Mounting Suggestions/Ideas to prevent disconnecting power

Hi there,

I am looking to see if anyone has any unique mounting solutions or ideas to prevent someone from disconnecting.

I have one of my kids still living with us and her two kids. She has a lot of issues in her life that she tries to hide from us. My indoor cameras (Pan cams) are always plugged in. We were on a cruise and she was watching our house and dogs. I got WiFi at one spot and went to check the cameras and it was off. The outdoor Wyze cams were powered on. I know she does this to talk to her ex-boyfriend whom we despise. Magically it was back on later that evening. She does this because we caught in her a lie before with the Wyze cam.

Does anyone have a unique way to prevent someone from unplugging the device whether it is at the power source or plug into the back of the camera? Yes I know the kid is the main problem but I am hoping the mounting and ability to prevent the cameras from being disconnected be the lesser of two evils.

My ceilings are not tall and about 9ft tall.

I know this could bleed into another category but could third-party apps such as Home Assistant send me a notification when the cameras are turned off? I am a .NET Developer and see the API Wyze offers and it looks like I can get a list of cameras and then for each camera, it exposes a is_on property. Has anyone worked with the API and can confirm this functionality?

Thanks,

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Wyze cams allow you to turn them on and off from the app, so the is_on property is probably what that is for. The Wyze app also displays if the device is online or not, so theirs probably a field in there for that, but I haven’t played around with the api much

Run a search on something like “Plug lock” or “socket lock” and you will find some devices that can cover the sockets and allow you to lock them so the plug can’t be accessed at the socket.

You can get a sort of camera mount that could cover and protect the camera and wire going into the camera so it can’t be accessed easily. Maybe even just some cage like wiring all around near the plug at the back of the camera. I have read of people creating specific cabinets just for the camera and locking it up in a way that it can still see out, but a hand can’t fit in to pull the power out.

You could also super-glue the cord into the back of the camera. Not ideal, but an easy solution for the camera end.

You could also solder a cable directly onto the PSU motherboard, and the other end into the wall. Make it extra difficult by having it go immediately into the wall so that there is little to nothing there to cut, and you can screw in metal around it to help make it more difficult.

You can also put a Small UPS (battery backup) in play, so even is she pulls the power breaker to that room (which you should also try to lock/protect), the UPS keeps the camera going for a while. Don’t tell her there is a hidden UPS installed or involved, just do it. Maybe hide it in the small built-in cabinet if you use one…if you do this, you can even put a fake plug in play…have a fake plug going toward the camera cabinet, and she’ll unplug that one, thinking she shut it off, when the actual power is coming from another source through the wall with or without a battery backup (make sure the camera doesn’t pan or have a status light on or it will give itself away).

Some people wire up a battery powered alarm into the wall socket to trigger when it detects power is removed (circuit is broken).

When I say run the cable through the wall, you could also do it through the Ceiling, maybe plugged in to the room above it which is locked from her access. Cover any exposed cord with something hard to cut and basically fused all around the camera port.

Add a second camera that she doesn’t know about, or even if she does know, make sure to have multiple cameras watching each other and their power sources, so if she tries to disconnect any of them, the others will record the act. Ostensibly you say you are adding an extra camera or 2 for “redundancy” because it seems somehow the one you have is failing too often, so maybe if there is a second one, you’ll at least be able to have one of the 2 recording. And since they have SD cards recording, unless she quickly unplugs all of them within the same minute, one of them will catch it on the SD card at the very least.
If you use home assistant with the Docker Wyze Bridge, you can even RTSP the video to a harddrive and catch every single second up to when it loses power, so there can be no denying what she did.

Obviously nothing you do will 100% prevent her from stopping the camera. She can just smash it or whatever else if she got desperate enough…BUT you can do things to prevent/reduce any lying/gaslighting about the fact that she is actually doing those sneaky things.

Honestly, she can still just go sit in her room to talk to him, or in a car or go for a walk or whatever…but if you’re goal is to do what you can to make that camera have the most uptime as possible from someone who is trying to be sneaky and have plausible deniability about shutting off the cameras, then the above suggestions are a decent starting point for some ideas.

Best of luck. :+1:

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