Opinion of V3 setup

Just looking for feedback on my setup; if I should be concerned. My entire internet/network system is on UPS battery backup. Even if I have a power outage, I am still good for a couple of hours. And if I am home and it looks like power may be out for a bit, I have a generator that can run my house. (Yes, it’s correctly wired in, just not an automatic transfer switch). But with occasional power bumps, brown outs, spikes, etc. devices like the Wyze V3 camera will most times wind up rebooting itself. And depending on the power, this could happen often. Not being a fan of electronics taking surges, bumps, brown outs, reboots, I did the following.

I am using Battery Banks (Small battery packs about the size of a cell phone). These are normally used to recharge your phone, tablet, ear buds, etc. when on the road and you need more power. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, the ones I have, have all the safety protection in them. They protect against overcharging, overvoltage, overcurrent, overtemperature. So, instead of using the Wyze power pack that comes with the V3, I have the V3 plugged into the battery bank; and it in turn is plugged into it’s power pack. The USB output is more than capable of running the V3 camera. (The provided V3 power pack output is 1000ma/1amp) and my battery banks can handle an output of up to 3 amps/3000ma. So, having this setup, the V3 camera NEVER, EVER, sees a bump in power. Never sees an outage, brownout, surge, etc. And while I said the battery bank could keep the V3 operational for a couple of hours… being I don’t continuously record (only events), the battery bank probably will keep the camera good for quite a few hours.

So, does anyone see any negatives to this setup. Battery banks are inexpensive, small, and ensure the camera gets constant smooth power. Any input???
Thanks
Mike

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It will work fine but you have to keep in mind those battery banks aren’t meant to constantly be draining and charging at the same time. At best, the batteries in them will wear out quickly. At worst, a lithium battery overheats from the stress, goes into thermal runaway, and starts to burn, at which point there is no stopping it. You remember the hoverboards and other cheap stuff that was going up in flames? Even if they have protection circuitry (some lie and don’t, or it is not substantial enough) once it passes a certain point, no circuitry is going to stop it.

If it is a reputable brand like Anker, then the risk of that is pretty low, but not 0. But you’ll end up buying new ones pretty frequently as the batteries wear out, which of course you won’t know until you have a power outage and the cam stops working, defeating the purpose.

A better solution would be cheap APC or Cyberpower UPSes, the smallest/cheapest ones will work fine and keep the camera running for hours. I’ve seen them as low as $30 to $40 at times. The batteries in them are usually good for 5 years or so. They are meant for that type of use. Many of the “portable power stations” from Ecoflow, Bluetti, Anker, etc have a UPS mode that will work also, they are designed for that, but those are pretty expensive and overkill for the solution (unless you can manage to wire many cams and possibly your internet stuff to it also, in which case it might make sense to get one of their smaller $150ish ones).

If you do stick with the power banks, look specifically for good, reputable brands and look for ones that at least claim to support “passthrough” mode. The hope is that those will have something programmed into the battery management system to not constantly be charging them while they’re sitting at 100%.

I guess long story short, if you want to stay with that route, get a good name brand, make sure it lists passthrough charging as a specific feature, and plan to replace them more frequently than you would a traditional UPS.

@dave27 is spot on and I agree 100%.

Your closing statement

Needs examination.

If your looking for “constant smooth power” your typical power/battery bank will not do this.

I am in the middle of bringing up a bird Feeder that uses a power bank and solar panel to keep a v4 camera running 24/7. Reaching this goal has been a challenge.

I have found there are 3 types of power banks.

The first, and I believe most popular, are banks that only provide power if they are not being charged and will only charge if not providing power. This scheme is relatively safe and provides clean battery power. The downside is you need to manually setup the charge.

The second type has pass-through and this is where you have to be careful. In my testing I found the pass-through to be just that. Whatever is on the charging side is passed through to the load side. This seems to work well if you have a clean, stable input but falls apart if the input is not clean and stable. Basically garbage in garbage out. In my bird feeder quest this method proved unusable. Testing in my house looked promising as I was feeding the input clean, stable power. It failed miserably when I took it outside and connected the solar panel. As the sun started to fade the solar panel voltage /amperage started becoming unstable. This setup created a chattering on the output resulting in a camera reboot every 30 seconds or so. I stopped this test as it would not work. There are variations in this method. Features like trickle charge, power off after 2 hours etc. Bottom line you do not get stable, clean, conditioned power to the camera.

The final method I found by accident. Like you I was looking for clean conditioned power for the camera. I don’t remember what my keywords were but I stumbled on a claim from Voltaic that they had power banks that the output was “always on”. This interested me so I did further research and their claim was regardless of the input the output would be either 5v/2a or off. Period. In subsequent searches I could not find any other vendor making this claim.

