Interior Design Center

For many people wireless surveillance is the magic solution that solves all problems and makes installing a surveillance system much easier. There are some downfalls to this type of surveillance however and It's a good idea to know the ups and downs of wireless surveillance before purchasing any equipment.

Wireless Range

Wireless ranges on surveillance equipment varies from product to product, but whatever range is advertised on the product; it is generally the absolute optimal range it will perform at when conditions are perfect.

What I mean by perfect conditions pertains to the line of sight rule and good weather. If you have a straight line of sight with no obstacles in your signals way, you are more likely going to able to achieve the advertised wireless distance. Now if you take the clear distance and stick a brick wall, a steel door, and a fireplace in between; you are going to be hard pressed to get a wireless range anywhere near that distance with any form of decent quality.


Basically the thing to keep in mind is that when you put obstacles between your receiver and transmitter, they will have to circumnavigate them and it will diminish your signals quality and strength as the distance increases.

Not Always True Wireless

Wireless surveillance equipment doesn't always mean it's void of any and all cabling; in fact most wireless equipment is still going to require a power source, and that usually means a power adapter that is going to be near a plug. So even removing the video cabling from the equation doesn't mean you're completely cable free.

One way to supplant the need for a power adapter is to use a battery pack if your equipment doesn't come with one, but this will lead to more involvement as the battery packs will have to be recharged and replaced regularly as they run out of power.

Lower Quality To Extremely Expensive

Wireless equipment in general tends to occur at both ends of the price spectrum and is less prevalent in the middle of the pack.

To begin with you have all of the consumer grade wireless equipment that usually has some decent features and is acceptable for use in small systems, but nowhere near competent enough to use in large scale surveillance applications.

On the other hand when a wireless surveillance solution is needed for a sophisticated surveillance system, it is generally very expensive as it will need to be a very powerful piece of equipment to compete with a wired solution that has the same uses. Wireless cctv equipment that uses WIFI and individual IP addresses is generally the type of equipment that costs a lot more than a similar wired counterpart.

Frequencies

This topic could span multiple articles of its own, but we will cover a very small portion of information related to wireless surveillance transmission frequencies.

Digital Transmission

Digital transmission of wireless surveillance equipment is somewhat new and far less prone to interference than analog transmission.

Analog Transmission

Analog transmission was the standard for a long time when it came to wireless surveillance equipment and it is still used partially today, but it suffers from a lot more interference issues than that of a digital counterpart. In fact interference is common with digital phones and other household wireless devices; especially if they are 2.4GHz devices.

Finally it should be noted that as of the last few years law enforcement and government agencies have taken over a few of the analog wireless transmission frequencies, and made them no longer available for public use. These include both the 1.2Ghz and 900Mhz frequencies.