Warning: Utility Outages causes Camera Settings to change

Cameras
1

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 could tell this happened because 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. Or drop the little power pack and go with a back-up DC power supply.

2

Anything that uses electricity could suffer damage or other odd things if power was cycled quickly or if there are brownouts.

So yes, anything that can suffer from these kind of outages needs a UPS.

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3

I power cycle my cams all the time. Almost all of them are plugged in to a smart outlet that makes power cycling them easier. I’ve never had a setting change from this.
I agree using a surge protector is smart. Using a UPS is better. But saying power cycling your camera will cause your camera settings to change… I’m not a believer

4

I tried to describe the condition of the power lines when the resetter is cycling. The voltage is not just a 60 cycle sine wave, it is more like a high frequency high energy burst. For most northern climate locations each winter storm causes a lot of outages. The last storm caused over 85,000 PSE customers to loose electrical power in Washington State. We did not loose power but we did have about a dozen of these “power bumps”.

Thanks for the reply,

5

Rapid power cycling can indeed do strange things to anything that is plugged in.

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6

Or at worse a surge protector. One of the benefits to POE is how much easier a centralized UPS can be installed ($$$ though).

7

As @ShadowCam stated, rapid fluctuations in power, either full lose or brown outs, can cause significant damage to any electronic devices unfortunately. Surge protection can help and UPS is a better solution but both of those are likely unreasonable costs for the cost of these cameras. I would certainly be frustrated if that was me. Living in New England we suffer a bunch of winter related damage every year including last year and didn’t experience this particular problem.