I decided to give them a go. Bad news. They are twice as expensive for half the available power. I ordered up their V75 model,approx 20,000mAh.

The product is exactly as they claim. Always on power to the load. I am now on day 4 of my testing and the v4 has been running non-stop. I started the test with the unit at 75% charged. During the day it charges to 100%, at night the v4 drops the charge down to 50%. Next day solar panel charges it back up. I have also noticed that as the sun fades the unit turns off its input, protecting itself from a chattering condition

It looks like my bird Feeder quest will continue. This whole episode got me to thinking about which of the above methods Wyze uses in the Battery Cam Pro. I have one aimed at my driveway. My belief is they are using an “alway on” method. It works great with the Wyze solar panel. Hats off Wyze!!!

In closing take @dave27 warnings seriously about thermal runaway. As he suggested you might want to explore UPS’s,especially AVR models.

Thanks for the feedback. Couple of things:
Dave: The battery bank I have currently been using on my first camera has been going strong for about a year and a half. I just bought 2 more cameras and will be doing the same with those. The battery bank is LiPo (Lithium Polymer which is gel vs Lithium Ion which is liquid). Should be good there. I unplug the current one I’ve been using about every couple of months to ensure the camera is still working and the battery isn’t dead. So far, so good after a year and a half. And they do have “Pass Through” and even advertise using your device while IT is charging from the battery bank, and the battery bank is charging from the power pack. So it “Should” be good.

Ron: As I stated to Dave, these battery banks do have pass through. As for the garbage in and garbage out, I agree with you. However, that is really up to the power pack that you are going to use to charge/power the battery bank. Any decent power pack, just like one for a cell phone, will have decent output regulation because it is intended for world-wide service. Meaning, it will have an AC input voltage of 100-240vac. This means it will regulate whatever voltage is input and rectify it to the 5v that the device wants. As for clean power, that really isn’t my goal. DC power (the output 5v) is clean by it’s nature of being direct current vs alternating current. Clean or dirty is strictly on the AC input. Of course, a cheap battery bank without any regulation could put out too high or too low of a DC voltage. These seem to be pretty good because they were intended to not only charge your device, but determine if the device is PD/QC compatible, and what voltage to give it.

Both of you brought up some great points and I appreciate your inputs. Thanks again for giving other insight so I can keep thinking outside the box and not be restrained. As an electronic engineer of more than 45 years, I realize that technology is always advancing. Mostly for the good, but not always. And I am always striving to learn more from others and their experiences. Thanks again.
Mike

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Can you recommend a brand of these power banks? I like LiPo batteries.

Most “modern” battery banks are LiPo. I too like them over Lithium-Ion. They are gel, not liquid, so they are safer in all regards. Their biggest concerns are over and under charging them and extreme fast discharging. But with modern technology and protection circuits, these concerns aren’t that big. And for my uses, like wyze cameras, there is no fast discharging. Matter of fact, my battery bank always shows 100% charge, so the pass through charging is covering the discharge rate fine.

I have found that when 100% charged, and the cameras connecting and operating, the battery bank remains completely cold. No warmth whatsoever. Telling me that the pass through is working and the battery itself probably isn’t charging.

As for recommendations, I’m not sure if this forum allows links to Amazon items for sale, so I won’t give any direct links. However, the brands I recommend that I am using for the camera are “Pxwaxpy” 30,800mAh or “INIU” 10,000mAh. I use the Pxwaxpy mainly. Search Amazon and you’ll find them. About $20 with discount for the larger and $18 for the smaller. Hope this helps.
Mike

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FYI, we are allowed links as long as the link is not something that you are trying to sell on the forum.

Thanks for the info BTW!

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I did not know that. I bought a couple 360W power banks and then saw a 300W LiFePo battery. I guess the benefits of LiFePo and LiPo are equivalent? I didn’t realize they had LiPo in the smaller power banks. I like double the recharge cycles.

Good to know. I could not find any documentation on the pass-through charging but I can take your word on that. The price is reasonable.

Found three Pxwaxpy models. One as 30,800 mAh and one 36,800 mAh. I won’t be flying with these packs since anything over 30,800 mAh is not flight worthy.

Just to see if it is allowed …

30,800 mAh

and

36,800 mAh

Thank you, Mike.

Hmmmmm. Whenever I fly, I always have my 30,800mah battery bank to keep my iphone, ipad, and airbuds charged. I keep all my electronics in a separate bag for TSA. My devices, bose headphones, charges, and the battery bank. They’ve seen it every time; (at least 6 flights in the last 1-2 years). They’ve never said anything to me.

