Remote sites on satellite or cellular internet

Can I use satellite or cellular internet?

Yes. Just check two things with your internet company:

• The upload speed is high enough for your cameras.
• There are no blackout times, slow-downs (throttling) or limits for steady, heavy use.

Watch out for old-style satellite

Older satellite internet can have a long delay, called latency. It is often 1.5 to 2 seconds and can reach 5 seconds.

With that much delay, cameras wait on the cloud and hold frames. That can cause dropped frames, shaky connections and breaks in recording.

Set up cameras to use less data

Smart object detection can still work at low picture sizes. In good light it can spot objects as small as 10 pixels wide. To make that work well:

• Point the camera at a good angle. Avoid looking straight down from above.
• Keep trees and other things out of the way of the lens.
• For far-away objects, use a camera with a narrow view (a longer lens).
• Cameras mounted very high (over 8 feet) see more area but may miss faces and clothing.
• Mount the camera firmly so it does not sway. Swaying causes false motion.

Get the light right

• Light the area well. Don't point a camera from a dark spot toward a bright one.
• Use WDR (wide dynamic range) for scenes with bright and dark parts. Keep it low, because high WDR can blur moving things.
• Avoid pictures that are too bright or too dark.
• Use a fast shutter speed, 1/100 of a second or faster. This cuts motion blur.

Lower the frame rate

If you don't need to catch fast movement, like on a building site, drop the frame rate from 12 FPS to 3 to 5 FPS. That can save 30–40% of data or more.

Don't go to 1 FPS or below. It barely saves more than 3 FPS, and detection gets worse.

With good settings, a camera can still spot people and cars while using under 200 Kbps. In a clear, high-contrast scene, even 640 × 360 pixels at 5 FPS can work.