‎Outdoor camera battery life is only 1 day — thoughts and ideas | SimpliSafe Help Center
 
blaircerny's profile

Saturday, July 23rd, 2022 4:44 PM

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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!​

Community Admin

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218 Messages

8 months 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

4 Messages

@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!

Community Admin

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4.3K Messages

@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.

4 Messages

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!

4 Messages

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.

4 Messages

@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!

4 Messages

6 months ago

Ditto!

Community Admin

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4.3K Messages

@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.

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