Subscriber Discussion

Wireless Video Solution If Line Of Site Not Always Available?

U
Undisclosed #1
Nov 11, 2016

What would you recommend for a wireless video link if line of site is not always available? I see people here talk about Ubiquiti and Fluidmesh but not sure those will work in such conditions.

U
Undisclosed #2
Nov 11, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Something blocks the line of site intermittently?

Or there is no line of sight ever?

SK
Stan Knutson
Nov 14, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Intermittently, Area is rock quarry so is fairly wide open area.

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Scott Bradford
Nov 11, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Define "no line of site". Are you talking about trees in the way, or buildings?

If it's trees, some times you can get high powered, directional radios (900mhz is best) to blast through it. If it's solid objects (buildings)... then you have to go above or around.. (typically with mesh radios like Fluid)

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SK
Stan Knutson
Nov 14, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Line of site would me limited. Such as when the vehicle receiving the video signal goes behind a building or huge rock piles. Client said intermittent video loss would not be a huge issue.

U
Undisclosed #1
Nov 11, 2016

For a vehicle patrolling a moderate size area.

U
Undisclosed #2
Nov 11, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Is 3G/4G/LTE available?

SK
Stan Knutson
Nov 14, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Here's the scenario. The client want to save time and money by limiting the trips his loader operator has to take when loading trucks at two different locations at the quarry. He wants the loader operator to be able to look at a monitor in his loader and see how many trucks are waiting to be loaded at each site. As it stands now the loader operator is driving back and forth and at times, only loading one truck. This way he can wait until a number of trucks are lined up waiting to be loaded.

U
Undisclosed #2
Nov 14, 2016
IPVMU Certified

He wants the loader operator to be able to look at a monitor in his loader and see how many trucks are waiting to be loaded at each site.

Not to be crass, but common channel 2-way radio might be effective here.

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Avatar
Scott Bradford
Nov 11, 2016
IPVMU Certified

For a vehicle.... wireless is out. You would have to have an extremely robust MESH network to pull that off. Go cellular 4g... which has it's own issues.. (streaming video on 4g, good in theory, bad in practice... unless you have literally $2,000 a month to pay Sprint for data usage)

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MM
Michael Miller
Nov 11, 2016

Fluidmesh has high speed hand off so it can handle the vehicle well. None LOS will be your issue.

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Jon Dillabaugh
Nov 11, 2016
Pro Focus LLC

Has anyone looked into the new Ubiquiti Mesh products? We have many installed Nanostations without LOS.

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JH
John Honovich
Nov 11, 2016
IPVM

Jon, thanks.

for others:

Anyone have any feedback on using Ubiquiti's mesh here?

MM
Michael Miller
Nov 11, 2016

Looks interesting. Would like to know if they are using single radios or dual radios. Every mesh hop you lose half your bandwidth and you have high latency. Will be interesting to see how UBNT handles this issues which get amplified with video traffic.

(1)
U
Undisclosed #2
Nov 11, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Would like to know if they are using single or dual radios...

They have dual radios and on the 5ghz band they claim 1300Mbps.

Every mesh hop you lose half your bandwidth...

In the OP's case of a (single?) vehicle streaming, and with dual band radios, why would that be the case?

MM
Michael Miller
Nov 11, 2016

1300mbps is at 80mhz so that is eating up alot of channel width.

I don't know anything about the network design but based off the fact that he has no LOS and the vehicle is moving making me think there will be multiple hops. It will be interesting to see how UBNT handles connects and disconnects.

U
Undisclosed #2
Nov 11, 2016
IPVMU Certified

...he has no LOS and the vehicle is moving making me think there will be multiple hops.

I agree, multiple hops.

What I was asking is why you would 'lose half your bandwidth' with each hop when you have simultaneous send and recieve radios on each AP and no traffic except for apparently one vehicle?

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Matthew Netardus
Nov 14, 2016
IPVMU Certified

We generally either find a 4G wireless, or configure mesh in which case losing LOS is not an issue as long as the other pathway is still set (this is used for us when we are in a manufacturing environment where movable loaders sometimes block cameras on a ship; when it blocks one pathway by definition it opens another up).

What specifically is blocking your LOS?

SK
Stan Knutson
Nov 14, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Here is a Google Earth shot of the area I'm referring to. The White building is where the cameras will go. To the right of that is one loading site and the other is top center.

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Jon Dillabaugh
Nov 14, 2016
Pro Focus LLC

Why not just simply use a 4G capable tablet and call it good enough? Is there no cellular coverage at this site? Is cellular too slow to even support a substream? You wouldn't think this would be a very tough scenario, maybe I'm over simplifying it?

If you really need to do local wireless, it shouldn't be too hard to do a PtP link out to the far loading center, where you can install an AP or mesh APs. You could also do an AP at the main loading site too, but it doesn't sound like he needs to view the camera all the time, just when at the far loading center.

JH
John Honovich
Nov 14, 2016
IPVM

How about 900Mhz? Much better dealing with line of site and with the low / single camera count, not much bandwidth needed.

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Jeffrey Hinckley
Nov 15, 2016

Use MDS inet 900. Really rugged with FHSS technology. Should be able to blanket that area with omni on the building and vehicle. Use minimal fps jpeg images, rather than noise or high error rate vulnerable h.264. You will get probably 1 mbps, but the frequency hopping will keep you online. Many cities used to have this for mobile data, pre 3/4g.

Customer may also have some other scada based applications for this in the quarry.

Avatar
Jeffrey Hinckley
Nov 15, 2016

Actually, I found a bunch of those on ebay. You have to figure there are thousands of those out there, pulled from police and municipal vehicles after convert to cellular mobile data. These are industrial devices which should work well in this environment.

JC
John Collings
Feb 13, 2017
MEMOREYES

Stan - If this project is not deployed I'd suggest the following.

1- You don't need video, you only need a current single frame picture.

2- No radio is going through rock. If you build your own radio network altitude is everything. Got a tower? If not, where are the closest cell towers and whose are they? Cell data for 30-50 1.3M pictures a day wouldn't cost much.

3- If you use cellular you will need a static IP also and device/computer at the camera to request a picture either on demand or every few minutes. Can you write software?

4- Finally, there's an old joke about the real definition of FM and AM...  Frickin Magic and Another Miracle... Radio is dark art best left to Wizards and Magicians...

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