AOV CCTV Cameras Explained: What Always-On Video Means for Wholesale Buyers

What "AOV" means on a CCTV spec sheet

AOV stands for Always-On Video: a camera that records continuously, around the clock, instead of waking up only when a PIR motion sensor trips. It pays for that continuous capture with on-device AI scene analysis — the camera runs a low-power capture loop and escalates to full-rate recording, alerting and 4G upload only when the scene actually contains something worth the battery. The term is industry-generic. Any factory can build an AOV model and many now do, so "AOV" on a quotation tells you the recording behaviour, not the brand — which is exactly why it needs checking line by line when you compare two offers. SolaGuard's current catalogue carries 49 AOV SKUs across four series, with wholesale prices quoted per order, all 2K, all IP66, built on 8000mAh or 20000mAh batteries with 8W or 15W solar panels.

For a buyer, the practical definition is simpler still: with a PIR camera you get a folder of clips and have to trust the sensor decided correctly. With an AOV camera you get a timeline, and the AI decides what to flag within footage that already exists.

AOV versus PIR-triggered: what actually changes in the field

PIR detection works on thermal differential across a sensor's zones. That is cheap and it is genuinely effective in many installations — but it has four failure modes that a distributor hears about from end users, not from datasheets.

Slow or parallel movement. A PIR sensor responds best to a warm body crossing its zones laterally at walking speed. Someone moving slowly, or approaching head-on down the camera's axis, crosses far fewer zone boundaries and can stay under the trigger threshold.

Hot ambient conditions. PIR reads the difference between body heat and background heat. In the Mekong Delta in April, or on a Sonoran or Chaco afternoon, that gap narrows. Sensitivity that was tuned in a Shenzhen QC room behaves differently on a tin-roofed warehouse in the tropics.

Out-of-zone events. A vehicle stops just outside the PIR cone, someone walks into the frame already inside the detection zone, or a theft happens in the corner of a wide scene. The pixels are there; nothing ever triggered the recorder.

Missing the lead-up. Event clips begin at the trigger. The thirty seconds before — the vehicle circling, the fence being tested — are the part an insurer or a police report usually wants, and a triggered camera never had them.

That last pair of rows is the honest trade. AOV is not free, and any supplier who tells you it costs nothing is describing marketing, not physics.

The four AOV series, and how to pick between them

The split that matters commercially is the power class, not the lens count. Three of the four series run 8000mAh with an 8W panel; only the SG-D42G-15F66-V* line steps up to 20000mAh and 15W. Quote the 8W class where the mount gets clean, long daily sun and the customer's alert volume is moderate — open farmland, a fence line, a yard with a southern (or in the southern hemisphere, northern) exposure. Quote the 15W class where the panel will be shaded part of the day, where the site sits under a long wet season, or where the customer expects heavy upload traffic because every flagged event goes to a phone.

Do not size that from a table alone. Real autonomy depends on latitude, panel aiming, shading, alert volume and how much the 4G radio is asked to transmit, and the only defensible answer is a sample on the actual roof through the worst month. That is what the 7–10 day air sample window is for.

Entry-level single-lens units like the SG-C41G-10T66-V1 suit volume retail and simple perimeter jobs. The SG-D42G-10F66-V1 adds a second lens for wide-plus-detail coverage at the same power class. The SG-D42G-15F66-V1 is the one to put in front of a customer who has already been burned by a camera that went flat in the rainy season. Full specifications per variant are on the product catalogue.

Storage and retention — the question end users ask second

Standard storage is microSD up to 128GB, with higher-capacity cards available on custom orders. Continuous recording consumes a card far faster than event clips do, so plan retention honestly with your customer: an AOV camera loops and overwrites, and the retention window is days, not months. That is not a defect, it is the arithmetic of continuous video on a card. The workflow that works is retrieval by AI-flagged event — the customer finds the moment in the app and pulls the footage before the loop reaches it — not manual scrubbing through a card weeks later. Sell it that way and you avoid the most common post-sale complaint in this category.

Weatherproofing

Every AOV model listed above is IP66. When a competing quote advertises a higher ingress rating, ask for the test report and the certificate holder's name, not just the number printed on the box. In this category, claimed ratings are the most commonly inflated line on a spec sheet, and a rating no one can document is worth nothing to you when units come back under warranty.

Sourcing AOV stock: MOQ, margin, lead time, certification

The cameras are manufactured by Shenzhen Leksell, established 2012, TÜV Rheinland certified, with CE, FCC and RoHS on the products. For any importer selling into a market with customs or retail-channel documentation requirements, ask for those certificates up front and check that the model numbers on them match the models on your proforma — a factory-wide claim with no matching per-model paperwork is a problem you inherit at the port.

Distributor margin starts at 20% from around 10 units and reaches 30% from around 50; the dealer programme sets out the tiers. OEM and private label are available across the whole catalogue, including all 49 AOV models — your logo on the housing, your branding on the packaging and manual, at the 100-unit MOQ. The broader catalogue runs to 150 SKUs with wholesale prices quoted per order, so an AOV line typically sits at the top of a range that also has entry-level stock to hold a price point.

One detail worth putting in your own sales material: installation is 5–10 minutes per camera. There is no grid power to run and no WiFi to join, so a crew can commission a site in an afternoon. For a distributor selling to farms, construction sites or logistics yards spread across a province, that is often a bigger part of the pitch than any spec on the sheet.

Five questions to put to any AOV supplier

1. Is it truly continuous, or is it "fast-wake" PIR? Some suppliers market a shortened PIR wake time as AOV. Ask whether footage exists for a period in which nothing triggered. If the answer is a clip list, it is not AOV.
2. Which battery and panel ship with which model number? Not a series-wide figure — the exact pairing per SKU, because within a catalogue these genuinely differ.
3. What is the per-model certification? Certificate numbers and model numbers, matched.
4. What is the warranty process and where do RMA units go? Solar and battery products fail differently from mains cameras, and whoever holds local stock absorbs that cost.
5. Can I get a sample on the real site before committing to bulk? A supplier confident in the power budget says yes. Sample pricing and terms are handled through wholesale enquiries.

A buyer comparing AOV offers should end up with two numbers per model — battery capacity and panel wattage — and a certificate they can verify. Everything else in this category is negotiable; those are what determine whether the camera is still recording in month three of the rainy season. For a specification review or a quotation against your own tender documents, write to info@solaguard.net with the site conditions and the quantity, and a person will answer — quantity, price and lead time always come from a human, never from a spec table.