What are the Pros and Cons of IP WIFI camera NVR?

If you ask me whether we should choose WIFI system over PoE solution in CCTV surveillance project, I would say don't consider the WIFI unless wire is not the good option. "The wireless is not stable", people always say to WIFI. Technically, it is not about the 'stable'. The WIFI signal will drop down 30-50 % once it penetrates a wall. If the signal needs to go through several walls in the scene, the WIFI cameras could face serious signal dropping. Another thing is the WIFI camera still requires power, it is not really wireless.

What is the value of WIFI camera NVR? Firstly let's take a look at the picture below. The red spot is the place we would like to install CCTV camera. The blue area is the empty without facility. With PoE solution, we would have to be cabling over the sky in the blue area. Those make the installation difficult and ugly. In the open area like the farm or factory, we always could see the similar sense. The cables have to either go over the sky or underground. The WIFI camera NVR could provide better solution in this sense.

The WIFI camera doesn't need to be cabling back to the NVR, so no need to deal with the sky cabling here. The transmission distance is not the problem. The WIFI can reach 120 meters distance in open area. The challenge is the wall. If we place the WIFI NVR inside the building, the signal needs to penetrate at least one, even two walls before arriving at the NVR. The signal could be dropping sharply. We can use the WIFI receiver to settle this issue. The WIFI receiver is the device which can install outside, receive the video from different WIFI IP cameras and return back to an NVR with cable connection. After we deploy the WIFI receiver, the wall penetration takes a cable connection instead of wireless signal. The power is not the issue in this sense, each building has available power.

The key to deploy the WIFI camera NVR is trying everything possible to avoid the WIFI penetration over the wall. In the above case, we use a receiver. Can we simply move the WIFI NVR outsider to receive the signal? It is properly not a good idea. The hard driver will turn into issue once we move the recorder outdoor. The limited operation temperature of hard driver is around 55 degree. Data could be losing, even shorten use life when the temperature rise up to the limit. That is why we can see it always has cooling system in the data center to control temperature for hard drive. With sunshine, the temperature will arrive at 55 degree very quickly inside the NVR.

In the practical application, we can even integrate both WIFI and PoE with a receiver. The NVR will connect all the cameras in the network, both from wire or PoE. WIFI camera NVR can eliminate the cabling deployment in the open area, just try to avoid wall penetrate. The solution will be working fine.