But with choice comes more questions 😆. PoE means you don't need separate power for the camera. But it looks like they sell solar powered wifi ones. Is there a benefit of using PoE instead of wifi+solar?

[–] kurikai@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Well worth running Poe if you can. Poe can also power some wifi access points(I use ubiquity sps I bought cheap on trademr), so you can hide them in your roof space.

[–] Dave 2 points 4 months ago

It just sounds like so much work 😆. How does the actual running of PoE work? Do I measure the distance at say 18m then buy a 20m cable to use, or am I buying a big roll, cutting it to size, and adding the plug on the end? (And if the latter, how do I do that?)

Do I have to be careful about which cable I get to make sure it supports PoE, or can I grab any cat5 or cat6?

[–] Panq 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The solar/battery models don't run 24/7 - you can trigger them remotely (so you can check the live feed whenever) or they can trigger with motion. Still perfectly useful for a bunch of use cases (e.g. just checking if you closed something, or installed somewhere that motion sensing is reliable like a low-traffic corridor) but not super useful for, say, a front door.

[–] Dave 1 points 4 months ago

Oh that's super useful to know, thanks!