WiFi IP Camera

Overview

An IP camera is a networked surveillance device that captures video and transmits it over Ethernet or WiFi. Unlike analog security cameras, it encodes video as H.264 or H.265 packets and streams them to a recorder, cloud service, or mobile app. This product is a fixed-lens WiFi model: a compact Housing Assembly with an Lens Module that focuses light onto an Image Sensor Unit. During the day, the CMOS Image Sensor captures normal color video; at night, the Infrared LED Module floods the scene with infrared light invisible to the human eye, and the sensor switches to grayscale infrared mode to preserve night visibility.

All video encoding and network transmission is handled by the Main Board, which runs a WiFi SoC (system-on-chip) with embedded H.264 codec and TCP/IP stack. The Microcontroller reads the CMOS Image Sensor, controls the IR LED brightness, and manages the Compute SoC Module. Local video can be recorded to a MicroSD Card Slot for backup if the network fails.

The entire assembly mounts to a wall or ceiling via an Mount Bracket and is powered by either a 12 V DC supply or PoE (Power over Ethernet), which delivers both data and power over a single Ethernet cable.

How it works

Light passes through the Lens Module and strikes the Image Sensor Unit. The CMOS Image Sensor is a rolling-shutter CMOS detector with millions of photodiodes; each pixel accumulates charge for a fraction of a second, then is read out line-by-line and converted to a digital value by the ISP Module. The ISP applies white balance, color correction, edge enhancement, and noise reduction in real time, then feeds a high-quality YUV or RGB image to the Compute SoC Module.

The WiFi SoC contains dedicated video compression logic. It compares consecutive frames, encodes only the pixels that have changed (exploiting temporal redundancy), and applies JPEG-like frequency compression (exploiting spatial redundancy) to create a compressed H.264 or H.265 bitstream. This is packetized into RTP (Real-Time Protocol) packets and transmitted over WiFi to a recorder or cloud service at 1–4 Mbps depending on resolution and quality settings.

IR mode is triggered by an ambient light sensor or manual override. When activated, the IR LED array draws current through the SMD Passive (R/C/L) (current-limiting resistors) and floods the scene with 850 nm or 940 nm light. The IR Filter on the CMOS Image Sensor blocks daylight while passing IR, so at night the sensor sees only reflected IR and produces a high-contrast grayscale image.

The Main Board is always listening for WiFi packets. Configuration and stream requests arrive as HTTP or RTSP commands; the SoC parses them, adjusts encoder settings (resolution, frame rate, bitrate), and streams video back to the requester. If PoE is used, the Power Supply contains both a DC/DC converter (to drop 48 V to 12 V for the camera logic) and a flyback transformer to separate the analog and digital grounds, preventing noise injection into the video signal.