Camera with solar panel charging - a sleeping mode
Sometimes, e.g. due to bad weather for a number of days, the battery may run out. When there is more sun light, the charging by the solar panel can be quite slow. I would like to suggest a sleeping mode: The camera does nothing but maintain Wi-Fi connection and waiting for wake-up by the user. This should minimise battery consumption and allow faster charging. I have tried to turn off recording and detections, but the charging can hardly get to 100%. I guess the camera OS is still consuming power. A sleeping mode may help.
Even during the sleeping mode, the camera should not check Wi-Fi availability frequently (in case it is down) to ensure the camera operating system is really idle.
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Tapo battery-powered camera stays in sleep mode mostly to conserve battery, until it is being woken up and starts operating. If the camera isn’t used frequently, it should be fine even if it hasn’t been charged for several days or even a week or two.
If you’re noticing any unusual power consumption with your camera, you can check this guide for troubleshooting tips. What to do if the battery drains quickly on my Tapo battery-powered camera/doorbell?
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Tapo battery-powered camera stays in sleep mode mostly to conserve battery, until it is being woken up and starts operating. If the camera isn’t used frequently, it should be fine even if it hasn’t been charged for several days or even a week or two.
If you’re noticing any unusual power consumption with your camera, you can check this guide for troubleshooting tips. What to do if the battery drains quickly on my Tapo battery-powered camera/doorbell?
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Thanks for the information.
Maybe I should call my suggested sleeping mode "Deep Sleep Mode". that is, even without any detection (PIR or AI). This is to ensure a minimum of power consumption.
The reason I would like to minimise power consumption is about battery charging speed. For the first time use, I charged the C410 battery to 100% using an USB charger. But now, after two days of solar panel charging, the camera stays at 95% of battery (I switched of the camera in order to speed up the charging). Is this caused by the panel or the battery?
I have not installed the camera. Once it is installed, it won't be handy to switch it off. In this case, speeding up battery charging (while keeping battery usage to a minimum) will make more sense.
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This situation is likely due to insufficient sunlight. When the camera's battery is almost full, the charging power decreases because of the battery protection mechanism. In this state, continuous and strong sunlight is required to fully charged the camera.
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Indeed, I did not place the solar panel at a location fully exposed to sun light.
If the battery has a protection mechanism that stops charging at certain percentage, any further charging won't work, regardless of how strong the sun light is.
The last leg of battery charging might require stronger charging current, but the solar panel was unable to produce? I am guessing.
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The solar panel can fully charge the camera but continuous and strong sunlight is required. If the camera operates at the same time, then it will take longer time to fully charge the camera.
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