Outdoor Solar Cameras: The Production Spec, Four AOV Series, and Wholesale Terms

The short answer: what an "outdoor solar camera" actually is

"Outdoor solar camera" is the everyday name for a security camera that runs on a rechargeable battery topped up by a solar panel and sends its data over a 4G LTE SIM — no mains wiring, no WiFi at the mounting point. The specification that genuinely holds up outdoors in Vietnam and Latin America comes down to six numbers: 1080p–2K resolution, an IP66 housing, an 8000mAh–20000mAh battery, an 8W or 15W panel, a microSD card up to 128GB recording on site, and AOV (Always-On Video) rather than PIR-triggered capture alone. Within SolaGuard's 150-SKU catalogue, the 49 AOV models carry wholesale prices quoted per order, install in 5–10 minutes per camera, ship as air samples in 7–10 days and as sea freight in 25–40 days.

What follows takes those blocks apart one at a time, because they are exactly where factory quotes diverge — and where a wrong choice is only discovered once the pallets are already in your warehouse.

Four spec blocks that decide your price and your complaint rate

Battery and panel are a pair — never read one without the other

The most common mistake in a datasheet comparison is looking only at battery capacity. The battery decides how long the camera survives without sun; the panel decides how much of that it wins back each day. A large battery figure behind a small panel runs beautifully for a week and then slides as soon as the rainy season starts — and the complaint lands on the distributor's desk, not the factory's.

Two combinations are in production:

• 8000mAh + 8W — for positions in direct sun for most of the day: farm fence posts, open yards, outdoor car parks, the street face of a construction site.
• 20000mAh + 15W — for positions shaded by trees or a building through part of the afternoon, long-rain regions, or customers who want heavy continuous recording and nobody climbing up to hand-charge anything.

When you are advising a dealer, one question settles it: does this camera lose the sun in the afternoon? That answer picks the combination, and it moves the price more than the lens count does.

Ingress rating: IP66 declared, and how to verify it

Every outdoor AOV series is rated IP66 — fully dust-tight and able to take high-pressure water jets, which covers tropical rain and the hosing down of pens, sheds and yards near the mounting point. If a supplier offers a higher ingress rating, ask for the independent lab test report with the model code on it, not the line printed on the carton. Ingress ratings are the most over-declared figure in the solar camera category, precisely because a retail buyer has no way to test one.

Resolution: 1080p–2K is what ships

1080p–2K is the standard; 4K is accepted only as a custom/OEM order. On a battery-powered camera that is a deliberate engineering choice: higher resolution costs current draw and 4G data volume, and on a system that is only ever refilled by an 8W or 15W panel, the part that looks good on paper gets paid for in real runtime. At the identification distances that matter in practice — a plate at the gate, a stranger in the yard, cattle at the fence line — 2K is enough, and enough of the time.

On-board storage

microSD up to 128GB is the standard; larger capacities are handled as a custom order. For projects that need longer retention, the sane architecture is continuous recording to the card with events pushed to cloud, rather than trying to cram everything onto one oversized card — the card is hardware sitting outdoors, and one dead card means the whole evidence trail is gone.

AOV against PIR: a difference that shows up in complaints, not just catalogues

AOV (Always-On Video) is an industry-generic term, not a SolaGuard trademark: the camera records continuously, 24/7, at low standby power, using AI scene analysis to decide when to raise recording quality and push an alert.

A PIR-triggered camera only starts recording when the thermal sensor sees a change that is both large enough and fast enough. On site the consequences are very specific:

For farm and construction customers, "first seconds lost" means the part that mattered most is not in the file. That is the reason to lead a B2B range with AOV and keep PIR for the strictly price-driven end.

The four AOV series and how to pick by site

The 49 AOV SKUs fall into four series. The version counts and price bands below are the full catalogue figures, not a sample:

How to read that table when you are placing a first order:

• The door-opener, easy to close on price: SG-C41G-10T66-V1 — single lens, enough for one gate, one yard corner, one warehouse door.
• The best-balanced configuration: SG-D42G-10F66-V1 — dual lens giving wide angle and close view at the same time, still on the 8000mAh/8W pairing, so the price stays reasonable.
• The SKU for difficult positions: SG-D42G-15F66-V1 — dual lens on a 20000mAh/15W base, for shaded mounting points or customers who never want to hear the word "recharge".
• Triple lens (SG-S43G-10T66-V*) suits internal road junctions and large yards where one pole should replace three.

The full catalogue with per-version specifications is on the products page.

The factory file: what belongs in the folder before a bulk order

The products are built by Shenzhen Leksell, established 2012, certified by TÜV Rheinland, with CE, FCC and RoHS. For imported goods sold through project channels these papers are not decoration: they are the condition for clearing customs, for bidding, and for an industrial client to sign acceptance.

Three questions worth asking any factory, including us:

1. Is the certificate in the factory's own name, or in the name of a trading intermediary?
2. Does the test report carry the exact model code you will be shipped, or a "representative" model from the series?
3. If a customer asks for resolution above the production standard, does that order go down the custom route with its own MOQ and lead time, or is it quoted as stock? The honest answer is always the first one.

OEM/private label is available across the whole range, including all 49 AOV SKUs — logo, retail packaging and manuals in the language of your market. That is the real difference between a distributor and a reseller: the brand ends up in your hands, not the factory's.

Commercial terms and lead times

The 10-unit order exists to solve exactly one problem: it lets you mount the cameras outdoors on your own sites and run them through a rainy season before committing to a container. We keep an office in Ho Chi Minh City for domestic delivery and warranty. Volume, price and exact timing always come from a person — the wholesale page describes the process, and the tiered discount structure is on the dealer page.

The three field mistakes that repeat most

The panel aimed the wrong way. A camera goes up in 5–10 minutes, but if the panel faces the side a metal roof shades every afternoon, every battery figure in the catalogue is meaningless. This is the number one cause of "the camera keeps going flat" cases in which the hardware inspects out perfectly fine.

Choosing the SIM and data plan after installation. Continuous recording uses more data than event-based recording. Lock the data plan at the same moment you lock the camera configuration, and write it into the end customer's quotation — so the monthly airtime never becomes the reason a customer asks to send the units back.

Shipping without pre-configuration. On orders of a few dozen units and up, configuring and labelling each unit by position in the warehouse before it goes on the truck saves hours in the field, particularly on farm and construction projects where the install crew has no technician with them.

For tiered pricing by quantity, a sample SKU list for a specific site, or the certification file for your import paperwork: WhatsApp +86 188 1869 9870, phone +86 188 1869 9870, email info@solaguard.net.