AOV Camera Meaning: What Always-On Video Actually Is, and How to Buy It Wholesale

AOV Camera Meaning: The Short Answer

AOV stands for Always-On Video. An AOV camera records continuously, 24 hours a day, rather than waking up only when a passive infrared (PIR) sensor detects a heat signature moving across its field of view. On a battery-and-solar camera this is only possible because the device runs a low-power imaging pipeline with on-board AI scene analysis, so it can keep the sensor live and still survive on harvested solar energy. The term is industry-generic — it appears on datasheets from many manufacturers and is not a brand, a trademark, or anything proprietary to SolaGuard. If a supplier presents "AOV" to you as their own patented feature, treat that as a sales-training problem, not a technical differentiator.

For a distributor or importer, the practical meaning is narrower and more useful: an AOV camera produces an unbroken timeline you can scrub through, while a PIR-triggered camera produces a folder of disconnected clips with gaps between them. Those gaps are where end-user complaints come from.

Why the term appeared at all

Mains-powered CCTV has always recorded continuously; nobody needed a word for it. The label became necessary when solar and battery cameras arrived, because early off-grid units could only do event recording — the radio and the encoder consumed too much to leave running. "AOV" is how the category now signals that a battery camera behaves like real CCTV rather than like a trail camera.

AOV vs PIR-Triggered: What Actually Differs in the Field

PIR detection is a physical sensor watching for a moving heat differential. It is cheap, it is reliable for a person walking briskly across a driveway at close range, and it fails in a specific, predictable set of situations your end customers will hit.

The honest summary for your sales team: AOV buys evidential completeness and pays for it in power and storage. That is the entire trade. Anyone who tells a buyer AOV is free is setting up a warranty conversation later.

Where AOV genuinely wins for the end user

Farms and ranches with livestock, where theft is slow and quiet rather than dramatic. Construction sites where the dispute is about when material disappeared, not just that it did. Warehouse yards where the question is which vehicle was where at which minute. Anywhere the customer's real need is a defensible timeline, AOV is the correct recommendation. For a remote gate that sees four vehicles a week, PIR-triggered is the better engineering answer and the cheaper unit — recommend it and keep the customer.

The Power Budget: Why Battery and Panel Are Paired

Continuous recording raises the average draw, so an AOV camera has to be specified as a system — sensor, battery, panel — not as a battery number on a spec sheet. Our catalogue runs 150 SKUs in total, with wholesale prices quoted per order, of which 49 are AOV models across four series:

Read the table as two power classes. The 8000mAh / 8W platform covers the volume price points and suits sites with clear southern (or northern, below the equator) exposure and normal seasonal sun. The 20000mAh / 15W platform — for example the SG-D42G-15F66-V1 — exists for monsoon regions, tree-shaded mounts, and any installation where three or four consecutive overcast days must not produce a gap in the record. In the Mekong Delta and in the wet season across much of Latin America, that is the specification to quote by default, even though it costs more per unit; a camera that browns out in August generates an RMA and a lost account.

Entry AOV starts at the SG-C41G-10T66-V1, single lens, 8000mAh, 8W. The mid-tier dual-lens SG-D42G-10F66-V1 is the usual first order for distributors testing the category. Every AOV model is 2K, IP66-rated, and 4G LTE — no site WiFi and no grid connection. Installation is 5–10 minutes per camera: mount, insert SIM, angle the panel.

Browse the full range at /en/products/.

Storage is the constraint you should be quoting on

Continuous recording fills a card faster than event recording does — that is arithmetic, not opinion. All models take microSD up to 128GB, and end users should be told plainly that an AOV camera on a small card recycles its oldest footage quickly. Two things follow for your quoting practice: fit the largest supported card by default rather than treating it as an upsell, and set the customer's expectation for how far back the timeline reaches before the sale, not after an incident. If a buyer's retention requirement genuinely exceeds what on-board storage can hold, that is a cloud or NVR conversation, and it is better had at the quote stage.

Verifying an AOV Claim Before You Commit an Order

The term is unregulated, so some suppliers apply it to cameras that record continuously only while mains-connected, or that quietly drop to event mode when the battery falls below a threshold. Before an order:

1. Ask what happens at low battery. A defined, documented fallback behaviour is fine. An undocumented one becomes your support ticket.
2. Ask whether AOV survives a 4G dropout. Recording to the card should be independent of the network; upload should catch up afterwards.
3. Ask what the AI actually does. "AI detection" should mean on-device classification — person, vehicle — so notifications stay useful. Scene analysis is what makes low standby power possible in the first place.
4. Test in the worst month. Run samples through your rainy season or your shortest-daylight weeks, not through a clear March.
5. Check the certificate holder, not the certificate. Ask whose name is on it.

Our cameras are built by Shenzhen Leksell, established 2012, TÜV Rheinland certified, with CE, FCC and RoHS. Samples ship in 7–10 days by air, bulk orders in 25–40 days by sea, and 7–10 business days within Vietnam from our Ho Chi Minh City office.

OEM, Private Label and Order Terms

All 49 AOV models are available for OEM and private label alongside the rest of the catalogue: your brand on the housing, your packaging, your app naming. MOQ is 10 units for a trial order and 100 units for OEM/ODM. Dealer margin is 20% from around 10 units and 30% from around 50 units.

One note on customisation, since AOV buyers ask about it more than most: the catalogue is what ships from stock, but the factory builds to specification — higher resolution than the standard 1080p–2K line (4K is a custom/OEM build, not a stock item), different battery and panel pairings, and other configuration changes. Quantity, price and lead time for a custom build come from a person, never from a price list.

Distributor terms are at /en/wholesale/; to open an account, see /en/dealer/ or email info@solaguard.net with your target market, expected first-order quantity, and — most usefully — the site conditions your customers actually install in.