Very nice.
So many screens to display.
I have zero volts at the red and black wires at the board, even in bright sunlight.
C I have a spare WOC Iâll connect to the solar panel and see if it charges.
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Either it was damaged in the disassembly, or it has some sort of safety that doesnât switch on the output until it senses âdemandâ. The latter actually seems likely, many USB battery banks work the same way, which causes them to not work well on very low draw devices. If you get an inline tester like the ones shown above, and put a camera/load on it, you can confirm if that is how it is behaving. Of course you could also clip a 5v device to the output terminals and see if the voltage switches on at that point.
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As Gomez Addams said âcapital idea, my good man!â
I have several USB testers and will check tomorrow.
My scientific wild guess is that the battery is there to âfill in the gapsâ when a cloud passes over etc - to prevent the panel output from cycling on and off throughout the day. Continuing to guess, that would probably mean it needs x minutes of sunlight, plus x% of battery charge, plus possibly demand at the output, before it will actually switch on the output.
I recall another thread here, canât remember if it was you or not, where a panel on amazon said it needed a certain time to charge up. Normally with solar panels that just means the cells need time to saturate before they can put out enough voltage, but in this case it may literally be that it has to charge that battery to a certain capacity to ensure that âsmoothingâ function will work.
Yet another guess would be that after a certain amount of time with not enough sunlight, it will turn off the output rather than completely discharge the battery so it is ready for the next day when the sun comes up.
Thanks for those power levels, I was about to make a setup with my multimeter to allow me to make similar measurements.
If the camera is only pulling about 1 to 2.5 watts my battery should be getting longer life than 2 to 3 days. I am only running the camera 8 to 10 hours, I do not have the IR or spotlight on since it is only day time hours. I have the camera set to come on sunrise to sunset and it off at night. One would think the 100-watt panel even on low light days should be able to output 5 to 10 watts which is enough to run the camera and battery.
The reason for the battery, originally, I was hoping to use it for 24 hour Surveillance of the property once the house was mostly built. Once I saw during raining days the battery was not begin fully charge, I turned off the camera at night. Since I have cellular hotspot, if it loses power, it does not automatically turn on once power is restored.
He was measuring with no motion, movement and more complex colors will draw more power. But still probably in the 3-4W max range.
Possibly the camera is not drawing enough for your solar panel to activate its output or some other issue with the panel?
Habib,
That is what I thought too, but if the camera is only consuming 1 to 2.5 watts that means worse case 135 Watt hours of battery should last 54 hours. Since the camera is running at 5 volts it is only drawing 0.2 amps to 0.5 amps. I original assumed the camera was 5 watts drawing 1 amp and solar panel had enough power to keep battery fully charged and run the camera during the day.
At this point I think I need to see what the solar panel is actually doing.
How old is that panel? Panels loose efficiency over time. Also what type is it: mono or poly crystalline? Donât forget if it is polycrystalline, those do not perform very well in low sunlight situations.
@dave27 Thanks, I do not have any motion detection turned on and not saving any video and its only streaming when I connect to the Camera, my assumption was the camera would not draw max power otherwise. I know if I have full sun days, not any problems, it ran for days, even had time lapse videos recorded.
As you pointed out I need to see if there is something not working with the panel itself. I know on full sun days it puts out 24 volts and low sun days it is down to 14 to 16 volts, The battery charging circuit requires 15v at 1.5 amp and it can charge and run a load at same time.
@habib, brand new mono crystalline panel, I thought I bought the correct panel and I decide to go larger just in case on using it for something else in the future and possibly having two cameras on the setup.
Thanks for all the insights. I did a back of the envelop calculations and made some assumption which may not be correct, I will have to go back do actual measurement to make sure everything is doing what I expected.
You chose the right panel, I still think your battery doesnât have enough capacity. What kind of battery do you have? I take it is a deep cycle and not just a cranking one 
As @dave27 mentioned those a âlabâ results. You also have to take into consideration that when the camera is off from the app it is still on. It still draws power, still connected to wifi, it is more or less in standby mode. To really turn the camera off you need to kill the power.
Remember that the cameras draw almost as much power when turned âoffâ.
Iâm guessing you have other stuff running off the battery - the hotspot etc?
But I think youâre on the right track of checking the panel and battery setup, a panel that large should be charging that battery no problem.
That is a really small battery. For sake of simplicity, that battery can only provide 1 Amp for an hour for twelve hours. If the camera draws 1 Amp then the battery will be completely discharged in twelve hours. Taking into consideration that the charge controller will stop discharging the battery once it reaches 80% to prevent it from premature death, not much is left to power the camera. To have enough capacity. to power the camera for three days without sun, he needs at least 70 AmpH battery. Also, we donât know how the voltage is being regulated to the camera. Whatever regulator is being used it also wastes some of that power stored into the battery.
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If there were absolutely no losses and everything was perfect, 135WH should be able to power a single v4 for approx 50-75 hours (keep in mind your calculation is 1 amp at 12 volts and the cam only runs at 5 and uses around 0.25 to 0.5 amps). We know there are losses, especially in the conversion from DC to AC so it will be lower than that. But seems like it should be able to handle more than a day especially when the cam is idle most of the time.
Of course the question becomes is it actually charging the battery properly and in a timely fashion. Batteries, especially lead acid (if thatâs what this is) charge slower as they get more full.
Iâm not sure what kind of battery it is (USB battery bank maybe?). If it is a full on solar setup with rectifier, charge controller, etc, may as well just toss a big deep cycle battery on it. Given that it is a 100W panel Iâm guessing it may be that sort of setup, thatâs not something Iâd expect to find powering a USB output.
The voltage doesnât matter, itâs the Amps that matter when it comes to power storage. Golf cart batteries come in mind, 6V over 200 AmpH capacity most of them. Widely used in off grid setups.
That is correct and I think the panel is doing its job, but the battery capacity becomes a bottle neck in this case.
I doubt it, that 100W panel will kill the battery bank unless it goes through charge controller. If that is the case then the power loss at the controller rectifying the 12V to 5V plays a big role.
Thatâs how I would do it.
No, especially if there is inverter involved in the equation. Inverters are extremely power hungry. The best scenario would be panel to - controller to - battery then use 12v-5v rectifier, something like this 
Have to disagree there, he was specifying a watt-hour battery so voltage comes into play.
5v at 1 amp (5 watts) vs 12v at 1 amp (12 watts) will result in very different runtimes.
Even when looking at amp hours, that rating is at a specific voltage (probably 12ish volts if using a standard large system battery like a car battery, but may be 6v too). If you draw less than that the AH rating of the battery technically goes up.
Of course depending how many components and conversions are going on, it becomes extremely difficult to calculate/predict exactly how much runtime any battery is going to give, but can SWAG it a bit.
What I was trying to say is that no matter the voltage if that battery has only 12 AmpH it will take 12 hours to discharge it at 1 Amp per hour.