Our real estate agent and friend Mr. J suggested that we install a CCTV before doing anything else in the farm. Neither he nor we were know about possibility of theft in the area. But while talking to a few of our other farmer friends, some of them have had a bad experience with theft. So having a CCTV there seemed like a good idea if for nothing but to act as a deterrent. Since we are not going to live in the farm yet, anything we buy for the farm like pipes or pump etc, can be easy targets for theft. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, the farmers these days are neither innocent nor god fearing nor humble nor moral nor ethical or any of the other positive adjectives you normally associate with farmers.


Since we absolutely did not know the locals and were not sure if we can trust them with anything we leave in the farm, we decided to get a CCTV so we can watch over the farm. A city farmer friend who like us lives in Bangalore but bought a farm some 1.5 hours drive from their place had some interesting stories to tell. Supposedly they installed pipelines for sprinkler system and also installed sprinklers. They did not have any plantation yet. They already had a bore and electric connection when they bought the land. So they installed pipelines and sprinklers. They were planning to start seeding in a few weeks. Since they were working professionals, they could only visit their farm every weekend and do a little bit of work at a time.


They did not have any CCTVs installed on the farm. Apparently, a few days after installing the sprinklers, the sprinklers started disappearing. They suspected that some locals must be stealing. Later they installed a CCTV and sure enough, it was the neighbor farmers, slowly stealing away things. In one of the video, they found that a neighbor farmer casually came to their farm, picked up a ploughing tool, threw it into his farm and another person from that farm took the tool and went home. Our friend was bothered by the fact that these people are stealing silly things. The items they were stealing (sprinklers and tools) are not that expensive. It is just an annoyance for them to replace all the stolen parts.


They could not understand what is the point of this silly cheap stealing. Anyway, after showing the CCTV footage to the locals, they stopped stealing but our friend is still being cautious. Having heard this story, we thought it may be a good idea to invest in a CCTV ourselves before we install anything in the farm. Since we already got the bore done, and when we get electricity connection, we will install a submersible pump and pipelines. We may have to buy a bunch of pipes and get it transported to the farm and leave them there until we can get to the farm to get them installed. During that time, if the pipes are lying on the farm, they would be easy targets for theft. Carrying a light weight 20 feet PCV pipes is easy and they can get good money for them.


Since we have a 2 acre farm, where shall we install a CCTV? We cannot install several CCTVs because it would be extremely expensive. Mr. J suggested that we install just one PTZ CCTV near the bore since that is where we will do all the piping. We can leave anything important near the bore and watch in CCTV. But there are a few problems. First, how to install the CCTV? There are no walls or trees to which it can be fixed. Another problem is the theft of the CCTV itself. How can we avoid that? Moreover, there is no electricity there. So how will we power the CCTV? How about internet? There is no internet service, so how can we watch the CCTV footage sitting in Bangalore?


To solve all these problems, we decided to go with a SIM card based solar PTZ CCTV. Let me break that down. First, a PTZ camera allows one to pan, tilt and zoom the camera. Basically you can turn the camera in any direction covering almost 360 degrees horizontally and about 90 degrees vertically. So if we install the CCTV in the middle of the farm, it can cover the full area. Note that we cannot see all around the farm at the same time. We have to turn the camera around to see everything. Still it is something. In case you are wondering, I ordered this camera from Amazon.


Since the camera comes with a solar panel and inbuilt battery, it can work without electricity. Supposedly the battery can last for 7 days without sun. I don’t know if that is true, but we did not have any problems so far. Throughout the day, the camera works on solar energy and charges the battery at the same time. In the night, the battery is used to power the camera. Since it is an infrared camera, we can see up to about 40 feet or so in the night. During the day, the range is much much better. Theft in the night may not be much of a problem because as I said before, there is a leopard sighting in the area and people are generally afraid to venture out in the dark. In any case, all our material will be near the CCTV, so the 40 feet range should be good enough.


The CCTV also comes with a SIM card support. So all we need to do is buy a SIM with data plan and insert in it. Then we can watch the CCTV from anywhere in the world. There is one problem though. The signal strength of almost all mobile networks is very very weak at the farm. What can you expect from a remote location like this? My wife uses a Jio SIM and I use Airtel. Thankfully the Jio SIM gets a faint signal, enough to send a few data packets. Airtel is completely useless over there. We checked the data speed on her phone and we could get a few kbps up and down speed. May be it will be sufficient for the CCTV we don’t know. Yet we went ahead and bought the CCTV. It works but the frame rate is pretty low even in SD quality. In HD quality it is barely usable.


Anyway, that solves, the electricity and internet problems for the CCTV. Now to solve the problem of how to fix it and how to avoid theft of the CCTV itself. Mr. J had an idea. He suggested installing a tall 15 ft metal pole and fixing the camera on top of it. That solves both the problems. Mr. J was kind enough to get the metal pipe and workers to have it installed at the farm. It stands tall and now we have an eye on the farm.



It also has a slot to install a micro SD card so it can record live video. So we can actually look back at the previous few days worth of footage in case we detect something missing or if it has moved. A mobile app lets us control the pan, tilt and zoom and depending on the speed of the internet it is a sort of hit and a miss. The CCTV has motion detection and anytime it detects humans, animals or vehicles we immediately get a notification on our phone and we can check live footage right away. Here is a small footage and you be the judge of the quality of the video and PTZ capabilities.



One more task checked off from our list. And the expenses keep going up :).