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Tony asked: “My house is roughly 1,800 square feet and I have about 2 acres that I’d like to set up cameras in. What is a good camera system available with wifi and storage?”
Tony, you’re likely going to be better off looking at a wired system than WiFi. The reason we say that is that not only do you need a network to cover a big distance, but you’re going to need to power your cameras somehow.
Power aside, two acres is a lot of ground to cover, and WiFi will probably no be able to get you adequate service.The theoretical range of WiFi outside where there are no obstructions is about 300 feet. An acre can obviously take any shape, but acres are most typically parceled as 66 x 660 feet rectangles, if that’s the case for your two acres, you’re going to have a tough time never being more than 300 feet from a camera with no obstructions between your WiFi source and the camera itself.
Your best bet is probably to go with coax, it can run for longer distances while providing decent video quality, but obviously, that means wiring your way to each camera, and that won’t be cheap. In better news, some cameras do take power over coax, and if you need to power the camera anyway, you might as well considering coax to carry the signal as well as the power.
To give you an idea, an 8-camera plus DVR system with Power Over Coax capabilities and weatherproofing from A1 Security Cameras will cost you a little under $1000. And that’s without taking into account the cost of dropping the wire all the way to each camera location.
A comparable 8-camera system with a DVR by Night Owl that uses WiFi instead of a hard-wired connection to each camera will cost you around the same, but each camera will come with a 9-foot power cable, and they only advertise a range of 300 feet. If you need to run 291 feet of power cables to each camera to be able to power them, and you still may not get a good video signal, you might as well just run coax instead.