Amcrest Battery Operated Outdoor Camera

[sydney]

Revo2Maxx:

Thanks for testing and sharing your feedbacks.

The battery shouldn't drop from 100% to 94% over a 24 hour period. This is really bad! Though I don't know the condition of your camera & battery. Either the battery isn't holding charge or something in your camera that is consuming too much energy. I notice there's a small green light on the front which is always lid. It makes more sense
to light up red when the battery is low. It doesn't need to be "ON" and green when it's powered. It's basically useless
and draws power. You can always check the app. That's my 2 cents on this light.

My other Amcrest cameras are either PoE and hard wired. This is the first I bought an Amcrest battery operated since it's for a very low traffic area. I didn't want to drill holes on walls, fish wires and etc this time. Just wanted to put something up quick. If the battery can at least last 3 months, I'm keeping. Else it goes back to Amcrest.

Anyway I just put it up today. Let's see how it goes for a week. Battery is 100% charged.

[Revo2Maxx]

Well I am not sure as I never let it get low enough for Red if it does or not.. Sadly about the light there was or is a Toggle to On or off and sadly I didn't see any thing different in either position for mine anyway.. The Green LED only goes on when the Camera comes on in mine anyway.. Goes out once the camera goes out... I have most of my other units with the Lights off on the camera and hard to know at times if it is working or not. Personally the LED isn't a large current draw as I am going to guess it is going to be less then 30ma... For the time the camera is working isn't going to put to much of a Tax on the system...

So I don't know about the LED, I know when I flipped it off and went to look it was off but don't know if it was off before when not active, I then changed it back and as soon as the camera went on and off again it was off when not active.. I didn't power Cycle the system to see if it ever stays off or to see if it ever stays on as it just seems to come on when camera comes to life...

Again for me the thing with this camera is that it is Fast when active, sends the details to the Hub where it stores it and if I am away from my phone and don't see the alert I don't have to worry about waking up the camera to just look at the footage because it comes from the hub.. With the hub being able to control 6 devices to be honest I am kind of Impressed with the thing in all... Right now the camera is in an area that has been having a large Temp Swing by day and night.. high 60's in the day to low 70's and oddly enough this year 28 to 34 at nights and snowing last night just 34 no snow and 70 right now.. So for me I am sure things will or should change as the temps don't have such large swings in the coming days...

[sydney]

The only thing I like about the HUB is that the USB is detached from the camera. Criminals can only take/steal the camera but not the footage. All of my other Amcrest cameras send .jpg/.mp4 to my NAS. But since this battery camera can't take NAS, I have no choice but to use the HUB. This goes back to my original question. If I have the IP of the HUB, what else can I do with it? That's what I was trying to explore. Sadly there's NOTHING you can do with the IP except to know it.

[Revo2Maxx]

Sadly as I said before there is little that this can do because while I can connect the Hub to my Amcrest NVR there is no footage of anything outside the time when the Camera turns on. Then you have to ask your self how much of that 2 or 3 motions that your going to have will be full event motions? LIke I cause a 3 second motion I get maybe a 5 second run time from the camera feed on my NVR

So what happens well most systems have an offline or a Tamper feature like my Amcrest NVR and it will even though I have the system setup for that channel to run as motion I have turn turn off all alarms as well because if I don't it will just run full time recording for one issue or another.. Then with it setup right all alarms turned off sadly in the NVR how will it setup. When you setup NVR or NAS or Blue Iris or even ASP with PC-NVR you have to give it how long you want to Record on Motion. Pick to little then it don't get enough pick to long and now you are recording Blank screen...

The thing is to be fair in my mind it isn't a true option for a CCTV camera. (Security Camera) because it lacks some of the perks that a Real Security camera does offer.. I mean it has a place for someone that wants to have a couple of cameras connected to the Hub and use the hub as the Recorder. For me it is a Tool that will let me setup a Camera on a location that I need recording while working on a camera that normally works in that area...

