AOV Smart Solar Cameras: A Wholesale Buyer's Guide to Always-On Video

What "AOV smart solar" actually refers to

AOV stands for Always-On Video: a solar-powered camera that records continuously at low standby power instead of sleeping until a PIR motion sensor wakes it. Rather than letting a pyroelectric sensor decide what is worth capturing, an AOV camera keeps its sensor and encoder running in a low-power state and uses on-device AI scene analysis to decide what to flag, tag and upload. The term is industry-generic — it describes a recording architecture, not a brand — so when you see "AOV" on a datasheet, treat it as a technical claim to be verified, not a marketing adjective.

SolaGuard's AOV line is 49 SKUs, with wholesale prices quoted per order, across four series. Every one of them is 2K, IP66, 4G LTE (no mains power, no WiFi), with a 8000mAh or 20000mAh battery, an 8W or 15W solar panel, and microSD storage up to 128GB. They sit inside a 150-SKU catalogue built by Shenzhen Leksell — established 2012, TÜV Rheinland certified, with CE, FCC and RoHS on file. Install time in the field is 5–10 minutes per camera, because there is no cabling and no local network to join.

Why PIR-triggered recording loses events

PIR works by detecting a moving heat differential inside a fixed detection cone. That fails in predictable, commercially painful ways:

• Slow movement. Someone walking a fence line deliberately, or a vehicle rolling in neutral, may never cross the threshold.
• Out-of-zone events. Anything happening at the edge of frame but outside the PIR cone is not recorded at all — the footage does not exist, so no amount of reviewing recovers it.
• Lost opening seconds. The trigger fires, then the camera wakes, then recording begins. The moment of entry is routinely the part that is missing.
• Thermally similar targets. Ambient temperatures close to body temperature flatten the differential PIR depends on.

AOV removes the trigger from the decision path. The footage is already being recorded; AI analysis decides what to mark and transmit. For farms, construction sites, yards and warehouse perimeters — where the incident that matters is the one nobody was watching — that difference is the entire value proposition, and it is the argument your sales team will make to end customers.

The four AOV series

That is 49 SKUs in total. Variants within a series differ in configuration rather than in the core platform, so confirm the exact build on the product page or against your quotation before you commit a PO — the series-level figures above are what stays constant. Reference models distributors most often sample: SG-D42G-15F66-V1 (dual lens, 20000mAh, 15W), SG-D42G-10F66-V1 (dual lens, 8000mAh, 8W) and SG-C41G-10T66-V1 (single lens, 8000mAh, 8W). The full range sits in the product catalogue.

Single, dual and triple lens

Single lens is the volume unit: one field of view, lowest landed cost, the right answer for a gate, a door or a single approach. Dual lens covers two fields from one pole, one SIM and one install — which is where the arithmetic turns, because a second camera means a second data plan and a second mounting job. Triple lens extends the same logic to sites where a single mounting point has to cover a wide yard or a junction of approaches. For most distributors the dual-lens SG-D42G families are the core of the order and the single-lens SG-C41G is the price-point opener.

Sizing battery and panel is the decision that drives everything else

Continuous recording costs more standby energy than waiting for a PIR trip, so the battery and panel pairing is not a detail — it decides whether the camera survives a bad week of weather.

• 8000mAh / 8W covers open, unshaded sites with reliable sun. In most of Vietnam and much of Latin America, a pole in open ground with a clear southern (or northern, below the equator) exposure is comfortably served.
• 20000mAh / 15W is for sites that do not cooperate: tree cover or building shadow for part of the day, extended monsoon or overcast runs, short winter days at higher latitude, or a deployment configured for heavy continuous upload.

Note the constraint this creates: the 20000mAh/15W configuration exists only in the SG-D42G-15F66-V* series. Every other AOV series is 8000mAh/8W. So choosing the larger power budget also commits you to dual lens. Buyers who plan mixed deployments usually stock one 8W series for easy sites and the 15F66 series for the difficult ones, rather than trying to force one SKU across both.

Also brief your installers on panel orientation. A camera that underperforms in the field is usually mounted where the panel is shaded for three hours a day — not a defective unit — and that distinction decides whether you absorb a return or not.

Specifications that get overstated, and how to check

This is where B2B deals go wrong. A datasheet figure that cannot be supplied becomes your problem at the customer's site, not the factory's.

Resolution. Standard across the catalogue is 1080p–2K. Higher resolution is available as a custom/OEM build only, quoted per project. Any supplier offering 4K as a stock item at the low end of this price band is describing something other than what will arrive.

Storage. Local capacity is microSD up to 128GB. Under continuous AOV recording, treat that card as a rolling buffer — the working window before overwrite — not as an archive. If the end customer needs long retention, that belongs in cloud storage or an upstream VMS, and it should be scoped and priced at the quotation stage rather than discovered after deployment.

Weatherproofing. All 49 AOV models are IP66. If a competing quote claims a higher ingress rating, ask for the test report and the certifying body. Ingress ratings are cheap to print and expensive to honour.

Certification. TÜV Rheinland, CE, FCC and RoHS documentation should be in your hands before the first container, not after customs asks.

Commercial terms

The 10-unit trial exists so you can put cameras on real sites in your own climate before committing capital. Buyers who skip it and order at the 30% tier typically end up with the wrong panel size for their territory. Margin tiers and the onboarding process are set out on the dealer page, and bulk pricing structure on the wholesale page.

OEM and private label

Private label is available across the catalogue, including all 49 AOV models, from 100 units. That covers branding for distributors who sell under their own name into a market where a Chinese brand label costs them shelf credibility. Custom hardware specifications — resolution, power budget, storage, packaging — are quoted case by case by a person who can commit to them, which is the only way a spec figure should ever reach you. Quantity, price and lead time for anything outside the stock catalogue come from a human on the sales side, never from a web page.

Vietnam-based buyers are served from the Ho Chi Minh City office. To open a quotation or request the trial batch, write to info@solaguard.net with your target territory, expected annual volume and whether the deployments are open-sky or shaded — those three facts are enough to return a SKU shortlist and a real price.