(As opposed to battery-based, with their chemistries, e.g., lithium-ion, lead-acid, nickel-cadmium, and their issues.)
I’m in a rural area, with frequent power glitches of a few seconds each. My camera is recording to an SD card continuously, so I’d like to avoid the camera losing power, to avoid data corruption.
I do have a sine-wave UPS for my computer equipment, but feel buying one for a camera would be overkill.
It is only going to give you a matter of seconds of backup power, so really only helpful as a buffer of sorts if you have frequent short blips.
Several here have used USB battery banks (need one with pass through charging and no drop when it loses power in order to have truly uninterrupted power. Can be hit or miss with different ones whether the cam reboots or not. Running in this way will typically significantly reduce the battery lifespan of the power bank too but they’re not terribly expensive.
During power failure, dual capacitors offer about 15–110 seconds backup time (depends on load and charge level), giving your device time for data saving and controlled shutdown.
That would cover the greater percentage of power outages I experience.
And with no battery chemistry problems diminishing the life of the product.
I haven’t used any capacitors. However, I’m using a Voltaic Systems USB Battery pack for my smart home hub. I choose it as it’s truly always on, so if power goes out my smart home hub / alarm is still functioning and never goes down. My V50 battery pack runs my hub for over a day without power. They have smaller and larger models as well though. Might be worth a look?
Though do note, Voltaic recommends running the battery packs down at least once every so many months (they have a spec on it in the manual). I just have my hub set to run the battery down automatically once a month, and reconnect power automatically.
A related question, after reading other alternate 5V UPS solutions on the Wyze forums, is if the provided adapter would be sufficient to re-charge the supercapacitor-based unit.
(I also think that Wyze, from the warranty standpoint, wouldn’t like the combination of a non-Wyze adapter hooked up to a non-Wyze UPS equivalent device to their camera.)
The point I want to remind people is my goal in avoiding a battery-based solution is that supercapacitors don’t wear out like batteries do from charge/discharge cycles. The capacitors might last 20 years.
Supercapacitors wear like anything else and cycles are the primary reason they wear (other than running them outside of their limits). They also take a long time to reach full charge, spec is usually 100 hours and even then they’re at like 9x% charge. They do charge up to around 50% pretty quickly though.
The included USB adapter will charge it fine, but if you’re trying to both power the camera and charge the caps, you’d likely want something beefier. I wouldn’t mention it during any warranty claims. They have no way of knowing.
Given the price of that unit, the fact that it will only protect you for a very short period of time, then need a long recharge time before protecting again, I think the pass through USB batteries are a much better and cheaper solution. Modern lithium batteries can last 1000+ cycles, though it will rely heavily on the BMS used in the unit, if it is constantly drawing from and charging the batteries all day every day, obviously that’s going to reduce the lifespan.
Anyway, what I was hoping for was some firsthand accounts of using supercapacitor-based mini-UPSs.
There are holes in the walls between the rooms that I ran an Ethernet cable through, before the Wi-Fi era started, that I could run an electric extension cord through from my real UPS, to plug the Wyze adapter into.
Then the camera would have the same backup power router the modem and router get.
That’s probably the sensible solution since you have the UPS anyway. I have power running from my main UPS (where most of my gear is) to my fiber ONT which is in a different part of the house. I never bothered with the cams since my power is pretty reliable and I’m not that concerned if they go down for a while.
You may want to look at the POE options that are available - run a POE switch or multi port PoE injector at the UPS then run ethernet to each cam, then use a POE to USB adapter on the cam side. Just seems somewhat safer and probably cosmetically nicer than running extension cords. Several here are doing that (well not sure if they’re using UPS power but same idea).
By the time I ran POE to every camera I would run different cameras. You’ll likely have a bit higher initial investment, but you would likely ditch the subscription fees and such.
I had posted a thread at one point about a fairly cheap set from Ubiquiti (an injector combined with a PoE to USB adapter that can run two cams off a splitter) but I believe @carverofchoice and others have used less expensive and multiport ones off amazon - I’ll let him comment and/or you can search for “POE” and specify his user name to see past threads.
The most important thing is to make sure whatever inserts your power is compatible with the adapter that converts it to USB. There is 24v Passive (rare), 48v passive (pretty common) and then the smart/active POE, POE+, and a couple kinds of POE++.
I assume most of the cheap ones are probably using the 48V passive just need to make sure both ends match. You can run hundreds of feet over CATx (even old CAT5) cable and have it output nice stable 5V USB.
I love the idea of a supercapacitor-based UPS for cameras. I haven’t tried any yet due to the cost, but I like the idea in general because as was mentioned other battery types that do pass through power for real UPS End up dying and wearing out so fast. I’ve got several dead UPS units from the battery just giving out even though they almost never got used.
Personally, I love this idea, but instead of running a power cord through there, I would just add ethernet again and as was mentioned do PoE connecting the camera back to an adapter that is connected to the same UPS as other devices. That would be my primary recommendation because Ethernet is small and easier to conceal running electrical power such as through extension cables or something. And ethernet cables are a lot more safe for doing something like this especially for something like a smart camera that doesn’t really need very much power. It will also future proof your home if you end up switching away from Wyze to want something more local and private some day. There are little adapters you can buy that well. Convert ethernet input into a micro USB or USBC connection for power to the camera.
