[moprabbit]

My sheep are in a field about half a mile from my house, not in direct line of sight. I was wanting to set up a camera which would link to a mobile phone so that I can see them at all times, where ever I am.  There is a power source nearby, but no internet that I can use. Does any one know of such a piece of equipment? Thank you.

[Me]

I have an alarms for farms wireless system, its temperamental at best, after sales service is poor - but it claims to function up to a mile I think (ours only crosses the yard!) and has saved a burglary or two I am sure

[Tregwyr]

You could buy a 2nd hand android smart phone and install a baby monitor app on it. Mount it in a tree in a box with a glass front and use 3g to monitor it. You would probably need a contract with a fair size data plan though. Unless there is a free wifi service that you can use.

Another option is a camera drone that you could remotely fly the half mile to the field for a quick aerial recon. Expensive but fun.

If you don't want real-time monitoring, there are wildlife cameras for around £80 that work off batteries and an SD card that can take video or still shots if movement is detected.

[pgkevet]

It's illegal to fly camera drones out of direct visual range unless specifically licensed and at a usefully low altitude to see the sheep you'ld be at risk of signal loss anyway at 1/2 mile with standard legal equipment - or you could just tape the same stuff to a tree.

It may be possible to get a wi-fi signal of your own that distance with UK legal power outputs if you carefully focus your two aerials. If it's over your own land then a direct cable will give the best performance but I suspect for that distance you'ld need some signal boost that way too on cheap kits.

You might get away with ordinary cat5 cable which is cheap enough (about £160 for 1/2 mile) but proper shielded outdoor cable costs a lot more... about £2 a metre.

If the law doesn't bother you and you're rural enough that you won't get caught then there's lots of long range higher power transmitter stuff on ebay - the sort of thing used to get wi-fi into US trailer parks and the like.

[MarvinH]

Go to a local 'city electrical factors CEF' as I beleive there now doing exactly what your after with built in wifi for about £200

[macvity]

buy this it works well.

[moprabbit]

Thanks for the replies.


JS - Ive contacted CEF and they are looking into it for me.


Macavity - can you give me any more detail about the camera and transmitter please? Thank you