What Is AOV Recording? Always-On Video Explained for Solar 4G Camera Importers

The short answer

AOV stands for Always-On Video. An AOV camera records continuously, around the clock, instead of sleeping until a passive infrared (PIR) sensor detects a heat signature and wakes the unit for a short clip. It stays awake at low standby power because on-device AI scene analysis handles the work the PIR sensor used to do: the image sensor and encoder keep running, while the processor decides in real time what is worth flagging, uploading over 4G, or writing at full quality. The practical difference for a buyer is coverage. A PIR camera produces a timeline full of holes; an AOV camera produces an unbroken one.

AOV is an industry-generic term, not a proprietary feature of any one brand. Dozens of factories in Shenzhen sell AOV models and the acronym means roughly the same thing at all of them. What varies enormously — and what actually decides whether a container of cameras performs in the field — is the power budget built behind the feature. That is where most sourcing mistakes happen, and it is the part of the spec sheet buyers skim.

Why PIR-triggered recording fails in the field

PIR sensing detects a change in infrared radiation across its field of view. It is cheap, it is power-efficient, and it has three well-known blind spots that matter on a farm, a construction yard or a fenced compound.

Slow movement. PIR responds to the rate of change in heat across the detection zones. A person walking slowly and directly toward the lens, or crawling, can cross the zone without producing a trigger. Livestock drifting through a gap in a fence line often does not trigger either.

Out-of-zone events. The PIR cone is narrower than the camera's optical field of view, and usually shorter. Anything that happens inside the frame but outside the sensor cone is simply never recorded. The footage does not exist, so there is nothing to review after the fact.

Ambient heat. In Vietnam's dry season or a Latin American summer, when surface temperatures approach body temperature, the thermal contrast PIR depends on collapses. Sensitivity drops exactly when sites are busiest.

The last two rows are the trade. AOV solves a real detection problem by removing the sleep state that made solar cameras easy to power in the first place.

The power budget is the whole engineering problem

A PIR camera can coast through a week of overcast weather because it is genuinely off most of the time. An AOV camera cannot. It has to recharge close to what it spends every single day, which means the panel has to win against the worst month of the year, not the average one.

Across SolaGuard's AOV range there are two power configurations, and the choice between them is a site decision rather than a budget decision:

• 8000mAh battery with an 8W panel — the mainstream configuration. Suited to open sites with clear southern (or northern, below the equator) exposure and no significant shading from buildings, mast structures or tree canopy.
• 20000mAh battery with a 15W panel — the configuration for hard sites. Monsoon regions, high-latitude Latin American installations with short winter days, partially shaded mounting points, or any deployment where a service visit is expensive and a dead camera is unacceptable.

This is the single most common sourcing error we see in AOV quotes. A distributor compares two cameras on resolution, lens count and price, picks the cheaper one, and discovers three months later that a fleet installed under tree cover in the rainy season is browning out at dawn. The reserve capacity is not a luxury line item; it is what makes the always-on claim survive contact with a real roof.

All outdoor AOV models are rated IP66, which is the enclosure standard SolaGuard actually certifies. If a competing datasheet claims a higher ingress rating, ask for the test report rather than the marketing sheet, because the rating on the box and the rating on the certificate do not always match.

Storage behaves differently under AOV

Continuous recording consumes card capacity in a way event clips do not, so retention planning changes. Standard across the catalogue is microSD up to 128GB, with higher-capacity cards available on custom builds. In practice most deployments do not rely on the card as the archive — the card is the local buffer, and events flagged by the on-device AI go out over 4G. Tell your customers to plan retention around what the AI escalates, not around holding weeks of raw continuous footage locally.

The 49 AOV models in the catalogue

SolaGuard's catalogue runs to 150 SKUs, with wholesale prices quoted per order. Of those, 49 are AOV models, in four series:

Every model above is IP66. Three reference points for a first sample order:

• SG-C41G-10T66-V1. Single-lens 2K, 8000mAh, 8W. The entry point into AOV, and the right unit for a distributor testing whether the local market will pay the AOV premium at all.
• SG-D42G-10F66-V1. Dual-lens 2K, 8000mAh, 8W. Wide plus detail view in one housing, on the mainstream power configuration.
• SG-D42G-15F66-V1. Dual-lens 2K, 20000mAh, 15W. The hard-site unit, and the one to quote when the end customer's mounting position is shaded or the region has a long wet season.

Resolution across the standard range is 1080p–2K; 4K is available only as a custom or OEM build, and any supplier offering 4K continuous recording on a small solar panel is describing a camera that will not hold charge. Full specifications for each variant are on the product pages.

Sourcing checklist for AOV orders

Manufacturing is by Shenzhen Leksell, established 2012, certified by TÜV Rheinland, with CE, FCC and RoHS compliance on the range. When you evaluate any AOV supplier, including this one, the questions that separate a real factory from a trading company are consistent:

1. Ask which battery and panel pairing backs the AOV claim. If the answer is vague, the always-on duty cycle has not been engineered — it has been asserted.
2. Ask for the certificate, not the logo. Certification marks are trivially copied into a PDF.
3. Ask what happens at OEM stage. SolaGuard offers OEM and private label on all models, including all 49 AOV SKUs, so a distributor can build a brand rather than resell one.
4. Ask about installation labour. These units install in 5–10 minutes per camera with no grid power and no WiFi, which is what makes rural and construction-site rollouts economic in the first place. Installation cost is a real line in your customer's quote.

Commercial terms

The Vietnam office is in Ho Chi Minh City, which is what makes the 7–10 business day domestic lead time possible for buyers in-country.

A sensible first AOV order is a mixed 10-unit trial: a few single-lens units at the entry price to test price sensitivity, and a pair of 20000mAh/15W units for the shaded or wet-season site that will otherwise generate your first warranty claim. Volume pricing, OEM tooling and per-SKU quotations come from a person, not from a page — quantity, unit price and lead time for your specific configuration are confirmed in writing before you commit. Start at wholesale for pricing, or dealer terms if you intend to carry the brand, or write to info@solaguard.net.