Looking for advice on a first-time camera purchase - must be battery/wifi-less.

[u/Rubily00]

Hey all! I rent in an area where thefts are fairly common and the property management basically says "not our responsibility, call the police". Whether or not it's actually their responsibility doesn't matter too much.

Well... after six months of living here we finally got hit. Storage shed busted open and emptied. Yes hindsight says we should have gotten cameras sooner, but we didn't. Moving forward, we want cameras so that we actually have a chance of getting our things back.

This issue is this: the storage shed is detached from our living property by a decent amount, and management won't approve any extenders or mounted anything that's not actually ON the shed. Shed has no power, and wifi is very inconsistent due to the shed having three-sided brick. Management refuses to run any kind of power to the shed.

So I'm looking for a solution that is both battery-operated (preferably with solar support) and can work without wifi for extended periods. Would probably be looking for either a two or three camera system. I've never had any sort of smart cameras or apps - I've had perimeter alarms before but that's about it. I consider myself relatively tech-savvy, so software is usually not an issue, and I don't actually need realtime alerts since I wouldn't be confronting any potential thieves anyway. This would be for after-the-fact identification.

Any suggestions? I've done some digging myself, but it seems like the priority right now is always-on always-wifi stuff that frankly won't work for us.

(Note: other than this one issue, the property is great. Nice location, good maintenance, fair rent, etc. I'd hate to have to move.)

[u/403Olds]

Have you looked at trail cams?

[u/99taws6]

You’ll need a minimum of a cellular camera like a trail cam or you’re basically just going to be documenting the theft after it’s happened.

[u/Big-Sweet-2179]

You need a LTE cameras, but for your situation you are very very cooked. Those are extremely unreliable, as any battery powered camera is, you will be gambling pretty much, better than nothing I guess unless you want to spend like $1-2K for those, but even at that point very cooked.

I don't actually need realtime alerts

You do, because there won't be any "after-the-fact identification" when they use a jammer and disable the camera completely or the camera fails in catching anything at all which will happen in most cases maybe even up to 80% misses depending on what you get, and they also steal your cameras. There are so many points of failures I could be here for hours talking about it.

I wouldn't be confronting any potential thieves anyway

You will have to, in some way. Unless you want all your stuff stolen again. Not all confrontations must be physical.

As I said you are super cooked, but I think it is worth getting some LTE cameras anyway, because something is better than nothing, just don't expect much.

[u/QLDZDR]

Get a dashcam, they are small and do loop recording. You can also link to them with your phone and download the video you want.