I have a battery cam pro being used to monitor an owl nesting box. The box is suspended 20 ft. from the ground in the middle of an open field and accessible only with a 24 ft extension ladder. The cam has a solar panel outside of the box to charge the cam battery. Worked fine last year. This year I decided to bring the solar panel down to get easier access for cleaning the panel or brushing snow. For some reason (may be operator error) the battery lost its charge. I went up the box to check and I might have disconnected the pig tail (coupling) from the cam to the solar panel long cable. I am now testing if I had it right this time. My question is if I buy spare batteries from Wyze, CAN I CHARGE THE BATTERY AT THE CAM LOCATION WITH THE SPARE BATTERY (that I can charge with my phone charger) from ground level. That way, I have a choice between solar and spare battery that I both can access at ground level, to power the camera. OR can I take out the battery in the cam and power it just with the external battery. Its about this time that we may have a new tenant for the year.
First, not sure about a battery charging a battery. The BCP does not function without the battery in place unless wired directly with an AC 5v/2A dc power adapter. I have 1 wired and 1 with a solar panel. The battery has to be in the 1 with a solar panel. If you pull the battery, how would you make the connection to the camera’s internal terminals? Would you attempt to use a double-ended male usb-c cable to connect the 2 batteries? There is no way to have a connection to the battery inside the bcp, physically impossible. I think you may be at a no viable solution with this one.
Get a USB power bank and use that for what you’re looking to do, should work fine. It will power and charge the cam no problem.
The only catch is once the cam is fully charged, the current draw may drop low enough that the battery bank powers off (nearly all of them do that automatically) so you’d have to turn it back on when the battery needs a charge (unless you set it up in the pass through mode I mention below, I’m pretty sure as long as those ones are receiving an input, they’ll turn on the output too).
Do not try to connect the solar panel and the battery bank to the camera at the same time (you’d need some funky Y adapter to do that, but just making sure you don’t try it). However if you get a battery bank with pass through charging, you could connect the solar panel to the battery bank “input” and the cam to the “output” and effectively get yourself a much longer runtime. Then as needed, charge the battery bank with your faster cell phone charger.
Obviously the battery bank would need to be protected from the elements.
Good alternative solution. Never thought about a power bank as a source. Not sure about a solar panel keeping a 20k+mah power bank sufficiently charged, at least not the regular panels for battery cams we see. May have to go next level on solar panel or removing the battery and/or power bank to charge externally may occur more often than desired and defeat the intended purpose; 3 mos, 6 mos,
It reads to me like @bertcorales is looking for a ground level solution to maintaining the least uninterrupted operational status of his BCP. I think you’re definitely headed in a good direction with your suggestion.
Yeah OP mentioned charging the battery from time to time with cell phone charger, the solar panel would help extend the amount of time between having to do that, but unless you got a decent sized solar panel (probably 10-20 watt at least to account for night time battery use) it will eventually need a charge.
Or of course there is the option to just charge the battery bank from time to time. It should die before the battery in the cam, so basically when the cam battery starts decreasing, you know it is time to charge the bank.
Not sure what size the battery is in the BCP but even a 10K bank would probably have more than a second wyze battery (which wouldn’t work in this case anyway).
BCP battery: 3.7v - 6200mAh which is why I suggested possible 20,000mAH as minimum for any period of longevity worth the effort. Obviously the higher the better, not to mention other factors to consider.
Thanks, I don’t have AC power at the camera location. Box is 20 ft in the air in the middle of the field (owl cam). Reason I ask about battery charging a battery is I read something like that as ok. The question is actually directed to Wyze because they can answer it if they already tried it, Or, easier for them to bench test it rather than me ruining my camera. I just looked at definition of USB power bank (not a techie here) it says “it is a portable battery used to charge electronic gadgets when you don’t have access to a wall charger” I guess I need to know what spec of charger to buy. Any thoughts?
