). When we changed to fiber, it stopped.
We found that lightnings, when are discharged to the ground, were sending high voltages through copper cables to devices, burning them.
Golf Courses and HOA's are much like Big Foot...one day someone is going to catch one.
Yup, too bad the camera was out of focus, but aren't they always when chasing the creature.
Two solutions come to mind:
1) This sounds like a job for SD cards. The chances of anything happening is remote enough that I'd be OK with not having real time access to the video. That way you can skip a LOT of the trouble.
2) One word: DRONES!
Sensera Systems offers a line of solar/wireless cellular cameras that are a good fit for this application (already being used for golf course applications).
Our complete camera including integrated solar power are $3600. Cloud Service plans (inclusive of cellular) vary by plan.
David.
That is MSRP.
You can contact me about other questions
david@senserasystems.com
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