Questions · Cameras
What is PoE and what do I need to use it?
It is powering the camera over the same network cable that carries the video, so you only have to run one cable per camera and you do not need a socket up there. What you need is a network switch with PoE —or an injector— and for the camera to accept it, which today is the normal thing.
What you have to look at before buying is the power. There are three standards: the original IEEE 802.3af, which gives of the order of fifteen watts per port; 802.3at, which is around thirty; and 802.3bt, which goes a good deal higher and is the one needed for cameras with a heater, with motorisation or with a powerful illuminator. A fixed indoor camera makes do with the first; a motorised outdoor dome with a heater may need the third.
And there is one figure that always gets forgotten: the switch's total power budget. A unit can have twenty-four PoE ports and not be able to feed all twenty-four at full power at once, because its power supply does not go that far. That does not fail on fitting day, it fails on the first cold day when all the heaters start at once.
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