Briefly:
I tried searching, but this is so specific... Asking for camera suggestions to record my wife's daily, daytime rides in a 20m x 60m horse arena. We do not want to set something up every day like a Pivo + iPhone. I've exhausted myself researching the name brand cameras like reolink, eufy (no, only does 15fps) and hoping you experts can help out. Still considering Reolink Trackmix or RLC-823S2, but dubious on the smooth tracking ability.
My wife rides every morning for 20-60 minutes in a fixed dressage arena which is ~67ft wide by 200ft long. Camera would be on a short side recording into the length mounted another 10-20ft off the arena.
musts:
nice to have:
do not care about:
Final thoughts
User experience > raw camera quality. While the arena is not convenient to run power or ethernet to, it can be done. We have a pretty good mesh wifi setup around the farm. I used to run Blue Iris v4 back in 2015 or so with a foscam, but switched to Wyze (I know, I know) because it is "good enough", cheap to setup a ton of cams, and WAY EASIER to work with than finicky blue iris. I am a technical person, know more than the average about AI vision models, and will figure anything out, but I do not want to constantly hear "honey, the camera isn't working again" and have to constantly fiddle with software, reboot the camera, etc.
Thank you!
I tried searching, but this is so specific... Asking for camera suggestions to record my wife's daily, daytime rides in a 20m x 60m horse arena. We do not want to set something up every day like a Pivo + iPhone. I've exhausted myself researching the name brand cameras like reolink, eufy (no, only does 15fps) and hoping you experts can help out. Still considering Reolink Trackmix or RLC-823S2, but dubious on the smooth tracking ability.
My wife rides every morning for 20-60 minutes in a fixed dressage arena which is ~67ft wide by 200ft long. Camera would be on a short side recording into the length mounted another 10-20ft off the arena.
musts:
- >= 25 FPS
- >= 0.9MP / 720P - if optical zoom, otherwise it needs to have "enough" to see the horse movements clearly (at the far end of the arena she should be >= ~15% of the frame size)
- SMOOTH, not jerky, tracking via PTZ or fixed cam with variable focal lengths or higher resolution camera with cropping/digital zoom - could even be something like a 4k+ camera that uses a yolo detection box (ideally with +25% padding so its not right at the edges of the horse), and the camera needs to be wide angle enough to capture the entire short side, but not so wide that she's a blurry mess at the far end.
- a relatively simple way for her to access the video (PC or phone), either from network folder or by accessing (downloading or streaming) onboard micro sd card easily, or even from the cloud via phone app
- weather proof
- under ~$1,500 - but could stretch a bit for a perfect fit
nice to have:
- under ~$750
- solar and wifi (lol?)
- ease of installation and use, both hardware and software ecosystem
- clean picture without massive compression artifacts everywhere
- not have to use NVR or PC to record
- microphone
do not care about:
- nighttime performance
- IRs or LED lights
- top level image quality (no license plates will be read)
- cloud/app subscription costs, as long as its not egregious
Final thoughts
User experience > raw camera quality. While the arena is not convenient to run power or ethernet to, it can be done. We have a pretty good mesh wifi setup around the farm. I used to run Blue Iris v4 back in 2015 or so with a foscam, but switched to Wyze (I know, I know) because it is "good enough", cheap to setup a ton of cams, and WAY EASIER to work with than finicky blue iris. I am a technical person, know more than the average about AI vision models, and will figure anything out, but I do not want to constantly hear "honey, the camera isn't working again" and have to constantly fiddle with software, reboot the camera, etc.
Thank you!