Construction Camera

[trashauler]

I have new building going up this year. 42 x 64 with a lean on one side. I work when most of the construction is going to happen. Has anyone used either a timelapse camera to capture the construction or even a live feed to view? This will probably be a onetime use so i am not looking to break the bank.

 

[NWOhioChevyGuy]

I bought a birding camera (cheapest option) and set it up to take a couple pictures a day for my garage build.
Little did I know it chewed thru the battery life about when I got the slab poured. So not ideal. I built my garage myself so taking the time to check the batteries didn't occur to me until I pulled the memory card.

If I had to do it over, I'd spend more $ on one that has better options.
Maybe even a cellular game camera. Which I do have now in the woods - easy to operate and can take real time pictures & video if you pay for that level of service.

 

[P0234]

Lots of choices, Wyze cameras are cheap and support a time lapse function. Your bigger problem I think is going to be powering it and possibly securing it so 1, it doesn't move changing the FOV and also doesn't disappear.

 

[Bodj Built]

Do you have any 110v power/wifi near where you want the camera? You can get a home security camera pretty cheap from amazon. They're easy to set up, and some of them articulate and can change directions to point at what you want while looking at it from your phone.

 

[trashauler]

Wi-Fi isn't a problem. Depending on where i mount it power may or may not be.

 

[M.Wong]

For me, this was a time lapse project (not a live view solution) and I got a "Brinno" in 2022 for a similar reason. The TLC200 ($110 back then) or TLC200 Pro ($220) had a better camera lens and field of view. Got a mount and waterproof case for it too.

Some thoughts, note I am a total novice and have no photography knowledge...

It takes 4 AA batteries and I record enough frames to make about one second a day. The batteries last more than a month, but die before two months.

The files are saved on an SD card so no wifi needed.

You will want to spend some time playing with the settings and letting it record a few days so you can see how it turns out before a project. Frames per second, etc. You can also set the times of day to record so maybe only daytime hours for a construction project.

I grab the SD card from the camera about once a month and bring it to my desktop, then use Clipchamp to link each day's file to a single movie.

 

[ericm]

I have new building going up this year. 42 x 64 with a lean on one side. I work when most of the construction is going to happen. Has anyone used either a timelapse camera to capture the construction or even a live feed to view? This will probably be a onetime use so i am not looking to break the bank.

I'm doing that right now. I used a Reolink cellular based camera since there's no wifi on site yet. Get one with good resolution or mount it close to the building site. Mine's about 50' away and sometimes I wish it was closer.

It's been really useful to have since the building is 6 hours drive from where I'm living now.

 

[Built To Work]

OxBlue is what we use. It sends pictures via cell I believe.

 

[67CarGuy]

I've got some trail cameras set up for my project, they work OK but it's not as ideal as I'd like. Take 12 AA batteries each, which last about 2 months. I can tell it to take just photos, or photo and video, how often to take them, how often to upload, etc. They're securely attached. Total cost was around $200 or so, then another $10-20/month for the uploads.

 

[kgkg1]

I'm also using a Reolink cellular camera to monitor a build. It will do time-lapse photos stored on a memory card while also providing live video to a cellphone using the Reolink app. It is a pan & tilt camera, so you can adjust the view after it is mounted on a pole. Also has 2-way audio, but I've never bothered using it.

https://reolink.com/us/product/reolink-go-pt-plus/

I'm using it with a sim card from EIOTCLUB (available from Amazon).

Really easy to setup. Combined with the Reolink solar panel, it has been working perfectly for 9 months.

 

[BMEP]

I had no power or WiFi at my property when my house and shop was built. I had 4 cameras, all with batteries, cellular modems (built-in) and solar panels. Two of them were Vosker cameras, the other two Spypoint. The Spypoint cameras didn't have solar cells attached so I bought a battery pack/solar charger combo, which worked much better than the Vosker's with the small solar cells only. For the most part, the cameras worked, but they did require some maintenance. Vosker and Spypoint have plans where you pay monthly, depending on the number of photos. The downside is more photos = more battery use.

Generally, the solar would keep up with the usage, but there were times where I had to go out and take the cameras down and charge the batteries manually.

