I turned on the IR lights in my outdoor cam and the battery dropped 20% overnight. So I assume they stay on all the time when set to on. I was thinking they only came on when they sensed motion.
This makes them essentially useless on a battery powered device.
they shouldnt be staying on.
one way to test this is to get vastly out of range of the pir so you arent triggering it and look at the camera through your phone as if you were going to take a picture of the camera. in looking at IR through a camera you can see their signature much more clear if they are on.
test it on a V2 if you have one. take a picture of a v2 wth the nightvision IR on nd another with the IR night vision off…you will see what im talking about
for instance, i found this picture on the outerwebz. this guy appears to have IR leds on his hat…so looking through the camera you can see it as your phone would see t on the left vs as you would see it with your eye on the right.
this is one way to see if your IR leds are staying on.
How else are you using the camera? Live viewing? How many events did you get overnight? How cold was it outside?
Right. But this is what I’m saying. If I go outside and flip the switch in the app to use the IR lights is can visibly see them come on. Now, my expectation is the will go out after some brief period of time. But if I go out later and walk below the camera, out of its sensory range, I can see they are still on. By the next morning I’m down at least 20%. Normally I might be down 1%, so my assumption is they are staying on all night.
The bottom line is if I put that switch on the camera is dead within 24 hours, if switches off the camera’s good for at least 2 months. So something must be wrong, they couldn’t have designed it this way.
It just sitting there doing nothing, looking out into the darkness. You can’t really use these cameras for live viewing, it turns the battery too much, but that’s another issue. No, there were no recorded events the next morning, so nothing triggered it.
no it’s not designed that way.
can you put it in a different area and see if they are still saying on? the bad thing with PIR is that any moving heat signature can trigger it. for instance cars driving by will trigger my porch light ( also PIR) even though it SHOULD be out of it’s range.
if you were to put it in a different location and it is still doing it then I would say you8 might have a case for a replacement.
by chance how do you know you re indeed out of it’s sensory range when you are walking below it. the PIR on the cam is biased downward a little( it’s the reason this cam does not have the ability to use the camera upside down) that was why i suggested being far away and taking a picture of it as you will be able to see the IR’S clearly in the photo if they are on and you would definitely be out of the PIR range. even reflected heat can trigger a PIR
this quite odd though
Yep! Just wanted to rule that out here, glad you are aware of that. There have been occurances on here where folks report battery issues then it’s found out that they were live streaming to a tinycam or something similar.
The ir illuminators should only come in when the our detects an event, and when live viewing through the app.
so am I understanding that you were actually live viewing this and THAT is maybe what drained your battery. but you were under the assumption that the IR’S would be off ( even when viewing) until the PIR sensor was triggered?
please correct me if I am wrong there.
To add on to @Bam s last message. Even if you are in the WCOs settings, you are connected to the camera just like live streaming and using battery.
Ok, I’ve uploaded a file just to show how dark it is where the camera points to. I honestly have no idea what triggered this event. That being said I may get one or two events per night. So there isn’t much activity.
I’m at 72% right now, and it’s 8:30 in the morning. I’ll turn on the IR lights and see where I am tomorrow morning. My main question has been answered that the IR lights should not turn on unless motion is sensed. I will also assume they should not come on during the day when there is light.
I’ll report back in the morning.
Oh, these are my settings.
I’ve accidentally drained 20 percent falling asleep while live viewing. I’ll wake up and take a look what’s going on outside and one time I fell asleep while watching. The IR lights are visible when there on so no need to view them through your phone. After you close the live feed they go off after 5/10 seconds. Same with while recording. After the 12 second recording clip ends the IR lights go out 5/10 seconds later.