Now, while I was typing, I did a quick search. According to TSA, ALL portable chargers and battery banks with a lithium ion batter must be in “Carry on Baggage”. No mention of size or mention of LiPo batteries. Here’s the link

After reading further, it says max is 100 watt hrs per battery. Well, the formula for watts is Voltage times current. So, if a 5v (battery bank) has 30,800mah (technically that’s 30.8 amp hours), then at 5v, that would be 154 watt hrs. So technically, too big. But I’ve never had anyone at TSA say anything. Probably because most of the battery banks all look about the same and they don’t know what size it is.

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I heard that size is allowable but nothing > 30,800.

I hear that often but only see it now on the amazon site.

-30,800mAh meet the international aviation standard flight limits.
Specification
Capacity: 30,800mAh / 113.96Wh

How does LiPo mix with salt water?

I heard about EVs catching fire when the floods landed during the recent hurricane. Supposedly they use Lithium. I guess LiFePo would be too heavy to be used economically in a car.

The TSA site said max is 100Wh.
Also, how did you come up with 113.96wh? That would be by multiplying the 30,800 by 3v. I think the rated output is 5v which would be 154wh. But either way, it’s still over the 100wh mentioned in the TSA website.

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I got that value off of the amazon site.

Information is not consistent. I will go with 30,800 mAh to fly with. Can we carry fire extinguishers on the plane in carry-on? :thinking:

Or better yet, a thermal containment bag.

Hee Hee. Like I said, either way, technically it is over the 100wh rating TSA states. But in more than a year of traveling, they have never stopped me. Nothing against TSA agents, but unless they see some Large UPS Backup Batteries being carried on, they would have no idea on whether a battery bank was more or less of 100 WH. They probably can’t even spell “Watt Hours”. And they most likely aren’t going to try and do the math…

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I have seen complaints that when most of these battery packs start charging it often bounces the output, so I’m guessing when tied to a solar panel that results in issues, since the input is going to fluctuate a lot. Seems it is common to want to tie one with a small portable solar panel and many found what you did, they had to go for a much more expensive battery pack that specifically addressed that problem.

A surprising number of packs, even some that don’t list passthrough or simultaneous charge and output do function in that way, but obviously there are concerns with that. And it isn’t clear if when the power does go out or blip, whether they’ll just suffer the same thing you’re seeing (particularly when the power comes back on as that seems to be when the output bounces). I suppose for short blips it may be fine since it was already 100% charged but who knows.

Not sure about the BCP but I know the bird buddy feeder I got a family member does seem to manage it well, it is also designed to work with a solar panel but I have it plugged in all the time (it is outside, so at least if it overheats, won’t burn down the house). It does seem to have some intelligence in it, the battery stops charging at like 99% and starts again around 95%, which it rarely drops to, so it goes into a mode where it is not charging the battery. Hopefully they designed the BCP similarly.

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Interesting, wasn’t aware they had those (typically LiPo is for very high output but shorter life than LiFeP04). Honestly, the LiPo packs always scare me a bit, they’re basically just a roll of foil and gel in cellophane. They were/are very popular for high performance RC cars, planes, etc and when they crash, there have been some pretty spectacular fires. But I guess as long as the pack isn’t subjected to rough service, shouldn’t be an issue.

Sounds like the ones you found are specifically intended for what you’re using them for. Personally I’d still be a tad nervous but if it has been working for a long time and performing how you want it to, well just make sure there is a nearby window and broom to use to knock it outside should the need ever arise :slight_smile:

Maybe they’re using an advanced BMS that doesn’t charge it to 100% and starts charging at 90% (not leaving it “float charging” constantly). LiPo typically does have more safeties built into it, at least the name brand stuff I’ve seen that uses it.

As you say, things are advancing and not always for the better. No-name battery banks with volatile lithium batteries and not enough protection is one of those examples, but sounds like you’re on top of it. Personally, I just have a decent sized central UPS and ran AC wiring from my FIOS ONT and one of my cameras to it, and it sits near my internet stuff, so that takes care of everything I need. Our power is very reliable, an outage every couple years at most and usually pretty short duration, so if my other cams are down during that time, I’m not too worried.

This way I just have to replace the batteries in that one unit every 7 or 8 years (infrequent outages along with top quality batteries makes them last a long time) and not really worry about anything.

EVs are Lithium Ion, mix of decent output and medium to longer lifespan (mostly thanks to advanced BMS that doesn’t actually charge them to 100% and distributes the charge over a ton of individual cells, so not actually charging any one of them rapidly). Though they are talking about making some cheaper EVs with LiFePo4 and even a new technology they’re working on supposedly.

LiPo are high output, low to moderate lifespan, high volatility.