The web sites for both of these looked like they were the same with different branding so I suspect there's one vendor behind that part of it. I'd do it again but you won't get anything like live video or frequent pictures like you can with an AC powered camera and WiFi.

One big challenge is that you need a wide enough angle lens to get a decent view of things, but that also means you won't see a lot of detail.

I'm happy to go into more detail if you'd like - just let me know.

Here's an example - this is a photo of the foundation work (house in foreground, shop in background) on my property. This particular one is from a Vosker V150. mounted on a tree, about 15' off the ground.

 

[Shadowdog500]

I bought a digital camera that could be set up to Timelapse and had it take a photo every 30 seconds. It was set up on a tripod shooting through the glass window of the upstairs guest bathroom.

Set your camera up and run it a couple days in advance to see if there are any issues with anything. I’m glad I did because the morning sun lit up the bathroom and the camera was capturing the reflection of the bathroom on the glass instead of the building. I taped black craft paper on the inside of the glass and left a hole just big enough to get the shot.

I was also working when this was build but came home every day at lunch to change out the memory card.
I think it was a Pentax point & shoot camera that had a programmable timelapse feature that cost about $500 that I bought just for the buildingTimelapse and didn’t really use it again since I had an iPhone at the time. The building was built in December 2009.

Here is my Timelapse.

 

[Old tool guy]

When i was doing commercial new builds and renos, we rented oxblue cameras. Weatherproof housing that can be mounted on a utility pole, all it needs is 120v power. Takes a picture about once every 9 minutes and uploads it to a server at their office. You can access it from any laptop or ipad, and access can be PW protected. A little expensive but very professional.

Came in handy more than once to trap a vendor who claimed to be working.

 

[loganb]

I setup an old cell phone in an outdoor box, wired it up to a charger and found an app to have it take photos on a specific interval. Worked well for the 3 or 4 week build...this was 10 or 12 yrs ago. Doing it again I'd get a basic security camera and use that if possible.

 

[tncatadjuster]

After discovering POE cameras I would go ahead and get a full dvr system and set up a couple for the build and then have them installed on the building afterward. Reolink does not require a monthly fee.

 

[hans109h]

Practice good cyber security. The cheaper you go the more important. Have a firewall if connecting Internet of things devices to you LAN and block these devices to the outside world as needed. Even if you don't care about a hacker watching your build, it opens the door to access to your entire network, potentially.

Cyber security is your responsibility and no one else's .

Hans

 

[Steve W.]

I used my son's GoPro. First time-lapse was set to one frame every 10 seconds. When viewing the compiled video, it was a bit choppy. Next session was set to one frame every 5 seconds, it was much better. Had to use a larger SD card, about 32 GB, if I remember correctly. Had to upload the SD card every night to an external hard drive. There is a LOT of editing necessary, as there was a lot of 'down' time during the day, unfortunately I have been too busy working on the house to do all the editing. Maybe when I retire.

I don't remember which model GoPro it was, but had a wifi pack on it so I did not have to climb a ladder to turn it on or off, only to retrieve the SD card. Also had power run to it, so battery usage was not a concern. Having those accessories attached took away any semblance of weatherproofing, so I had a shelter over it to keep rain and snow off of it.

.

 

[trashauler]

Thanks for all the advice. I ended up buying a few reolink's. I see they have a hub for storage so I might buy that as well.

 

[PopcornSutton]

Some companies used to set up one or two cameras for their projects when there was adjacent buildings. Gave the office people something to do while we built the projects.

 

[ImmortalSun]

I ended up using a camera from insta360.com for my garage build. It gave me full 360-degree footage, which has been great for time-lapse and catching anything I missed later on. I mounted it up high with a simple clamp and just let it run. The mobile app made it super easy to check in from anywhere without messing with a bunch of settings.

 

[Innovate1]

last time I did it I used a video camera and VHS VCR but that was about 2008 and the tech was old at the time. Later I needed to monitor some activity with no power or network and used trail cams. Set to record to SD card every few minutes as I recall. batteries and SD card was good for nearly 2 weeks. They were under $50 each but that was about 2015.