4 Messages
Outdoor camera battery life is only 1 day — thoughts and ideas
My SimpliSafe outdoor camera runs through batteries one a day. I bought a solar panel which I'll install this weekend but in the meantime I wanted to recommend that you buy at least one extra battery if your situation is like mine...
The front of my house faces a busy street, and there's a sidewalk tree there which blows in the wind — as such, my outdoor camera is recording pretty much 24/7. I don't mind having this level of record, but swapping batteries out every single day sucks.
I tried setting the sensitivity to medium but that causes it to miss big, easy things like cars coming and going. (At medium sensitivity I will see my neighbor's car there in one recording and then it's gone in the next, with no recording of it leaving.) I don't want to change it to the "people only" setting because there are other things going on which I want to record. I've adjusted a couple of the motion zones but that doesn't do much because of the aforementioned tree blowing in the wind.
I am NOT happy about needing to use this solar panel, but it's better than swapping batteries one a day. At this point, there are huge chunks of time for which I'm getting no recordings because it will do a critical battery shutdown in the middle of the night, and I'm constantly wondering whether or not it will catch something I need to see.
If you have any thoughts to add here, thank you!
And if I've given you anything useful, you're welcome!
alexandria_c
Community Admin
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236 Messages
1 year ago
Hi @blaircerny,
The battery in the Outdoor Camera is designed to last up to 3-6 months. I certainly understand the concern here when your battery is lasting only a day. One note, the Solar Panel was designed to top off the battery from what it uses within a day. In this instance, it may not keep your battery fully charged day to day. If possible, it sounds like your unit could benefit from being permanently wired into power with the cable provided. Is that something that can be done at this location?
If not, it may be best for you to speak with our Support Team. They can review the camera settings with you and make sure it's configured correctly, and additionally get a replacement camera your way in the event that one is needed. You can contact them with the details here.
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asnowing
4 Messages
1 year ago
Ditto!
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kengrimmett
1 Message
4 months ago
@davey_d I am having this same issue with my battery only lasting a day. Support is sending me a solar panel, but I am still concerned this will not be enough. We do not have much traffic, at the most I get a notification 9 times a day, but it's usually only around 4. The settings are set to people only and firmware is v1.16.9.778. I'm using a 24 watt, 5v 24A usb power adaptor for charging. With a brand new battery, the most it ever lasted was 6 days. I believe there is an issue with the battery itself or the charging mechanism. There is no officially designated charging mechanism offered by SS. I don't know anyone with this system that uses batteries that get 3-6 months of use. Please help us resolve this issue.
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bijoythomas
1 Message
4 months ago
Even I do have the same issue on my new camera which I bought on memorial day. Initially I’ve connected the camera to the base station to make sure everything works fine and didn’t install the camera on the designated target spot. My camera was sitting idle near to the base station for almost 4 days and didn’t see the battery draining issue. I was waiting for a corner mount to install the same on my garage and finally I installed the camera on garage and started seeing the battery issue. I need to remove battery every 3rd day and charge it. I’ve deleted re-added and enabled all above mentioned settings to see whether it improves or not and unfortunately I didn’t see any improvement on battery life. Now I’ve ordered 25ft cable to enable wired connection to workaround this.
0
buffjag
3 Messages
11 days ago
Having very similar issue with battery not lasting. Camera is only 3 months old. Re-charged for first time and now it will not hold a charge more than a day. Not much traffic on my street and when working, I only got two notifications per day so that is not draining it. After the re-charge, I had to call support as when I put the battery back in, I could not get it to reconnect to network/system while standing right by wireless router and base station.
First issue had with this camera was the magnetic holder was faulty and camera would be pointing straight down at the end of each day. New mount was sent to me.
Seems yet another call to support is needed. I have had more issues with this outdoor camera in three months than I have had with all other devices on my network in three years.
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