LiFePo4 are lower output, very long lifespan (charge cycles), very economical, pretty much found in everything that can fit those size cells and doesn’t need huge output.

I asked a flight attendant once and she said they had these “heavy thick bags we’re supposed to put them in but I’m not touching one of those things if it is on fire”.

They were super strict about the rules, you could not have luggage with one built in unless it was removable, they were checking the capacity, etc. Now it seems like they forgot all about it. From what I’ve seen the LiFe batteries smoke and smolder and get very hot, but aren’t anywhere near as volatile as LiOn or LiPo, so I guess they figure they have time to divert and land.

I’m actually surprised they haven’t just converted one of the overhead bins to a containment capsule they can just toss a bag or suitcase in with vents to the outside.

Are you sure you’re not confusing LiPo with LiFePo4?

No, not at all. If you look at the specs they will say “Lithium Polymer”. (LiPo). Just for grins and giggles, I looked up 7 on amazon and 4 on Best Buy. ALL were Lithium Polymer (LiPo). There were a couple of Lithium-Ion, but about 8 or 9 out of every 10 were LiPo. Mind you, I was/am only looking at battery banks with usb outputs for phones, tablets, etc.

Interesting, the few I have are older and use Lithium Ion. The large 40K one I got for a family member uses LiFe.

I can see where the real slim ones would use LiPo since the other two wouldn’t fit.

That being said I haven’t spent a ton of time researching these other than that 40K one that needed specific features (trickle charge mode particularly for her hearing aids during power outages).

As long as LiPo is in a hard shell and not subject to lots of impacts or damage, it is usually fine. But having dealt with raw lipo batteries and seeing their construction, they make me nervous. Considering LiFe are cheaper and have far greater charge cycles and lifespan, surprising to hear they’re using LiPo.

The other concern with LiPo is it is a single large capacity “bag” (or a few of them) with no internal protection circuitry, so the BMS has to be really good, and if something goes wrong, it can go really wrong.

That being said, the “random capital letter” brands can get extremely cheap lipo batteries (they’re exceptionally cheap in china due to no aluminum being needed/imported) so I guess in that aspect, it makes sense.

The portable power stations that I’ve seen are pretty much exclusively using LiFe, though I have seen a few with Li-Ion. LiFe is safer and lasts longer so that seems to be the norm for those.

With all the talk in this thread about Lithium batteries, I have to relate a story from tonight.

I have an old-ish Logitech harmony remote sitting in a drawer. It is a rechargeable version that originally came with a couple NiMH batteries and USB charger, but I didn’t get those parts, just the remote itself. It works fine off Alkaline AAs (even has protection when you hook it up to the computer to program it, so it does not attempt to charge the standard AAs) but I wanted to see if I could get it to be a rechargeable unit.

Family member had some 5+ year old Eneloops in a drawer. Hadn’t been charged in probably 4 years, and they were going to get rid of them. I said I’ll take them, if nothing else just to confirm it works before buying a new set.

Not only did they read 1.29V (fully charged) still, but since I wanted to test the charging functionality, needed to run them down some. Put them in a fairly bright LED flashlight and let it sit on for an hour. They were down to 1.22V and it was still shining bright (not as bright as 1.5V standard AA batteries, but still plenty). An hour off good Duracell alkaline and it would have been dimmer, this sucker runs through them pretty quickly.

Put them in the remote and used a generic phone charger and micro USB cable (remote says you can only use the included charger, which they’ll sell you for like $50), and they’re charging up fine. So, nice to have a functional recharge capability in that remote, but what impresses me is how much power (they’re even the 1900mAH ones, not the Pro 2500mAH) they still hold after many years. I’m impressed. Even though the 2.5 to 2.6 volts (dual AA) results in a flashlight not quite as bright as 3V from Alkaline, the alkies are usually down to that voltage after a short time anyway, I may start using these in some of my flashlights. Eneloops (originally Sanyo now owned by Panasonic) have always been highly regarded, so I shouldn’t be too surprised, but still pretty impressed. You can even buy them cheap under Ikea and Amazon Basics brands, but only certain colors are rebadged eneloops so that requires a bit of research, if they still even exist, that was years ago that I read about that.

Still waiting for the day when we’ll have rechargeable lithium AA/AAA cells that run around 1.5V, giving the best (or better) of both worlds. In the meantime, may actually get a few of the Eneloop pro versions for a couple of my flashlights.

At my previous employer I had APC 1500VA battery backups on all the critical devices at my work. I needed everything to stay on so I could VPN into my office computers. These are a little expensive but my work paid for them. There may be better battery technology than sealed lead acid, but these APC units never failed me.

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