AOV Mode Explained: Always-On Video for Solar 4G Security Cameras

AOV mode, defined

AOV stands for Always-On Video. It is a camera operating mode in which the unit records continuously, around the clock, at low standby power — instead of sleeping until a passive infrared (PIR) sensor detects body heat and wakes it up. The camera stays awake because on-device AI scene analysis, rather than a heat sensor, decides what is worth encoding and keeping. That difference is the whole point: PIR-triggered cameras miss slow movement, miss anything outside the narrow PIR detection cone, and miss the opening seconds of every event while the sensor wakes the imaging pipeline. An AOV camera has already been recording.

AOV is an industry-generic term, not a proprietary feature of any one brand. Several factories build it, the label appears on datasheets from all of them, and the implementations differ enormously. For a distributor or importer, the useful question is never does it say AOV but what battery, panel and AI stack is behind the claim — because continuous capture costs energy, and a supplier who has not sized the power system honestly will ship you a camera that dies every cloudy week. Of the 150 SKUs in the SolaGuard catalogue, 49 are AOV models, with wholesale prices quoted per order.

Why PIR-triggered recording fails in the field

PIR is cheap, low-power and genuinely effective for a front door. On the sites your customers actually deploy — farms, ranches, construction compounds, yards, warehouse perimeters — it fails in four predictable ways.

Slow and tangential movement

PIR fires on rapid change in infrared energy across its zones. Someone walking slowly and directly toward the lens crosses very few zones and can register as no change at all. A vehicle coasting in with the engine off, livestock drifting across a boundary at night, a person crawling along a fence line — these are exactly the movement profiles that a heat-differential sensor handles worst, and exactly the ones that matter in cattle theft and equipment loss.

Everything outside the cone

The PIR detection cone is narrower than the field of view the lens actually covers. Every distributor who has handled a return knows the complaint: the camera saw it, but it did not record it. The subject was in frame and outside the trigger zone. AOV removes the mismatch, because the recording decision is made from the video itself.

Events with no heat signature

A gate left open. A pallet removed from a stack. A trailer that was there at 22:00 and gone at 04:00. Smoke. None of these present a moving warm body, so a PIR camera records nothing whatsoever. Continuous video with AI scene analysis can flag a scene that has changed state, not just a scene something walked through.

The missing lead-in

Even when PIR triggers correctly, the clip starts at the trigger. The approach — which direction, which vehicle, how many people — happened before the camera woke and is simply gone. This is the single most common reason a recovered clip turns out to be useless as evidence. AOV keeps the run-up.

The power arithmetic behind the mode

Continuous capture draws more energy than sleeping, which is why AOV cameras are specified as a battery-and-panel pairing rather than a camera with a panel bolted on. Across the SolaGuard AOV range there are exactly two pairings, and the choice between them is a site decision, not an upsell.

Nothing above 20000mAh exists in this catalogue, and no panel above 15W. If a competing datasheet quotes a cell far outside that range at a similar price, ask for the cell count, the chemistry and the test report before you quote it to a customer — an unverifiable battery figure is the most common way a container of solar cameras turns into a warranty problem.

Storage is microSD up to 128GB as standard across the range, with larger cards a custom-order item. Because continuous capture fills a card faster than event clips do, ask any supplier — including us — to state in writing how their AOV tier retains footage: what is kept at full quality, what is kept at reduced rate, and how long the card holds before it overwrites. A vague answer here is a real risk to your after-sales cost.

All AOV models are rated IP66 for outdoor use, 1080p–2K resolution as standard, and take 5–10 minutes each to install — no grid power, no WiFi, no trenching. That install figure is what makes the category work commercially for a distributor with an install crew.

The 49 AOV models, by series

Three reference points buyers most often sample:

• SG-C41G-10T66-V1 — 2K single lens, 8000mAh, 8W, IP66. The entry AOV unit.
• SG-D42G-10F66-V1 — 2K dual lens, 8000mAh, 8W, IP66. Wide plus detail view in one housing.
• SG-D42G-15F66-V1 — 2K dual lens, 20000mAh, 15W, IP66. The specification for difficult light.

Full specifications for every variant are on the product catalogue, where the per-SKU differences within each series are listed rather than averaged.

Specifying AOV for OEM and private label

Every one of the 49 AOV models is available for OEM and private label — your brand on the housing, the packaging and the app. Standard resolution is 1080p–2K; 4K is a custom/OEM build, not something we hold in stock, and any quote for it comes with its own tooling lead time and price. The factory, Shenzhen Leksell, has been building since 2012 and holds TÜV Rheinland certification alongside CE, FCC and RoHS — which matters less for the marketing page than for the customs file your freight forwarder will have to produce.

MOQ is 10 units for a trial order and 100 units for OEM/ODM. Ten units is deliberately low: it is enough to put cameras on real sites through a full weather cycle before you commit stock, which is the correct way to evaluate any AOV claim, ours included.

Lead times, margins and getting a quote

Distributor margin starts at 20% from around 10 units and reaches 30% from around 50 units; terms are set on the dealer programme page. Quantity pricing, freight and any customisation beyond the standard catalogue are always quoted by a person, never generated automatically — the variables are too specific to your destination, volume and branding for a web form to be honest about.

Before you place any AOV order, from us or anyone else, get four things in writing: the exact battery and panel pairing per SKU, the footage retention model, the ingress rating on the specific variant rather than the series, and the resolution as shipped rather than as advertised. Those four questions separate a working AOV camera from a PIR camera with a better datasheet.

To price a mixed container or start with a 10-unit trial, contact us at info@solaguard.net or through the wholesale enquiry page.