Remote Power for Wyze Cam 2

I’m thinking up a way to use a solar panel to power a Wyze cam where I have no electric service. I read that a 20,000 mah rechargeable power supply will power the cam for 33 hours in SD. If I connect the cam to such a power supply and also connect a 24 watt cell phone charging solar panel to the power supply would that be sufficient for the cam to operate 24/7?

What I’m trying to do is monitor the area between the storage units in the photo. I have a spot where I can place the cam and power supply that is protected from the weather and I intend to place the solar panel on the roof. I keep the corner unit on the left structure for my own use which allows me those options.

I now have solar powered flood lights around the structures that work well but there is still a lock cutting thief operating between the two buildings out of view of my present cameras and I would love to get the thief on camera. Thanks

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Depends A LOT on how much sun you get - a big difference between Phoenix and Seattle!
If you are in a high sun area, a 24 watt panel would likely be enough, but not likely in Seattle. The camera draws about 2 watts without the IR illuminators and 4 watts with them on (search here will find some very detailed answers on consumption).
Clouds (as seen in your photo) will make a large difference. The screen capture below is the solar production from my house solar system for yesterday. The light blue part is total solar generation. It was cloudy until late morning as the chart makes obvious. In case anyone is curious, the peak was about 4700 watts.
Solar%20Power

A wind generator combined with a solar panel to charge your cells sounds like it could be what you need in this situation.

If they are fiberglass doors simply attach 120v AC hot leg to the metal lock hardware during the night, maybe put it on a on a timer, or use a photo cell to activate and deactivate the electricity, just like turning on a light after dark. They will not attempt to cut the locks off twice. If you are worried about liability then use a lower voltage AC through a step down transformer similar to an electric animal fence. Would not want to kill the poor sap. You could also put a flash trigger device using alarm contacts on the doors connected to a bright light at the end of the building up near the eve pointing toward the Wyze cam. Light turns on, center row overhead door is open. That would also send an alert through the Wyze cam. Personally, I like the idea of shocking the guy. Poetic justice I figure.

Hope this helps,

Thanx,

73’

Tuna

The structures are all steel, including the doors. I don’t want to invest in a wind generator if a $60 solar panel and $25 battery pack is all I need. I don’t get much wind here but the south Georgia sun does a great job on all my other solar powered devices. I’m also not looking forward to a liability law suit, I just want to get the lock cutter on video and let the Sheriff handle it from there. I did purchase a couple 32 gb memory chips for the two cameras that are now monitoring the storage units but I need to get closer and monitor the area between the structures. I got the person on video leaving the scene of a cut lock on the exposed side but the camera did not trigger when the car arrived. It was dark and the car lights made too much glare to identify the car. One thing that would help a lot is fixing the camera mixing bug but I get no response on that issue.

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What is this?

I get plenty of sun here is south Georgia. Photo is from a rainy day but my solar night lights on the front of the structure still get enough to shine all night even on such a day. Lights shine all night on dim and have an occasional 1 minute motion activated flood light mode. These lights have never failed to shine until morning light deactivates them. Solar panels on lights is rate 5v/3w and keep the 4,500 mAH battery charged. I think I will go ahead and order the solar panel and battery pack and I’ll post my results after a week or two. Thanks

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I have another message somewhere about the video taken on one camera will be associated with a different camera so I will have two of the same videos and no video from the camera associated with the wrong video. Unfortunately the best video of the thief did not get saved except for the thumbnail. I was told it was a bug with the earlier Wyze version I have but the latest bug fixed version is not compatible with my iPhone 5 running ios 10.3.3 and won’t install. I was told to submit a ticket which a did a couple weeks ago but so far no response.

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Ok, got ya. I’m hoping that gets resolved in the next few weeks when version 2.1 gets released. I have the same issue that I can’t install it on an iPad. running an older iOS.

I was told it only affected ios 9xx but I have 10.3.3 which is the latest for my phone.

More than one person with 10.3.3 has said the same thing. My iPad is 9.3.5, so that’s all I can see.

But I remember at least one other, but search isn’t helping me at the moment.

Yeah, the electrical shock portion was more tongue in cheek than an actual remedy. Can’t a girl dream? I also completely understand not wanting to spend excessive money on security systems if the Wyze Cam will do the job in the right location.

You might try one of the really small wind generators like for a sailboat, they are pretty inexpensive in comparison to a full fledged wind generator, and would almost certainly be enough to assist in charging a battery, enough for 1 small Wyze Cam to be powered along with a solar panel. I understand they also require a lot less wind to generate power.

And your name is wind_rocker!

ps. if whoever is doing this keeps returning to the scene of the crime (statistically most criminals do), and they are also driving right up in their car, they are not very smart. I have confidence you’ll eventually get them. It is only a matter of time.

73’

Tuna

So did anyone come up with a valid remote-off grid power-energy solution? The 10,000Ahr dimension is near meaningless unless you know the voltage to derive power-energy. Using the “2-4 watts” I came up with about 100Whr of energy (24hrs). At 5V to power the unit you need 20Ahr for 1 full day of ‘no sun’ conditions. To be conservative I plan to design 3 days of no sun so I’ll need 60Ahr at 5V.
The design will have 50W panel that will maintain the 300Whr of energy storage in a sun zone of about 4 (STC: 4 hours of effective solar irradiance per a day on average). So I expect performance to fall between 99.5 to 99.9 ‘up-time’ for the average year (vert remote possibility that sunshine will NOT be available for 3 days or longer).
Anyone interested in knowing what equipment set I’ll be using for this remote power Wyze cam?

Yes a parts list would be a grate help. Wyse is coming out with a solar panel for this use but who can wate on that.