At the 121st Canton Fair in April 2017, we displayed the LRD and LRC series alongside a model with a built-in camera. Most visitors treated it as a novelty. A light that watches the road sounded clever but unnecessary.

In 2026, buyers at security-focused projects ask for camera integration before they ask for lumens. The novelty became a specification, and the questions around it became technical.

What Changed in the Market

Three things converged.

1. Budget consolidation: sites that needed lighting and security began looking for one pole instead of two systems.
2. Solar maturity: a larger battery and panel could support both loads without doubling the structure.
3. Connectivity: 4G modules became cheap enough to put in a lamp head.

The Questions Buyers Ask Now

They are no longer about whether a camera can be attached. They are about how the two systems coexist.

• How do the camera and light share the power budget, and which one gets priority at low battery?
• What happens to recording when the battery drops below a threshold?
• Can the SIM be swapped locally, or is it locked to a carrier?
• Where is footage stored, and what happens when the connection drops?
• Can the camera be disabled without disabling the light?

Why Most Integrations Disappoint

Because the camera is treated as an add-on. A unit designed from the start around a shared power budget behaves differently from one with a camera bolted into an existing housing. The former can define priority rules; the latter simply drains the battery faster and shortens the light’s runtime.

What Comes Next

The next step is likely edge processing: a camera that detects an event locally and sends a short clip rather than streaming continuously. That reduces data cost dramatically, which is the main barrier in markets with expensive mobile data. As with lighting, the winning design will be the one that budgets power and bandwidth together rather than adding features until the battery complains.

The Trend Behind It

Street lighting is becoming infrastructure rather than a fixture. A pole now carries light, camera, sensor and sometimes communications. That changes bracket design, wind load and maintenance planning — and it explains why buyers in 2026 ask about the platform, not just the lamp.

The 2017 idea was early. The 2026 version is an engineering brief.