Construction Site Solar Camera: What to Specify, What to Verify, What It Costs Wholesale

The short answer: what a construction site actually needs

A construction site solar camera is a self-powered 4G LTE camera — integrated solar panel, internal battery, SIM card, no mains connection and no site WiFi — mounted on a pole, container, fence line or scaffold and relocated as the build progresses. For an active site the specification that matters is short: continuous recording rather than motion-triggered clips, IP66 sealing against rain and cement dust, 1080p–2K resolution, microSD storage up to 128GB, and a battery-and-panel pair sized to the site's real sun exposure. In SolaGuard's catalogue that maps to the 49 AOV (Always-On Video) models, wholesale prices quoted per order, built on either an 8000mAh battery with an 8W panel or a 20000mAh battery with a 15W panel. Everything below is the reasoning behind those numbers, written for buyers who have to defend the choice to a client.

Construction is the hardest of the off-grid scenarios to serve. There is no power until late in the build, no broadband at all, the perimeter moves every few weeks, and the assets worth stealing — copper, fuel, hand tools, plant — are worth stealing on night one. A camera that needs a trench, an electrician and a router is the wrong product. That is the whole reason the solar 4G category exists, and it is why importer demand for it in Vietnam and Latin America has followed the construction cycle rather than the consumer security cycle.

Why PIR-triggered cameras miss what happens on a site

Most cheap solar cameras save power by sleeping until a passive infrared sensor detects a heat signature, then waking to record a clip. This works acceptably on a quiet residential driveway. On a construction site it fails in three predictable ways.

First, PIR responds to a heat differential crossing the sensor's field. Someone moving slowly along a fence line, or approaching in hot midday conditions when body temperature and ambient temperature converge, may never trigger it. Second, PIR has a much shorter effective range than the lens does — so the camera can see the far corner of the compound but will not wake for anything happening there. Third, and most damaging in an insurance or dispute context, there is no footage between clips. If a delivery arrives short, or a subcontractor claims work was done on a day it was not, a folder of motion clips proves nothing about the gaps.

Always-On Video, and why the term matters when you source

AOV — Always-On Video — is the industry's answer to this. Instead of sleeping, the camera records continuously and uses on-device AI scene analysis to hold standby power down, spending its power budget on frames that contain something and coasting through frames that do not. The output is an unbroken timeline rather than a clip folder.

AOV is a generic category term, not a brand. Any factory can use it, and several use it loosely. When you evaluate a supplier — including this one — ask them to state plainly whether the sensor is running continuously or whether "AOV" is being applied to a fast-wake PIR design. The difference shows up immediately in a sample: leave the camera pointed at an empty yard for an afternoon and check whether the recording is continuous or full of holes.

Sizing the battery and panel to the site

Continuous recording costs power, so battery and panel sizing stops being a spec-sheet detail and becomes the deciding factor. The variable that matters is not how sunny the region is on average — it is how many consecutive poor days the camera has to ride out, and how much of the sky the panel can actually see. A site in a tower shadow, under crane jibs, or on a north-facing wall in the southern hemisphere collects far less than the same panel on an open ranch.

A practical rule for quoting: specify the 8000mAh / 8W configuration where the panel has clear sky and the site is a straightforward perimeter watch, and specify the 20000mAh / 15W configuration where the mount is shaded for part of the day, where the wet season is long, or where the client simply cannot tolerate a camera going dark for a day. The second option costs more per unit and closes more deals, because the failure mode it prevents is the one that generates support calls.

The four AOV series, and where each one fits

The single-lens SG-C41G-10T66-V1 is the entry point for volume perimeter coverage. The dual-lens SG-D42G-10F66-V1 is the general-purpose site camera — one lens holding the wide scene, the second pulling detail. The SG-D42G-15F66-V1 is the same dual-lens concept on the 20000mAh / 15W power platform, and it is the one to quote for shaded or monsoon-season installs. Full variant-by-variant specifications are on the product catalogue.

What to verify before you commit an order

B2B buyers get burned on the same four claims, in the same order.

Resolution. 1080p–2K is the standard across this catalogue; 4K exists only as a custom or OEM build. Treat an off-the-shelf solar camera advertised at very high resolution with suspicion — higher resolution costs power and storage, and a battery-powered camera has a hard limit on both. Ask what the sensor actually is, not what the interpolated output is labelled.

Ingress protection. These models are IP66. That covers dust ingress and powerful water jets, which is the right rating for an exposed site. Some suppliers quote a higher rating on a housing that has never been tested to it; ask for the test report rather than the marketing number.

Storage. microSD up to 128GB is the standard here, with larger capacities available on custom orders. Any supplier quoting a card size should also tell you the retention period at the recording settings they are quoting — capacity alone tells a client nothing.

Certification. Shenzhen Leksell has manufactured since 2012 and holds TÜV Rheinland certification alongside CE, FCC and RoHS. For importers this is a customs and liability question before it is a quality question: ask for the certificates in your own company's name where your market requires it, and check the certificate covers the model you are shipping rather than a sibling SKU.

Deployment economics on a live site

Installation runs 5–10 minutes per camera. There is no cabling, no trenching and no network configuration — mount the bracket, insert the SIM and the card, aim the panel, done. On a site with a dozen cameras that is the difference between a half-day job for one person and a two-day job for a crew with a power contractor.

That number is also a sales argument your customer will feel every month, because the perimeter moves. A camera that took ten minutes to install takes ten minutes to relocate when the hoarding shifts, when the tower crane goes up, or when the site splits into phases. Hard-wired systems get installed once and then quietly stop covering the areas that matter.

Pricing, MOQ and lead times for importers

The full catalogue runs 150 SKUs, with wholesale prices quoted per order; the 49 AOV models sit at the upper end of the range because continuous recording requires the larger power system. Dealer margin is 20% from around 10 units and 30% from around 50 — the trial MOQ is 10 units, which is deliberately low enough that a distributor can put real cameras on a real site before committing to a container. Dealer terms and tier thresholds are set out in full separately.

Lead times: samples ship in 7–10 days by air, bulk orders run 25–40 days by sea, and orders served from the Ho Chi Minh City office reach Vietnamese customers in 7–10 business days. Plan the sea-freight window against your client's build schedule — a site that breaks ground in six weeks needs the order placed now, not after the first theft.

OEM and private label

All models, including the 49 AOV ones, are available for OEM and private label at an MOQ of 100 units: your brand on the housing, your packaging, your documentation. For distributors selling to contractors and rental fleets this matters more than it does in retail, because the same client comes back for the next project and the brand on the camera is the brand they ask for. Custom builds beyond the standard catalogue — higher resolution, larger battery and panel, greater storage — are quoted individually rather than listed, since quantity, price and lead time all move together.

If you are pricing a construction project now, the fastest route is a short spec of the site conditions — number of mount points, shade profile, expected retention — sent to info@solaguard.net or through the wholesale enquiry page. A sample on the actual site for a week settles more questions than any datasheet will.