Hidden Camera in Fence Post Project – Reolink RLC-1212a

1. Starting off we have an info card on how to shop for Reolink products on Amazon, using the Amazon app on your phone’s camera.
2. This is a pamphlet on how the waterproof lid works to seal the PoE, RJ-45 connection from the weather.
3. These are ‘Warm Tips’ to make sure your Reolink NVR is updated, otherwise this camera might not function correctly.
4. This is a safety instructions card, do give it a ready to protect your camera.
5. Then we have a drill template sticker so you can pre-drill holes for the mount.
6. Oh cool, Reolink updated their window stickers. Very nice.
7. Here we have the user guide. Make sure to give that a read.
8. Next, we have a short Ethernet cable for setting up and testing the camera before installing it outside.
9. This is the weather sealing coupler, which we’ll get into shortly.
10. Then we have this foam sticker which applies to the inside of the mount to provide a tight seal to the mounting surface, to help keep out moisture and bugs.
11. Next, we have a bag of mounting screws. I’ll be using my own in my example.
12. Lastly of course the camera. Metal shell. Nice solid build and it feels like a quality product.
    1. The cables are a good length too. At the end of the cord, we have 3 sealed connections. A 12v DC connection, followed by a reset button, followed by an Ethernet port to connect the camera to a Reolink NVR or home network. It does support PoE or power over ethernet so you can power the camera using the same network cable from the NVR or a network PoE switch.
    2. On the front of the camera, we have 2 IR lights for night vision. These will turn on automatically in low light situations.
    3. Just above that we have a spotlight. This can be activated manually with the flashlight button here, or on a timer or even when motion is detected. We’ll test that outside this evening.
    4. On the back of the camera, we have a micro-SD card slot for cards up to 256GB which will hold about 72 hours of continuous footage, or when motion is detected. That means, this camera doesn’t need an NVR, it can work as a stand-alone device with just the camera and a micro-SD card.
    5. Lastly, the mic is located here and the speaker here. More on these later.

Let’s jump into what the typical install would look like. First off, let’s install the foam piece in behind the mount. Now we’ll feed the wires through the weather sealing grommet. Plug in the camera and tighten everything up to complete the seal. In this first example, we have a mounting surface with a hole to run the camera’s wires. This could be an eave, junction box or just a hole in the wall. Next, add 3 screws, point the camera in the desired direction and tighten the mount. If there is no hole, the cables can exit through the slot on the bottom of the mount. Fasten the mount, point the camera and tighten the mount.

For me, I’m not going to use the mount. I designed and 3d printed this vinyl fence post cap, and I’m pretty excited about it. This is the first version, with more updates to come. I want to camera to fit into the little tube here on the front. The problem is, the camera is too long with the mount, or even the silver mount ball attached. That piece has 2 functions; it’s the ball joint for the mount so it can point in any direction but more importantly, on the camera side it acts as a seal to compress a rubber ring around the exiting wire. So, with that removed, the camera fits perfectly but I am missing the wire seal. If only I could replace it with something smaller. Here is a better look at that seal. Let’s open the camera and unplug the wires. I can now feed that little plug out through the hole on the back of the camera. Let’s remove the seal and the ball joint. I measured its size as an 12mm fastener. After a quick 3d print, I have this short piece that will slide on over the wires. Replace the rubber seal. Feed it back into the camera. Plug in the clip. Put the camera back together. Feed in the wire seal and tighten the 3d printed hollow screw and secure it to create that weatherproof seal. Now when I install the camera into the mount, it fits great, with room to spare. Wow, this thing looks amazing. I couldn’t be happier with how this project is turning out.

Let’s quickly test this before heading outside. You could plug this directly into the NVR, or like in my situation, I have a Reolink NVR on my network. It’s set to automatically pick up any new Reolink cameras. And, here in the Reolink app, the NVR just added it. Now, let’s reset here and turn off the NVR feature to stop auto-adding newly found cameras. This is also the process if you don’t have an NVR. When I plug in the camera into the network’s PoE switch it shows up in the app right here. When I click on it, I have to activate it with a username and password. Give it a name and that’s it. I did notice a couple of seconds of video lag. I imagine it’s a camera processor thing dealing with 12MP of data. I don’t think it’s a network related because turning on and off the spotlight, it’s instant. Let’s head outside.

This is where I want to install the camera, facing the house. I already have an underground Ethernet connection out here, which I installed in a previous video. Let’s pop off the old cap and plug in the camera. All the wires and old mounting gear fits perfectly inside.

Let’s check out some footage, specs and some features.

1. Here are a couple time-lapses to get us rolling.
2. The camera has a 1/2.49” CMOS sensor with a resolution of 4512X2512. When I export footage, these specs are dead on.
3. It has a 4mm lens with an aperture of F1.6.
4. That all means the field of view is 93 degrees by 49. Perfect coverage for my scenario.
5. My house is 70ft or just over 21m from this camera. As I walk towards the camera, at 70ft, the license plate is pretty grainy. At 60ft or 18 1/4m it’s a little better. It’s at 50ft or 15 1/4m that we can confidently read the plate. Now at night, with no IR lights on, we can actually see a lot better through the camera than I can with my eyes. It’s pitch black out here. It isn’t until I am 10ft or 3m away until we can read the plate, which is actually better than I thought possible in complete darkness. Now with the IR lights on, as expected they are reflected by the license plate. Facial details start to become recognizable at about 30ft or just over 8m. Now let’s try with the camera’s spot light illuminated. Again, the plate is showing the reflection. And facial features are good at about 20ft or just over 6m away. Oh yeah, and check out how bright that spotlight is. Perfect for shadow puppet shows.
6. Let’s do some more distance testing. Let’s see when the camera picks up my motion and turns on the spotlight and sends me the notification. The distance is 50ft or 15 1/4m. By day, I get the same results; 50ft or 15 1/4m. I was seeing some false alarms because of these trees moving by the wind. I was able to tell the camera to ignore this area by going under settings, and then Detection Alarm. Then click on Non-Detection Zone and select the area to omit.
7. Up next, let’s talk about audio. I obviously won’t be using this camera for 2-way audio out here on the fence, but let’s remove the camera cap and expose the mic and speaker. Apologies for the wind noise being picked up my the gopro.