Outdoor AOV Cameras: What They Are, What They Cost Wholesale, and How to Spec Them

What an outdoor AOV camera is, and what one costs wholesale

An outdoor AOV camera is a weatherproof, solar-powered camera that records Always-On Video — continuous 24/7 footage instead of short clips fired by a PIR motion sensor — while staying inside the power budget of a battery and a small panel. It does that by holding the encoder in a low bit-rate standby state and letting on-device AI scene analysis raise quality the moment it classifies a person, a vehicle or an animal. AOV is an industry-generic term, not one brand's proprietary feature. At SolaGuard the outdoor AOV line is 49 SKUs, wholesale prices quoted per order, split across four series: every one of them 2K, IP66, 4G LTE, running on an 8000mAh or 20000mAh battery with an 8W or 15W panel and recording to microSD up to 128GB. No mains cable, no WiFi, and 5–10 minutes of install time per camera.

For importers and distributors the useful question is not whether AOV works — it does, and it is now the default expectation from any buyer who has been burned by a PIR camera that missed the event. The question is which series belongs in your container, and what you can honestly promise the end customer about it.

Why AOV replaced PIR on outdoor sites

The four ways PIR fails outdoors

PIR triggers on a change in infrared heat crossing its detection zones. Outdoors, that model breaks predictably:

• Slow or head-on movement. Someone walking directly toward the lens crosses very few zones. PIR reads it as nothing happening.
• Out-of-zone events. The PIR cone is narrower than the image sensor's field of view. Anything that happens inside the frame but outside the cone is never recorded at all — and the operator never learns it was missed.
• Low thermal contrast. In midday heat on a concrete yard or a metal roof, the background temperature approaches body temperature and the trigger becomes unreliable exactly when the site is busiest.
• The pre-roll gap. Even when PIR fires correctly, the camera has to wake, expose and start writing. The first seconds are gone. On a vehicle theft or a fence breach, the first seconds are the whole event.

What continuous recording changes operationally

With AOV the timeline has no holes. Investigation stops being "did it trigger?" and becomes "scrub to the timestamp." AI classification does not disappear — it still drives push alerts and bookmarks on the timeline — but it is no longer the gatekeeper that decides whether footage exists. That distinction is what a farm manager, a site foreman or a yard supervisor actually buys.

The cost is power. Continuous encoding draws steadily where a PIR camera sleeps most of the day, so the battery and panel pairing stops being a spec-sheet footnote and becomes the main selection decision.

The four outdoor AOV series

Read the table as four distinct commercial positions, not four price points on one product:

• SG-C41G-10T66 is the four-variant entry series — single sensor, the lowest AOV landed cost in the range, and the right SKU for a distributor testing AOV demand against an installed base of cheaper PIR units.
• SG-D42G-10F66 is the volume series at 18 variants. Dual lens on an 8000mAh/8W platform covers a wide scene and a detail scene at once, which is what most perimeter jobs are really asking for.
• SG-D42G-15F66 is the same dual-lens concept on the 20000mAh battery and 15W panel. This is the series to quote wherever the sun is unreliable or the scene is busy — monsoon months, shaded mounts, sites where the camera is recording activity most of the working day.
• SG-S43G-10T66 adds a third lens at 11 variants, for entrances and junctions where one pole has to cover several approaches.

Three models to put in a sample box

Those three span the whole decision — entry single lens, mainstream dual lens, and the high-power dual lens — for under $160 of samples. Full specifications for all four series are on the product catalogue.

Specifying for the site, not for the datasheet

Sunlight budget decides the series

The 8W platform suits open mounts with clear southern or northern exposure and moderate recording activity: fence lines, field edges, rural approach roads. The 15W and 20000mAh platform is for everything that erodes a solar budget — long rainy seasons in the Mekong Delta or Central America, partial shade from trees and structures, high-latitude winter daylight, or a busy yard where the AI is escalating bit-rate for hours a day. Over-specifying power costs a few dollars per unit; under-specifying it produces a camera that browns out in week three of the rainy season and a warranty claim you cannot win.

Storage and retention

Standard on these models is microSD up to 128GB, which is what continuous recording at a sensible standby bit-rate is designed around. If an end customer needs longer local retention than that, it is a custom-order conversation about higher-capacity cards, not something to promise from a catalogue page. Always quote retention as a range that depends on scene activity — continuous recording consumes storage faster on a busy loading dock than on a quiet field.

Ingress, mounting and connectivity

All 49 AOV models are IP66. Do not let a sales sheet inflate that to a higher rating; buyers in agriculture and construction check, and the certification is the credible part of the pitch. Each camera takes a local SIM, so confirm LTE band coverage with the end customer's carrier before a bulk order — that single check prevents more field failures than any hardware decision. The factory, Shenzhen Leksell, has been building since 2012 and holds TÜV Rheinland certification alongside CE, FCC and RoHS.

OEM, private label and order structure

Private label is available on every model, including all 49 AOV SKUs: your logo, your packaging, your app branding. Standard resolution across the catalogue is 1080p–2K; 4K exists only as a custom or OEM build, and quoting it from stock is the fastest way to lose a customer's trust at delivery.

Lead times are the other half of the plan: samples 7–10 days by air, bulk 25–40 days by sea, and 7–10 business days inside Vietnam from the Ho Chi Minh City office. Build the sea freight window into the customer's expectations before the PO, not after. Pricing tiers and freight terms are set out on the wholesale page.

A first order that de-risks itself

1. Sample three SKUs across the power range — one 8W single lens, one 8W dual lens, one 15W dual lens.
2. Mount them on a real customer site through one full week of the worst weather available, and watch battery behaviour rather than image quality. Image quality is the easy part.
3. Place a 10-unit trial on whichever platform survived, then move to 50 units, and to 100 for private label, once installers have confirmed the 5–10 minute mount holds up in the field.

Questions to put to any outdoor AOV supplier

• Is continuous recording genuinely continuous, or is it a short pre-roll buffer marketed as AOV?
• Which battery and panel pairings are offered, and is the high-power option a different SKU or an accessory?
• What is the stated ingress rating, and is there a test certificate behind it?
• What storage capacity ships as standard, and what is retention at realistic scene activity?
• Is private label available on the AOV models specifically, or only on the PIR range?
• What are the sample and bulk lead times in writing, and is there regional stock?

A supplier who answers all six with numbers is quoting from a real catalogue. One who answers in adjectives is quoting from a brochure. If you want the AOV price list and current stock position against your target volume, the dealer programme covers margin tiers and territory terms, or write to info@solaguard.net with the site conditions and quantity and we will spec the series for you.