I have a project where I want to monitor a bird feeder. It is kind of challenging to power the camera via wire. Is there any solution to power the camera from a dedicated battery (I could recharge and/or swap out)?
Is there any solution where it is powered from dedicated solar panels (and battery so it works at night)?
It doesn’t have to be a COTS solution. Is there something I could DIY?
Here is some great discussion on the topic https://www.reddit.com/r/wyzecam/comments/t1bhpv/powering_a_wyze_cam_v3_with_a_solar_panel_battery/
The Wyze cam outdoor has a battery and supports a solar panel. Only drawbacks are you cannot use continuous recording and it needs a base station with wired power and a network connection nearby. Are you able to put the base in your house? How far away is the camera?
I would prefer the solution be with Wyze Cam V3 (and going forward).
I’m definitely not interested in solutions that require additional hardware like base stations/hubs.
Your going to have a hard time finding a battery solution that works with the v3. The WCO was specifically designed to work with a battery, so it goes into a deep sleep state when not being used, and uses a PIR sensor to wake it up. A v3 cam is always running and always processing its input, so it uses significantly more power than the WCO.
Some users use a battery bank to power v3s, but from what I have heard the batteries are large, expensive, and only last a few days.
I am fine with the large batteries and having to recharge. are there specifics anywhere?
What battery, adapters needed?
What about solar charging of the batteries?
I can’t tell you the specifics as I don’t have this setup, but I’m sure there are other community members who can if that’s really the route you wanna take.
It will most likely end up costing you more than using wyzes battery cams, but if you need to it is possible.
I just purchased, from Amazon, the Power-Bank-Solar-Charger - 36000mAh Solar Power Bank (with solar recharging feature) for $19.99 USD. This morning I set it up and it is now powering a Wyze Cam OG. I’m hoping that it will be a good setup.
For the camera, I have the following basic settings;
I previously had the Wyze Cam Outdoor but I don’t like this camera since the lens fogs up in the morning; as well as, viewing recent events and/or viewing playback don’t seem to be features of this camera.
So, my fingers are crossed to see how well this setup works. I’ll update this post in a few days and let you know how well this is working.
I would suggest checking with other brands. They offer a battery camera with a solar panel. I heard wyze outdoors isn’t the best and it’s heavily overpriced.
https://forums.wyze.com/t/my-attempt-at-a-self-powered-wildlife-cam/154743
Perhaps this will give you some ideas.
A V3 can be powered from something like a car battery (a deep cycle battery would be better) with an adapter to a USB outlet easily enough. It will last something like a week or so.
You might be interested in a video I ran across. It’s not specifically focus on Wyze, but it does include the use of two Wyze cams for a solar powered mailbox with lights, etc. The author gets into details on the build, the battery, the charging, powering the Wyze cams, etc.
And a deeper dive with links to parts on Amazon, extra info, rough wiring diagram, etc here: https://www.thetechieprepper.com/post/7-business-strategy-tips-from-successful-entrepreneurs
Should be plenty of inspiration for you to pursue more deeply.
I bought 2 panels from China that have powered 2 cams now for a year. Cost was about 9.00 us each.
By any chance do you have a link to it or a link to something similar?
I was also hoping to power an Arduino (or maybe a raspberry Pi) too.
I’ll admit I don’t know this stuff that well, but I think the solar recharge method will take 100 hours to actually recharge. I am not sure if it will charge while being used either.
Please keep me posted on this method
This is very cool. thank you!
Asked a question on one of your threads.
This is very much in line with what I am looking for. Thank you so much.
I will have to read into this.
Well, it was a nice try but my fully charged battery pack worked well but was useable for only 1 day. Applying simple math (36000 mah/19 hours), it looks like the Wyze OG camera uses about 1900 mah.
So, it looks like I’ll use a long Wyze cable from my second floor down to a first floor outlet since my wife will, most likely, object to my running a cable from the camera across the bathroom to an outlet.
Presumably you meant to leave off the h at the end of that - or are adding per hour…
Fail. No way is the OG drawing almost 2 amps. For starters, it only comes with a 1 amp power supply.
I just plugged in one of my OG-Tele cameras that happens to be sitting here at my desk. As you can see in the photo, it was drawing 0.19 amps (ignore the mAH number - I had not reset it from a previous measurement).
Thanks for the info. As you can see, I’m not an electrician and figured the simple math provided the correct information. Even so, my hopes for getting maybe 3 days use out the power bank didn’t work out.
