Power Outage

Cameras
1

What happens to my Wyze Cams when there is a power outage? Is there a little tiny backup battery in them?

Any info would be appreciated. Thank you in advance,

Sigrid

2

While the power is out, the camera will not function. When power is restored, it will remember its settings and reconnect.

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3

No internal batteries, but you could easily attach a phone battery “power pack”. You can often find them very inexpensively online or local department stores. Plug the Wayze charger into the power pack with a short USB cable (often included with the power pack). Plug the Wayze USB cable into the charger and to the Wayze camera. I often do this to power Raspberry Pi’s that I use with sensors that I move around a lot. Once I move the sensor to a new location, I plug the charger back in.

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4

Thanks to both of you for your quick replies.

Zarthan, can you please recommend a brand or model for a power pack to use with a WYZE cam? If you don’t want to answer here in the forum, please feel free to write to my email address (saklein@mtaonline.net).

Again many thanks,

Sigrid

 

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5

This is the type of thing I have used. http://a.co/h6Q2mHp You can find them everywhere from grocery stores to lumber stores. I get mine at the lumber store. Here is one attached to a Raspberry Pi sensor. The black cable at the top, goes to the charger.

sensor.jpg
sensor.jpg2448Ă—3264 1.24 MB

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6

Wow, that’s very interesting.

We have several power banks here at home - but are afraid to keep them “under constant AC power”. We always thought to keep the power bank connected to an AC only until it is fully charged and then have to disconnect it. Are you leaving your power bank connected all the time (24/7)?

Do you agree that we should look for a power bank that has the same output like the WYZE Cam wall charger (5V, 1A) DC ?

Thank you very much for all your help.

Best,

Sigrid

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7

There can be risks I suppose, but that goes for anything plugged in as well. It is unlikely that you can overcharge the Lithium Ion batteries unless they are very poorly designed. They generally have circuitry to cut off the charge when they are fully charged. Since the camera will always be drawing down the battery, the charger will be constantly supplying a charge, potentially reducing the life of the batteries.

I do have the Raspberry Pis connected 24/7. They don’t consume much power and a 2000 mah battery can power it for a day or two when constantly sending sensor data. When plugged into the charger, the battery pack remains cool. Warm or hot would be a warning sign.

I don’t know how long that same battery pack (2000 mah) would power the Wyze camera. I am assuming you are using the SD card to constantly record the video stream, otherwise, there is no reason to have a battery backup. Unless your WiFi router was also battery powered, there may be extra power consumed with the camera constantly trying to connect. Test to see.

You do not need to match the power output of the battery pack with the camera. The camera will only draw what it needs. If you have regular power outages and lengthy ones, get a larger one. You would be best to test and see how long a particular battery pack lasts. Unfortunately, it is harder to test the WiFi down situation

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8

Or just use a commercially available UPS (uninterrupted power supply) like many use for their computers, but that is getting bulky and expensive to power a $20 camera.

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9

A small UPS could be a suitable option in some situations. It could support the networking equipment as well as cameras. I use 25 foot USB cables to power my cameras. If the distances and placement of cameras, Wifi router and UPS were just right ???

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10

Thank you so very much for all your help.

We’re at the moment testing out some of our Power Packs. The ones we got for free from our local phone company aren’t doing the job; the ones we purchased some time ago are doing fine so far.

We just want to make sure to get some more recordings to the cloud done during an outage. We have a Power Switch at the outside of the house, which we can use to disconnect the house from the power company and connect to our generator during a longer power outage. The bag guys just have to flip the handle on this Power Switch to disconnect the house completely; so no more power to our router (which has a back-up UPS) and to the WYZE Cams (which are now connected to the Power Packs). This is why we wanted to have an independent power source for some time to get more cloud recordings. If the bad guys steel the WYZE Cams with the SD cards we still have the cloud to show at least a few recordings of them.

We really appreciate your inputs and want to thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Sigrid

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12

I lived through several heavy power outages a few years ago, and though power was out for days, the Internet was still up and going. We did have a generator so our home had power but most in the neighborhood did not. DSL is perhaps less prone to power issues, after all, landline phones still work during failures. We have cable but were OK. There can certainly be circumstances where the Internet can fail. A fallback to cellular. I have had routers that did. You add redundancy if it is that important enough.

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13

Well I believe the camera can loose the memory settings with a power outage. Yesterday our power distribution system (the stuff out in the street) had several cases where the automatic protection from trees on the power lines instantaneously dropped the power then quickly brought it back online cycling the power up to four times before becoming stable again. This cycle occurred three times. The cameras were powered but turned off. After the third episode the camera went online, I started receiving notification of detected movement.

This tells me that power line protection is going to be required. Something like an uninterruptible power conditioner.

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14

I use a UPS like this:
https://www.amazon.com/APC-Back-UPS-Connect-Battery-BGE70/dp/B00KH07WRC?ref_=Oct_BSellerS_764572_21

It’s cheap and I trust it way more than one of those little batteries

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15

Wow they want $128 On Amazon for the BGE90M I got on sale at newegg for $26

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17

Charging and discharging a li-ion battery at the same time does not actually damage the battery, that’s just a myth https://www.quora.com/Is-it-ok-to-charge-a-Li-ion-battery-while-it-is-connected-to-a-load you might wonder if that’s the case then why does my smartphone heat up when I charge and use it at the same time, well your phone will heat up regardless if you are charging it or not, the heat is from the load not the battery.

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18

Unfortunately a LOT of the USB batteries available won’t let you charge and power loads at the same time. I have one that I bought a few years ago, but that manufacturer no longer makes battery packs with that capability. So check a pack before you assume it will work.

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