Hi all - this is /not/ a question about the wyze surge protection power strip
I have almost a dozen v2 indoor security cams. a little over a week ago, we had a power brownout/blackout (hard to tell which, it was less only about 1/4 second) and about half my cams are nonfunctional now. I did test with clean USB power supplies, so it isn’t the wall warts
2/3rds of my cams are in small enclosures (in covered but vented porch light fixtures, siphoning power from the bulb adapter and using low wattage LED bulbs to minimize heat), - no room for a full power strip, and barely enough room for the camera and the original wall wart. As I’m ordering replacement cams, I started looking for a small surge protector option and haven’t found anything ideal; posting to see if members of this forum have already identified better options. Either a wall wart with built in surge protection, or a small in-line 5v-5v surge protector (diode array, or whatever).
It seems this is an edge use case, most folks can just use regular power strip surge protectors, but having equipment powered by USB in remote locations (like wyze cams all over) does seem like it could benefit from some additional/local/small surge protection.
I welcome your advice and/or URLs to related products that might be worth considering.
I’ve never seen any compact usb adapter with built in surge suppressor, or an in line 5V protector, I would just rely on several surge protectors plugged in at different locations in the house (cameras doesn’t have to be connected directly). If you are familiar with electrical you could install MOVs at the breaker panel, or if you’re good at soldering, you could install NTE4900s in the usb cable or in the camera (voiding the warranty), would you like to sell the dead cameras to me? I’d like to take them apart and try to figure out what failed.
Another way to think about it… A good surge protector may become more or less useless once it takes a big hit. So spend 15 bucks to replace the surge protector or 20 bucks to replace the camera the surge protector would have been protecting.
Having several surge protectors throughout the house will also protect everything else, think of everything that is vulnerable, all appliances that has a electronic control, TV, internet modem, you’re PC, even if it’s turned off, alarm clock, cell phone charger, etc. The surge protector will shunt minor spikes and protect items not plug in to it directly, just don’t expect it to protect your stuff from a lighting strike right outside your house.
Depending on how much room you have and protection level you might be able to use a small single-outlet surge suppressor for each cam. I got a box of SL Waber Dataguard DG1 surge suppressors at an auction and they’re a nice size to fit in smaller spaces. I don’t know what the modern equivalent is or how many joules it protects against, but it says it can handle surges up to 400V. I’ve seen a few that blew out the fuse in the clear window:
This is pretty closet to what I was thinking; a clearance store shows them at $3 each right now so I’m going to buy a handful and hope they fit.
Dale21, I also really like your suggestion - I can do through-hole soldering, but not surface mount (I actually looked online at someone’s pictures of the wyze circuit board to see which it was; if it was through-hole I would have already pulled one apart to replace any capacitors or look for fuses). While I can solder, I’m not an electrical engineer so I’ll do more searching to see how to implement the diode. (and spend time pondering why those aren’t automatically incorporated into every 5v wall wart),
So I took all apart, did a quick check of the power circuits, couldn’t find anything wrong, Connect power to it, the only thing it would do is light the status LED yellow, pushing the reset button didn’t do anything, checked the reset button, it wasn’t making contact, maybe some corrosion? Used contact cleaner that fixed the reset button, the status LED would very briefly flash blue when pressing the reset button, Did a manual firmware flash, now it works, it’s been on for about an hour with no problems.
