Outdoor camera battery life is only 1 day — thoughts and ideas

@alexandria_c​ Thank you! I appreciate your input and guidance very much.

I've spoken with support a couple of times and some of the settings changes I've made are resultant to those conversations. They've also replaced the camera once already when it just suddenly stopped working altogether.

I will continue to adjust whatever settings I can but hardwiring is not an option at this location right now. In the future perhaps yes but for now I just can't make it work. And if you'll forgive me, I don't think I should have to hardwire it; the system is designed to be wireless and my circumstances are not unique or even unusual — I live in a small house that faces a normal city street and I only have one camera in place.

Again, thank you so much — I'm a SimpliSafe proselytizer and devotee and will continue to be such, no matter how long this takes!

@blaircerny , you bring up some great points. Our 3-6 month estimate is with the People Only Setting, so naturally you'd get much less if you have yours set to All Motion. But even then, just a single day of battery life is extremely low!

One interesting thing to note after I re-read your post: the All Motion setting switches the camera to infrared only; it looks out for heat-generating objects in contrast to the rest of the environment. So trees and leaves moving around shouldn't be triggering the camera all that much! So whatever is causing this extreme battery drain is something else.

I'm going to go ahead and request a call from our lab team. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of it.

Thank you, @davey_d I appreciate you jumping in and helping me here, and also for requesting a call from the Lab Team — I've received a call and email from them and I'm working with them on the problem now.

This is yet more great service from SimpliSafe, thank you so much!

I changed settings since I first installed but it is a hassle getting on a ladder every week…I can’t do it more often.But this is the worst piece of equipment I have ever paid for. I have contacted customer care numerous times and I know it’s not camera but battery. This is frustrating and not in best interest not to be able to change battery as frequently as it depletes. It’s very exhausting to bring it up again.

@asnowing My problem was eventually solved when I installed the solar panel accessory — now my battery lasts several weeks, depending on the weather. I don't know if this will change come winter, when the sun tracks a slightly different path across the sky because of the time change, but for now it's great. I don't know if this will solve your problem but at least it's another piece of data for you.

Unfortunately, even though the problem was eventually solved, I'm disappointed in the specialist/team to which I was assigned during the process. The person with whom I spoke told me that they would monitor my camera's diagnostics, help me make settings adjustments, and would be available to me whenever I had questions. This lasted about a week and then the person ghosted me. Just ... totally stopped answering my comms. We had a couple of phone conversations and a couple of emails during which I felt like my problem was being treated with urgency, and then ... nothing. I've sent many follow up emails to try to gauge if I made some mistake or if I was under a false impression but I get nothing but crickets.

Regardless, I've been able to get through the problem so at least there's that.

I hope that helps!

@asnowing​ how similar is your situation to the original poster? And what settings do you have active?

Even with extremely high activity though, your Outdoor Camera should be lasting more than just a day. I am curious - what firmware is currently installed on your camera? You can find out by navigating in the app to Menu > My System > Camera Settings > [your camera] > Basic Info.

The latest is 1.7, but 1.6 actually contained a fix for a known issue that severely impacted battery life. I wonder if your camera has been able to update to either of those versions.

@kengrimmett​ Our engineers are working on updates to improve the lifespan of the Outdoor Camera’s battery, but your battery should last longer than one day; especially with People Only mode turned on and the number of motion events the camera receives. I’ve forwarded your case to our engineers to look into - someone may reach out to you to further their investigation. 

In the meantime, I would set up the Solar Panel that our Support team is sending you. It was designed to keep the Outdoor Camera’s battery topped off, so it should be a good solution to keep a charge on the camera’s battery.

@kengrimmett​ I was sent a new camera and 25' cord to plug in because my original camera and power cord connection became funky and corroded where the cord plugs into the camera.  My camera didn't always charge and would only charge to about 14%.  Then, it finally stopped charging at all.  The corrosion was causing the problem.  It's really a silly (stupid?) design because the cord plugs in at the top of the camera and will eventually corrode with rain.  I put a blob of putty-type substance on the replacement camera's electrical connection so that rain will not get into the electrical connection and then cause problems.

@buffjag​ If your camera's battery is draining with so few motion events a day, we may need to replace the battery or the camera all together. Our Support team can help you with that.

I am having the same issue with my batteries only lasting a day especially in high busy areas. The best security cameras for the money and is wireless with rechargeable batteries is the Arlo. I have these cameras at my second residence and the battery life lasts several months and I have several cameras in high traffic areas. I will be changing my Simplisafe cameras out for the Arlo system at my residence. Maybe in a few years Simplisafe will be up to par with other wireless cameras capabilities. 

@angicallahan​ I am sorry to hear that your camera's battery doesn't last that long. While facing a high-traffic area can impact its battery life, there are settings you can enable to prevent it from draining: like People Only detection and Activity Zones. If you'd like to learn more about these settings, we discuss them further in this Help Center article.

@kram1956​ Have you already tried contacting our Support team about this? I would just want to rule out any potential hardware issues, since your camera receives so few motion alerts a day.

I did contact support and we basically un-installed & cleared the cache and reinstalled. That seems to have fixed the problem. It's been about 3 weeks and we've used about 10% of the battery. That's back to about where we were originally.

I have been doing some yard work around that area, so usage is a little above average. 

My next problem is, I keep getting notifications when a cat or something walks across the porch. I tried to adjust for the problem but it does the same even with sensitivity turned on low. I can live with that one. 

@kram1956​ Do you have any Activity Zones set up on this camera? By enabling Activity Zones, you can block off your porch so it ignores any motion in that area. This can be done in the SimpliSafe mobile app if you go to Cameras > tap the gear icon in the top right corner > select [your camera] > Motion Detection > Activity Zones.

@dlpsr​ I have read the suggestions.  Swapped batteries to no avail.  Today I completely removed the camera from my system, reset it and reinstalled it.  I kept checking it all day and the battery stayed at 100% until it died after 13 hours.  I checked the history and it only recorded 3 videos, all for less than 60 seconds, the last was 2 hours before it died.  Heck, I even turned off notifications and the status light.  Any other suggestions and I will listen.

@rrr​ If the camera's battery died after it only recorded 3 motion events, we may need to replace that camera all together. If you haven't already, I would recommend connecting with our Support team for additional assistance.