4G Construction Camera Sourcing: What to Specify Before You Order

What a 4G construction camera is, and the short answer for buyers

A 4G construction camera is a security camera that brings its own power and its own connection: a lithium battery kept topped up by an integrated solar panel, plus a 4G LTE modem with a SIM slot in place of WiFi or Ethernet. That is the whole reason the category exists — a construction site has no mains supply for the first weeks, no router anyone wants to leave in a container, and a perimeter that moves every month. In SolaGuard's catalogue the models built for this job are the 49 AOV SKUs, with 8000mAh or 20000mAh batteries, 8W or 15W panels, 1080p–2K resolution, IP66 housings, an install time of 5–10 minutes per camera, and wholesale prices quoted per order. Higher resolution or a different power pack is custom/OEM work, quoted per project rather than picked from stock.

For a distributor, the practical question is not "does it work" but "which variant do I stock, and what do I tell the site manager it will and will not do." The rest of this page answers that.

Why sites break ordinary cameras

Three things go wrong when a standard IP camera is repurposed for a construction site.

Power. Grid power arrives late and is cut whenever a trade needs the board. Anything on a wall socket is offline exactly during the weeks when material theft peaks.

Network. A site WiFi bridge covers a building, not a 3-hectare plot with steel and concrete between the camera and the access point. LTE routes around the site rather than through it.

Relocation. Cameras move as the perimeter, the laydown yard and the gate move. A cabled installation is a day of labour every time; a solar 4G unit is a pole bracket and a SIM, which is why the 5–10 minute figure matters more here than in any other vertical.

AOV versus PIR, and why it decides the evidence you get

AOV — Always-On Video — is an industry-generic term, not a SolaGuard trademark. It describes a camera that records continuously at low standby power, using AI scene analysis to decide what deserves full-rate capture and upload, instead of waking only when a passive infrared sensor fires.

That distinction is not marketing on a construction site. PIR triggers on a thermal contrast moving across the sensor's zone, and it fails in the exact conditions sites present:

• Someone walking slowly and steadily, carrying cable or rebar, may never produce a sharp enough thermal transition to trigger a wake-up.
• Midday heat in Vietnam or coastal Latin America flattens the contrast between a body and a hot concrete surface.
• Anything happening just outside the PIR zone — a truck backing up to the fence line — produces no recording at all.
• Wake-up latency means the first seconds are missing, which is usually the approach, the face and the plate.

A PIR camera therefore produces a clip library with holes in it, and you find the holes during the insurance claim. An AOV camera produces a continuous record and uses the AI layer to mark what matters. For a site owner this is the difference between "we have footage" and "we have footage of the incident."

The four AOV series, and how to choose between them

All four series are 2K and IP66. The real choices are the power pack and the lens configuration.

Power: specify per position, not per site

The 8000mAh / 8W platform suits positions with clean southern (or northern, below the equator) exposure and moderate event volume — fence lines, laydown yards, staff parking. The 20000mAh / 15W platform, such as the SG-D42G-15F66-V1, is what you quote for the hard positions: a gate with constant vehicle traffic, a camera shaded by the structure itself for half the day, or a site running through a rainy season where several low-irradiance days can stack up. Buyers who size the whole site off one number always under-spec the gate.

Lenses: coverage per pole, not per camera

A single-lens unit like the SG-C41G-10T66-V1 is the cost floor for a defined view. Dual-lens models such as the SG-D42G-10F66-V1 give a wide overview plus a detail view from one housing. The triple-lens SG-S43G series spreads the field wider still from one mount. The economics are worth spelling out to your customer: one multi-lens unit means one pole, one SIM, one install and one entry in the site's monitoring account, and on a large perimeter that recurring saving usually outweighs the unit price gap. Full specifications per variant are on the product catalogue.

Storage, data and recurring cost

On-device recording is microSD up to 128GB as standard; higher-capacity cards are a custom-order item, not something to promise from stock. The working model is local-first: the camera records to the card, the AI layer flags events, and the LTE link carries event clips, alerts and on-demand live streams rather than a permanent full-rate uplink. This is what keeps the SIM plan affordable — a site with a dozen cameras streaming continuously over LTE is a data bill no contractor will renew.

Two things to settle at PO stage: the destination country, because LTE band variants differ between Vietnam and Latin American carriers, and whether the customer wants cloud retention layered on top of card storage. Both are cheaper to specify before production than to fix after landing.

Commercial terms for importers and distributors

The cameras are built by Shenzhen Leksell, established 2012, TÜV Rheinland certified, with CE, FCC and RoHS on the product side. OEM and private label are available across the catalogue, including all 49 AOV models.

Vietnamese orders ship from the Ho Chi Minh City office on the 7–10 business day cycle, which is the timeline that lets a distributor answer a contractor's tender without waiting on a sea shipment. Pricing bands and payment terms are set out on the wholesale page, and the margin structure for resellers on the dealer page.

The RFQ checklist to send any factory

Whether you buy from us or compare quotes, ask for these in writing. A supplier who answers all eight precisely is a supplier whose datasheet you can trust:

1. Battery capacity and solar panel wattage, per model — not "up to" figures for a range.
2. Sensor resolution actually shipping in the stock configuration, and what resolution requires custom tooling.
3. Ingress rating on the housing, and whether the rating covers the SIM and card door when closed.
4. Maximum microSD capacity the firmware supports, not the slot's physical limit.
5. LTE band variants available, and which one is loaded for your destination market.
6. Certification scope — which certificates apply to which model, with certificate numbers.
7. MOQ split between a trial order and an OEM run, since these are almost always different.
8. Lead time quoted separately for air samples and sea bulk.

Quantity pricing, project discounts and OEM tooling costs come from a person, not a page. Send the site count, the mounting positions and the destination country to info@solaguard.net and you get a specification sheet back rather than a price list.