So when I first setup the device I don't remember the IP, When you asked I looked up and it was on 10.0.0.27. I did reboot it a couple of times since then and sadly now the IP is 10.0.0.29 looking in the Info for the Hub there is no way to setup a static IP so that is another issue that might come about trying to setup to a IP that never changes and yes I could within my Router setup a Static IP for it though the Router..

Then about the Camera, Today with only 35 events today the camera is now at 88% and I am going to guess we are getting to the point of the Charge where the system will start to use less and less battery % every day where the first day was the largest hit and again this to me could be purely what I call Ghost Charge reduction.. With the camera starting to stable out the voltage and current use the system will slowly work its way to a low battery. On my NVR the last motion the camera was 5:08 and it is 5:13 and that screen is just froze there however it was larger event then when it comes on for a short second or 2 and then goes blank... So it can give someone the false since of nothing going on if it was to just remain on a Froze screen with in the Recorder? Not all times does it end with a Picture froze on screen its just blank..

[sydney]

You don't configure static IP on the HUB. It's done via the router. Since my decision to keep it is still pending, I have not configured a static IP yet. All of my other Amcrest cameras have static IP. I can even logon to one of my Amcrest cameras located in another house.

I will post some updates next week regarding battery usage.

[Revo2Maxx]

Yes I have most of my Amcrest cameras connected and able to connect at another location..

Today had 33 alerts and I am now at 85%.. Personally I am not sure just how long mine would work in the Condition it is in.. I wonder if they have new batteries and Will look into buying a new one for the sake of having one I know the Condition of. Seeing mine has been plugged in normally since this was bought it might be my Battery is damaged and has over the normal amount of battery usage..

[sydney]

Surprisingly my battery is still at 100% according to my app since I put it up on 4/5 at noon. I got about 25-30 motion alerts yesterday which was unexpected. After reviewing every footage, none had humans. I think this camera is
very sensitive to sunlight when the sun gradually rises early in the morning. All these alerts were generated between 7am - 8am. This is supposed to be a 'heat/thermal' detection camera and supposedly to reduce false alarms such as wind blowing leaves and pets passing by. I thought it would only detect difference in heat/radiation emitted by humans? Now it makes me wonder??

No alerts generated this morning since it was overcast. Also, I went and walked around at around 9pm which was
completely dark outside. No alerts. If this was a 'thermal' detection camera, it should have detected the difference in heat/temperature. Not good.

[Revo2Maxx]

Sadly if you live in my area of the world the PIR is sadly not a well working device in my area... So to get a motion light to work on a really humid day don't work well...

Sadly If I remember right the camera system is designed to work with human and Pets as some are using it for the Pup camera setup.. I don't know.. I will admit that there are a couple of times I get an alert off Reflections and other times I don't.. I did have a day that I walked right in front of it with no alert and same time when I went in front of my PIR motion light it didn't turn on either.. It was very Humid out as being reported to over 95% so in the since of the camera working it says it don't work past 95% so I was to high expectation... Then also mind you this is with it plugged in because at the time it was working that way.. I also had a day that it Snowed the next day where there was no snow on the ground anymore and it was cold out again PIR didn't detect when my son was in the normal area and that night it was outside the 95% humidity level for working.. Other then that I do get results about moving animals and people...

[Revo2Maxx]

Just removed it form my NVR.. Oddly after doing a format, the system kept the last known picture on screen so I thought however I noticed it was ticking the time where before when it went offline the time would stop.. There was no footage on NVR and none on the Thumb Drive past the last action of Amazon making a Delivery...

Also notice now that the camera has Drop battery a good 7% lower then it was last time I checked and that is outside the normal.. So it is removed from NVR will keep an eye on the battery life next time checking on Sat...

[sydney]

After (4 x 24) hours of use, my battery level is still at 100%.

I'm now more worried than before because it hasn't dropped yet.