I know @spamoni has personally done this Wyze cameras (used adapters for converting ethernet to micro USB for his Wyze cameras to run). Then if the PoE injector is connect it up to the same outlets as your existing UPS, you can just use that. Keeping it centralized like that will save you a lot of money since you’re already using a UPS for some of your other hardware. I think that’s the way to go. But if you are going to get a lot of separate systems than you could absolutely do this capacitor solution. It’s just a relatively expensive solution that basically costs as much or more than a lot of the cameras themselves, which is kind of ironic to buy a separate one for each camera that you want to stay on.
I have known some people who get these little miniature UPS devices off of like AliExpress that Have one side with a usba connection and the other side with either micro USB or USBC that you plug into the camera and in the middle is a little enclosed battery in the middle of the cord. Those can sometimes provide power for more than an hour and last I checked, people were getting then for $5-$10 each, shipped. That’s what I’m used to seeing a lot of people get for individual camera UPS. Mostly because it’s very affordable and even if you have to replace the battery sometimes you can go through several of them for the same cost as an individual super capacitor backup would cost.
I do have a free critical cameras on backup power but not using capacitors since they are more costly. So if anyone tries One, please let us know your experience.
Sorry I knew it was either you or @spamoni, I guessed wrong
I still run an old school SLA UPS (a good quality APC Smart UPS true sine wave) and my batteries last 5-6 years usually. I replace them with good fresh CSB batteries rather than using the overpriced APC replacements (which are just CSB with an APC label and usually old stock). The lithium UPSes are looking promising. I got a family member one of the newest ecoflows that has <10msec failover which is UPS quality, plus plenty of reserve for charging phones etc during power outages, which are common where they are. For them it is perfect but it lacks some of the features I would want for a PC/network UPS. Then there are the Goldenmate brand UPSes, but I have no experience with them. Seem to be very popular on Amazon and prices are reasonable.
If done correctly, a USB power bank could be designed for pass through power with the batteries in a “line interactive” mode where they aren’t constantly charging and draining. But since power banks aren’t really designed for that type of use, I’m guessing one like that either doesn’t exist, or is pretty expensive.
I use supercapacitors for a lot of things, they’re good for replacing little batteries that are just there to keep a clock synched or settings saved, on a device that is usually plugged in. A relatively small one can last several months, but that’s with a very tiny power draw. Maybe if they were like $10 it would be worthwhile to help protect the cams/SD cards from short outages or brownouts, but yeah, $40 to $50 is steep.
Newer dashcams use them too, gives them the 5 seconds of power they need to write that last file, and not susceptible to heat and vibration like the little LiPo batteries that many (like mine) have.
Supercapacitors are sort of the opposite of regular capacitors. They can discharge slowly for a long time, whereas a regular one can discharge a very high rate instantly (which is why you don’t screw around in old tube TVs), but they self discharge reasonably fast when no power is applied. Decades ago when I was into car stereo I had 6x 1 Farad caps in parallel. Those ones generally wouldn’t hurt you unless your hands were moist and you touched the terminals (or shorted them with something metal) but the high voltage caps are nasty.
The other limitation with supercapacitors is that they charge to around 50% pretty quickly then slow down exponentially, so if you want it to be used often, you have to get one double the size you actually need so it is always ready. They’re typically limited to 3.3 volts too so have to run a couple in parallel to get 5V.
Couple months ago I picked up a Jackery 500 V2 that does exactly that for C$299 on Amazon. It was something like 40% off. I was looking for a UPS that will give me more than few minutes of run time. This thing runs my Mac Mini with two 27 inch 4K monitors, two external hard drives one being SSD and the other 5400 RPM HD. Also powers my gateway, router ad a ten port switch for roughly 4.5 hours without going below 20% battery capacity.
Yup those (and the Ecoflow and similar) all have a UPS mode running in line-interactive. I was referring more to the cheap portable charging units that some people have been using as a UPS of sorts for their cams. The ones of those that support pass through charging are generally charging the battery and the battery is then passing out the power, which will definitely decrease the lifespan of the batteries.
The “power stations” like yours and the Ecoflow I got a family member are really nice, a ton of capacity especially considering the size. Just not really economical to put one with each cam. There are only a few that support true UPS <10msec failover but most support <20 and that’s generally good enough for most stuff. The Ecoflow River 2 Plus has the <10msec and optional expansion batteries. The unit itself can be gotten cheap refurbished direct from them, the expansion batteries are a bit pricey though.
I still think they have a little way to go before replacing conventional UPSes (their PC software isn’t really great yet and there have been some complaints about reliability) but they’ve come a long way.
I think they’re saying they’d just get wired cameras rather than doing POE to these. But a wired system is a much larger investment (but usually you get all the features without ongoing subscription costs). Of course, if you truly want a security camera system, wired (both power and data) is definitely the way to go. But for most it is probably overkill.
It doesn’t. I said “ditch”. It’s because most POE cameras don’t have subscription fees, as their videos are store locally. So you wouldn’t have a reoccurring Wyze subscription for example, if you have POE Unifi cameras for example. They have a higher upfront cost, but they do not have the re-occurring yearly cost.
That being said, nothing lasts forever, so there are maintenance costs, and replacement costs.
Mine comes with no app and the switch over is <10 ms, does not affect my gear at all. Just the other day the transformer blew on the pole at the cottage, the power transfer was immediate. It took the crew 1.75 hours to fix it. Glad I bought the unit as I was in a middle of a time sensitive project.
You can always use a power bar and feed multiple cams that way. They’ll run forever .
Today I saw a Reolink NVR kit with four 4K cameras at Costco for around C$350, I was so tempted but the wife threatened me with a divorce, so I backed off
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