Instead of the Outdoor Cam, I am wondering if I could I run an electrical wire with the USB power roughly 75’ to a Wyze Cam v3? I believe a low voltage system only needs to be buried 6", would the voltage for supplied from a USB brick be considered “low voltage”?
thanks in advance
Yes, it is low voltage. However, it is unlikely that the camera would work at the end of 75 feet of wire - too much voltage drop. What you could do is run 12 to 24 out the cable and locally regulate the voltage down to 5 volts for the camera somewhere near the camera. There are adapters and regulators available on Amazon to do that.
thank you!
Well answered above.
FYI even 20-30 feet is iffy for some of us with long USB cables. You wouldn’t have a chance at 75. (Of course if you used a copper pipe as thick as a telephone pole…)
I should be able to shorten the run. I’m looking at " Cat6 Outdoor Ethernet Cable 50feet,(available in lengths of 25ft to 250ft),Waterproof and Direct Burial,Heavy Duty,RJ45 LAN Wire Ether Cable UTP,High Speed Network, UV Resistant PE Jacket " for the wire. It has more wires than I need but I’m thinking that the additional wires may come in handle if any of those wires fail. I would use an adapter to USB on either end.
How dangerous is 5v 1A running underground, compared to a low voltage lighting system, is this less of a worry? Should I be using a 16/2 underground low voltage wire or would this create too much resistance?
thanks again,
That should be fine if you go the 24V route but it won’t get you much past 20 feet if you use 5V.
As to danger I don’t think so but I am not an electrician or engineer.
First, you probably can test the run before you bury it. Lay the cable out that you intend to use and see if it works.
Then since you are going to dig s narrow trench anyway, I would get some 1/2 or 3/4 PVC pipe and slide the ends together without glue and run the cable through it. Would be easier to rescue or swap one out later if need be. And if possible run two separate since wire it cheap and a length of nylon cordage in case you need to pull something through later without digging it up. Funny thing, do all this prep/prevention work and you will never need it.
I use 50ft usb cables for 4 of my outdoor v3 cameras with zero issues. Two of them are buried in pvc pipes a few inches underground. No problems so far
Thanks again, the project is growing. I may need to take another look at the outdoor cam before jumping in.
Build your own weatherproof setup and run long cables to camera too…
The power Supply mounts indoors but the cable to camera can be longer as the 5 volts is regulated at the camera.
I have ran over 180 feet of 2 conductor cable to camera with this setup, use low voltage lighting wiring it can be buried, it is weatherproof and UV resistant.
Connect the 12v to 5v micro-USB regulator adapter to cable matching polarity ( +red -black ) along cable where a camera is needed if more than 2 cameras just get a 12 volt adapter with more current (Amps) The Adapter regulator is weatherproof except the micro-USB itself but the boot on the V3 takes care of that.
nice setup! thank you for the links and the graphic.
What would stop you from just using a Power over Ethernet adapter with a micro-usb adapter (something like Amazon.com ) then just using a direct bury Ethernet cable to connect to it, you would obviously need a poe switch or poe injector to send the power across the Ethernet for this …
Then, just use some waterproofing material to protect the Poe adapter outside.
I think that if I was going to to do this, that’s probably the route that I’d go rather than engineering my own solution… Since POE should be reliable up to 100 meters.
Would actually be nice if there was a v3 model that would be able to connected with PoE Ethernet honestly. It could easily have a RJ45 female dongle that we could connect to and weatherproof. Would be really useful for remote usage around a property where power and wifi may not be available.
Agreed, the obvious way to go if Cat5/6 has already been chosen. Should have mentioned it.
Supposedly PoE for the V3 is coming soon. I think some have already tried it.
I would advise against this. A couple years ago I buried a cat5 cable inside a conduit from my house to a garage/shop that was 65 feet away attached to a PC. Periodically I would loose a port on my router. After replacing three routers I remembered that in the 1990s while working as a computer networking engineer we had two buildings linked together and would have same problem. We solved it by connecting the building via buried fiber optic cable. Seems lightning strikes nearby was causing high voltage via the copper cable and blowing out routers, hubs, and even PC network cards.
I would say that it’s more likely that you were experiencing an issue from a mismatched ground plane between the buildings than lightning strikes (unless the cat 5 was melted everytime that one of the ports failed.
Basically… Yes, a copper connection can be tricky between buildings if they don’t share a common ground point when you’re connecting active devices (the pc to the router in your case). The reason for this is that if the ground for the pc was a few volts different than the ground that the router was using, you’re basically back feeding a few volts AC through the reference ground.
In this case, outside of lightning strikes, the remote end is essentially an equipotential device (it’s getting it’s power purely from the source end). I’m the case of lightning strikes, you could look at getting a POE surge protector from Polyphaser which would solve that problem, as long as it’s actually grounded… I’ve seen far too many of these types of devices be installed but never grounded which renders them mostly useless.
While I understand what you’re trying to do, (I mounted a V3 outside in a gazebo to watch my cats while they were in it), it seems like a lot of effort and expense (building a power supply etc.) to a problem that already has a solution.
The run to the V3 was a flat 25’ USB cable. But like you I wanted 50 ft. plus to be able to capture the wildlife in the woods along the back of my yard. I mounted a WYZE Outdoor unit nearly 100’ away along the tree line nearly 4 months ago and LOVE the results.
The specs claim the battery lasts “3-6 months based on normal usage”. I’ve recharged it once when it was down to 20% 2 weeks ago after multiple captures each night. I recently installed another unit closer to the house to capture what is keeping my cats up all night (fox, rabbits, a neighbor’s cat…).
I recommend “cutting the cord” and getting a WYZE Outdoor.
In the end that is what I concluded and am very happy with the Outdoor Cam!
Surprizingly, the voltage drop is not too great if you use a greater wire gauge. I have successfully installed a Wyzecam v3 using 100 feet of 16 gauge direct burial landscape lighting wiring (using a +5 volt power supply and an adaptor to the needed MicroUSB connector on the cam). The camera draws between 1.4-1.7 watts, and the voltage at the camera end of the line was 4.6 volts. This was a very inexpensive way to reliably provide the needed power to the remote location. Has been working well.
Hmm that’s regular 16 AWG extension cord gauge. Interesting.