Thanks, I replied to Dave 27 without even reading further down the replies, I guess you answered my question about using a USB power bank instead of my low tech solution of buying another Wyze battery. I wasn’t planning a “Y” for battery and solar. It more an alternative (OR not AND) to solar, specially in the winter months. I can monitor the battery charge status when I’m streaming. And yes, I am looking for a ground level solution for uninterrupted power for the camera and I think USB power bank is an excellent solution. Can you (or anybody) pls provide me a link of exactly what to buy for my application. Thanks a lot,
Can you pls guide me on what spec I need for you and dave27’s suggestion of the USB power bank. Thanka to you both.
Amazon or local electronic store. Suggest at least a usb 20,000 mAh power bank with 5v 2A output or better.
Just hop on Amazon. Personally I like the Anker branded ones, they’ve been reliable and high quality for me, however there are dozens of brands and others here have tested several other brands. A lot of the focus has been on ones that will not interrupt when there is a power outage but that’s not a big deal in your case.
Whether or not you want to combine it with the solar panel, I would look for one with “pass through” since the ones that don’t have that typically shut off the output when they are charging, which would then drain your camera battery during the charting period.
10,000Mah ones are usually quite cheap (may be less likely to have pass through though). 20,000mah are typically not that much more expensive and gives you a lot of extra power. Of course the more you pay, the more capacity you can get. I managed to grab a 40,000 Anker one on a good sale last year for $40 but that was a bit of a fluke.
If you have the solar panel anyway, and get one with pass through (which I would do regardless) then wire it up this way:
Solar panel → Battery Bank input/charge port → Camera running off battery bank output port.
That will give you a pretty good amount of time between charges. Then when you notice your cam battery starting to drain, you know it is time to plug in your AC charger (if you don’t have one, grab a phone charger or AC charger, Anker also Makes good ones, rated for 2.4A or higher so it charges relatively quickly (depending on capacity will be several hours usually).
From my experience the only “unknown” will be whether the battery bank will power off the output when the camera isn’t drawing much power, but I believe the draw of the camera will be high enough to keep most of them active all the time, and potentially even when the camera drains the battery a bit, it would begin charging and thus “wake up” the battery bank.
Also just look at the ports (input and output) that the one you choose has, you may need some adapters or cables to connect everything together how you want (there will probably be a mix of USB-A, USB-C, and micro USB in your setup).
Sorry if that is wordy, just relaying what I think you’ll need to know if you go with that solution. I don’t believe there would be any way to “daisy chain” two wyze batteries together, and this is a better solution anyway.
The more words the better. I just want to make sure, I still couldn’t wrap around the idea that “USB protocol supposed to regulate voltage” that’s why I was asking for specs. Now, I understand the different ends (connectors) matching. So, if I got something here, all I need is to choose the amp-hours and not to be concerned about the 3.7 V battery voltage. Now, “pass through”. Can you pls explain that further. Is that a concern for me because my plan is simply to detach the solar and plug in the power bank if solar does not charge during gloomy days, then plug back the solar on sunny days and charge the power bank in the house. (Appreciate patience, I’m old school, no, I’m just old).
Pass through means the battery bank’s output will stay on and powering the camera while you are recharging the bank via the input. This would allow you to leave the solar panel connected to it to get more runtime between charges, but even if you don’t want to do that, it would also prevent the camera from draining the internal battery while you’re charging the battery bank. Since that can take several hours, you’d end up never being able to have a full charge since as soon as you disconnect your charger, it would then start charging the camera back up and draining the battery bank.
So without passthrough you can still achieve what you want, but you’d lose some of the benefit. The passthrough is pretty common these days and available on many units even in the $20 to $30 range so I think it is worthwhile to look for one of those.
If you do use the solar panel to extend your runtime, when it comes time to charge the battery bank, you just unplug the solar panel from the bank’s input and put your charger in there instead. Then switch it back when charged.