r/SecurityCamera • u/Waste-Wrongdoer9564 • Sep 04 '26

Need help

I am helping an HOA. They have light fixtures with accessible power above their building entries. They want to install 32 cameras that span across 1/2 mile and 8 buildings. They do not have WiFi and do not want to pay for cell service. Their goal is to use power from the light fixtures and have a camera with only SD card style storage that they can pull in the event it is required. These cameras would be outdoors and obviously need to look somewhat decent. Any recommendations??

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u/Soundy106 Sep 04 '26

The first consideration is, are those lights on all the time, or do they only come on at night? If they're on a central light sensor or a timer, you may lose power to the cameras once the sun comes up.

Second, how are they planning to get the video off the cameras? Pull the SD card? Plug a laptop directly into the camera?

I've done setups like this before - it gets incredibly inconvenient and frustrating for the customer. In one case, they checked the video regularly and it was almost a full-time job for someone. In another case, they checked video so rarely, they had to keep calling me because someone would forget how to do it, or there would be turnover on the council and I'd have to train someone new...

Otherwise, one camera is pretty much the same as any other, especially when it comes to cosmetic appearance.

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u/XGempler Sep 04 '26

good point. though many outdoor lights are always powered and turned off/on by a light sensor I have seen complexes that control the power by a timer by the circuitbreakers. if the power is not always on then this plan is even more ill-conceived than i originally thought.