Outdoor battery dead in 20 days

Just putting it out there. After charging to 100% my battery died after 20 days. Just a tad shy of the 3 to 6 month mark. Buyer beware.

I searched for keywords “outdoor” and “battery” on the forum before posting but the threads I saw were 16 days old. Thought I’d toss out an updated result. Sorry if my due diligence is lacking.

here is a troubleshot thread on battery life. Battery life is directly correlated to usage, pls refer to the thread for details. Pls feel free to post or contact support if the battery life is abnormal after reading through the thread.

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Maybe I missed the information on the original spec sheet of the camera but it would have been handy to know that before I purchased it. I assumed that the 3 month part of the 3-6 month would have been in regards to heavy usage. Not a few weeks. Not to mention not knowing that it didn’t constantly record. All of this was new to me as of the camera arriving.

edit… you know, like i missed not having google assistant work with the wyze lock as it was advertised.

I suspect battery life is quoted in quiescent conditions (it contacts you), and is much less if you actively monitor the live feed.

Sure. Just like the gas in your car lasts longer if you don’t drive it. But how is not using something normal activity? Great that I might get months of battery if I don’t use the device or purely use it for motion detection, woo hoo! But maybe the specs on the website should say something more truthful. How about “up to a month with regular usage”.

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This is my public apology. I will try harder to see the fine print in the future.

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I Appreciate your candor.

With that being said. The fine print says nothing about live streaming having such a big impact on battery.

How many events are you getting over the life of your battery? Roughly 1100 events consumes around 85% of the battery for me.

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Wow, thanks! Interesting metic!

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I also got around 20 days and that’s with an average of one event a day! Yes, one! I drive by it numerous times a day but my SUV must be too small for the motion sensor to pick up. This camera is one big disappointment.

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if you are having detection issues, please refer to below troubleshooting guide. One other thing to check is the signal strength. If it is far and signal is weak, suggest change the resolution to 360p.

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My battery died in 4 days outside. 20 would have been great! I tested indoors for about a month in a high traffic (high motion/notification) area and the battery life was solid. Had about 50% battery after a month. Then moved outdoors at just slightly further distance from the base and boom battery zapped to almost zero from a full charge in 3-4 days. It has a signal and stays connected, but for some reason the draw on the battery increased incredibly.

let me start this by saying, i have no idea whats going on with your cam. However there are 2 things i can think of that might be contributing to this. 1) heat! how hot is it where your camera is? getting hot is really hard on batteries. 2) Signal strength. it might sound strange but if a wifi device has a very weak signal they tend to try and try and try to connect. This causes them to use much more power than if they had a stronger signal.

and just one more, but this is unlikely to be the cause. Have you made any changes to your internal network? I use a Pihole server for ad blocking in my house. This doesn’t seam to have an affect on my Wyze products, but with other devices they really want ads and will continuously attempt to download them causing a MASSIVE drain on battery (Thanks Microsoft). Again i doubt this is it, but is anything on your network attempting to block traffic?

I’m also really struggling with battery life (about 3 weeks per charge). I don’t get many detections per day and I’m not live streaming. Maybe I’m too far away from the base station but I’m really not that far. I haven’t installed it where I want to yet because I don’t want to drag the ladder out every three weeks to recharge.

Any statistics Accross all users on how long the battery should last under minimal detection scenarios?

Maybe I just have a faulty unit? Maybe it’s a problem
On my end?

How many detections do you have on a daily basis ?

Are you connected to Google/or Tinycam ?

Hi. Maybe 4 or 5 a day. And no not connected to anything other than Wyze base.

I am experiencing similar very short battery life…and most of my use has been inside in 70 F or less air conditioned space, I was anxious to install it outside, but after seeing battery life drain about 20% in 3 days of very light indoor use, I knew there was NO WAY the battery would last as long as your marketing claimed. And I didn’t want the hassle of having to take down an outdoor camera MONTHLY to charge it! So it’s been relegated to being a project camera to record progress on projects in the garage or in the yard on a temporary basis…like I would use a go pro. I’m very disappointed in this camera after the wait. And it sounds a little like Steve Jobs old “you’re holding it wrong” excuse, blaming the end user.

@itbedave

Have you tried troubleshooting the battery life in the thread I linked below. An employee from WYZE has been helping troubleshoot the issues. The battery definitely should not be draining that fast.

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Hi Jason. I hadn’t seen this trouble shooting post but I am compliant with all of this. The camera has been fully charged with the supplied cables twice now, it’s in a low traffic low heat area, it should be plenty close to the base, I’m not live streaming or anything else crazy. Maybe I just have a bad battery? Happy to try other things to figure it out but right now this isn’t useful and I can’t purchase the rest of them for the outside of my house if I can’t get this one to work properly. Open to additional suggestions. Is most everyone else having good experiences with battery life?