SG Xtreme Life Solar Rock

The solar rock is the outdoor member of this family, and it is the only one that solves the hardest problem in exterior surveillance: power. A camera outside has nowhere to plug in and nobody wants to trench a cable to a flower bed — so it runs on a battery, and a battery outdoors eventually means someone walking to the spot with a charger, in daylight, in full view. A solar panel on a nine-foot cable ends that cycle.

• Can wakeup device using your mobile phone within 1 second
• 2.4G Wi-Fi connection
• Remote viewing and alerts from App
• Memory Card Recording
• Responsive PIR detection
• Alarm information pushed to the mobile app immediately when someone is at the door
• Day and night mode can be switched automatically
• Memory card storage up to 128GB
• Cloud Storage for a fee (first 7 days free)
• Built-in recharegable battery
• Solar models: Long life Battery operated 90 days without sun
• Solar panel cable is 9 Feet Long
• Free App for Android and iOS devices
• Easy and quick QR code set up

Our New full line of SG Home security cameras give you choices: All cameras work on the same application so you can mix and match any model. Install a doorbell camera, floodlight camera and hidden cameras all on one app and one system

90 days without sun is the number that matters

Solar cameras are usually sold on the panel. The specification that actually determines whether one works is what happens when the panel gets nothing — a run of overcast weeks, a winter aspect, leaf cover that arrives in spring, a panel that quietly ends up in shade after the sun angle moves. Ninety days of battery alone means a seasonal change does not kill the placement before you notice.

The nine-foot cable matters for the same reason. The rock goes where the view is; the panel goes where the light is, and those are rarely the same spot. Nine feet is usually enough to get the panel onto a fence rail, a wall or a post with clear southern sky while the camera stays in the border.

PIR detection outdoors, and its one weakness

These units trigger on passive infrared — a heat signature moving across the sensor’s field — rather than on pixel change. Outdoors that is the right choice, because it ignores most of what makes video motion detection useless in a garden: swaying branches, shifting shadows, rain and headlights sweeping a wall.

What PIR does react to is genuine heat movement, so a cat, a fox or a bird crossing close to the lens will trigger it, and so will hot air rising off a driveway on a still day. Two practical fixes: mount so the likely approach path crosses the sensor’s field sideways rather than head-on, because PIR is far more sensitive to lateral movement, and keep the immediate foreground clear of anything that holds heat.

Placing a rock so it reads as a rock

Ground level is a low viewpoint. It gives you excellent detail on anything close — a door, a gate, a vehicle panel — and almost nothing useful about a person’s face at distance. Put it near the thing you care about, not across the garden from it. And place it where a rock belongs: in a border, against a wall, among planting. A single rock sitting alone on a lawn is the most conspicuous object there.

Recording is to a card up to 128 GB. More hidden cameras, and see the wood-frame décor and exit sign models for indoor placements on the same app.