Well it has been a couple of weeks since I mount this camera outside to put the device to the test. I purchased 4 – 18650 3000 mHa lithium batteries to run in the camera. I charged them up with the charger that came with the batteries so they were fully charged. When they were placed into the camera, the App advised they were 100% at the time of the mounting. Now setting the App up, I had the camera send updates to the phone on movement that was detected by the PIR in the camera. Well this was a bit of a mistake as there is a bus that travels past the house a couple of times per hour, never mid the rest of the traffic throughout the day. I changed that so that the PIR did not trigger all the time. The second and third days of use the camera did not bring the batteries back up to the 100% mark.
The camera is mounted so that the solar top is facing the southern sky for the large majority of the day. After the third the battery was down low, less than 20%. The following day was very cloudy and I wonder how well the batteries would recover. Well, then did not make it back to 50%. Then for the next few days, the sun was not always visible. Then two days of rain came.
After the rain, I attempted to connect to the camera, but it would not. A couple of days of no connecting I decided to take the camera down as I felt the batteries were probably not charged and I was correct. Dead! So, since the design of these solar cameras have the charge port/power port inside the battery compartment, the camera has to be removed from its mount and then all of the screws removed from the belly of the camera to get at these ports and batteries. I get it, they want it waterproof, but it is a pain to have to run out to the camera every time it stops working or the batteries are dead. Especially in climates that are sure to dip below freezing and then some.
The SAP HD App needs a lot of refining. The WiFi would not respond once the camera stopped working. I could not delete the camera from the App either as I thought I might try to re-install the camera in the App. But for some reason, you need to have a connection with the camera in order to delete the camera.
In the end, I ended up pushing the reset button on the camera and starting all over. I’m not sure this camera will survive the winter at the rate these batteries are going. Short days now will not allow the batteries to fully recharge using the sunlight. I would not recommend buying this camera for a shady area of your yard.
While the camera was up and running, I tried my darnedest to get the camera to connect to my Synology system to no avail. From the research I could figure out, the K55 has no protocols that will allow it to connect to the NAS. Some cameras that were looked, their specs showed 6 or 7 protocols such as http, https, etc.
I’m totally sold on the solar aspect for surveillance around the yard, but this camera I don’t think will cut it. I guess more research will need to be done before the next purchase. Perhaps a separate solar panel.
Until the next time, stay safe and keep the technology coming.
March 8, 2020
So, the winter has almost past and the camera has been outside all winter. I was worried the batteries would not maintain their charge. The lowest percentage of battery I noticed when spot checking was low 80’s. Today the batteries shows 100%.
I’m still trying to figure which recording mode is best and where to actually store the clips. There is a cloud function on the app and of course the micro SD card. I think the card is my best choice for now. The recorded video is clear, but I can’t seem to get the 1080 resolution to stick, VGA only.
The recording of the video doesn’t seem to be working. I set the camera to record continually and yet nothing seems to be on the storage card. I removed the motion alerts as there were continuous alerts as the bus passed by and the Co-Vid19 walkers. More tinkering needs to be done.
The quality of the images of the live view is fantastic. Let’s get the recording to work and the 1080 resolution to stick.