Wyze Outdoor Cam Battery Cell Balancing

“cell balancing battery management”?
Seldom (never?) found on inexpensive electronic devices.
The only cell balancing in my possession is in my electric car.

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Lithium batteries do not die that quickly. It comes down entirely to battery management. With good software control and cell balancing current lithium tech can withstand 500-1500 cycles. That’s years of use with these cameras. However if the cells become unbalanced with no way to correct for this it could shorten battery lifespan to much less due to damage from charging.

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I’m pretty sure this topic will die a quiet death as you know this isn’t anything even considered when making the WOC.

I’m clearly disappointed in the entire release of cheap over what the majority in the forums asked for.

It’s disposable at this point and I’m hoping to see an emergency post stating they will have alternative solutions to this disaster not disaster…cough

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This camera is far from a disaster and from an engineering standpoint I’m very surprised the starter pack is only $50 with features like remote storage and a base station with 300ft of range. There are a ton of cameras on the market that cost more. $40-$50 is a sweet spot that no other player is even close to.

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Agreed, people are judging before they have it in their hands. Wyze listens to their customers but they can’t satisfy everyones desires. The forum users are a small minority in their customer base.

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Just 1 or 2 years? The batteries are projected to last 3 to 6 months, so that’s only 2 to 4 charge/discharge cycles in an entire year. In 2 years, you say these batteries will be spent?

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We can agree to disagree but most reviews put this as a may not or should not buy for various reasons.

Global release of their product is that it’s an Outdoor cam never shown inverted hanging upside down in any review and if it’s constantly plugged in to 120v power it violates the warranty?

You can’t polish this into a shiny end all be all and appeal to whom? It’s an outdoor cam with severe limitations and invoking users from October - February ( winter ) to tackle a ladder potential twice in a day during obscene weather conditions in the Northwest America to complete their intentions.

Why is it always shown right side up? Put it in a waterfall upside down and show me the tests.

Float the camera down a river upside down and inverted in a raft and tell me it passes ( show me ) that it can survive a basic snorkeling adventure.

I’ll wait. Because Yi Outdoor Camera can do it. I’ve dine it and I expect this as minimum over can’t okace it outdoors with continuous power switching and be outdoor rated.

Dispute it.

It seems like you’ve misunderstood just about everything with this device…

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Then show me the parts in any video where it’s upside down and inverted video that passes tests? I’ll wait :confounded:

Inverted in water or not it does not matter, this is not an underwater camera and Wyze clearly shows this device is IP65 rated Ingress Protection Code. If you thought it was supposed to be mounted in a swimming pool the misunderstanding is entirely yours. This is off-topic and this thread is intended to discuss battery management.

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Apparantly, based on the information & videos released, it has appealed to almost 60k people :open_mouth:

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The topic is about battery balancing and life. The right algorithm will preserve the batteries indefinitely. Look at electric vehicles. The algorithms keep the battery pack between a specific range. When we see 100%, the battery is at approximately 80%. When we see 20%, it is around 40%. I am providing a generic scenario. The ranges keep the battery from actually going through a cycle. This is why a 5 year old vehicle has the same range as a new one, or a 10 year old vehicle.

This is also how the vehicles have a “limp mode” built in. I do not expect the WOC batteries to wear out, if properly moderated. We will see the software improved as well. Remember, Tesla will send out software updates during special circumstances to extend the range of their vehicles. This is just primarily moving the low range down significantly.

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Generally speaking charging control and cell balancing for Li-Ion comes with the cells; so assuming that Wyze didn’t feel like wasting money inventing the wheel, one would assume they just designed it as a package and just feed the battery/controller the required input.

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Without a continuous recording mode is there any advantage to this over a Blink camera that has a significantly longer battery life. I typically get over a full year of battery life in the Northeast. I replace the batteries every summer with my smoke detectors. I have tried getting 2 years but they fail when the temperature drops the second time around. Any real world data on how much battery life in cold temperatures would be great.

Hmm, so the Blink costs about 40 bucks more but uses user replaceable AA size lithiums? Hmm.

I already own the blink cameras and a bunch of Wyze version 2 cams but want to know about real world battery life since I don’t see any other benefits and 3 month battery life would be a deal breaker in my vacation home scenario.

I don’t have one and would just be guessing but would have to assume Wyze would want to at least match the market leader in this regard? Maybe not.

My impression is that the basic advantage of the WCO over a Blink XT2 is that you can also use the WCO as a GoPro or WiFi capable game camera. ( once you wrap it in camo tape of course :grinning: )

You can take it off grid to do scheduled recordings and time lapses, etc and view/control it from your phone.

So it’s sort of three different cameras for less than the price of one of the competition.

Not quite as good at any one function, but if you wanted to buy only one cam, or had limited funds, you could do more different things with it.

Agreed. For anyone doing long term remote security work, this is not the cam to get.

It seems more for the nature enthusiast who wants to move it around and film different things.

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I think I will keep waiting for an ideal camera. (24/7 recording, pir sensor, 1yr battery life) I currently use the Blink pir sensor to prevent false positive notifications and the Wyze cam for 24/7 recording. Both powered, first into the Wyze cam and then into Blink. There is only one area where a truly battery operated option is needed and the lack of battery life makes the Wyze cam no better than the outdoor Blink XT.
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With a couple of big battery packs and using intermittent snapshots (not continuous recording) you might be able to get close to a year?