As the experience proven already, the best way to test and validate a feature is to actually use it by myself so I have decided to create a use case for the timelapse feature.
One of my plumeria is about to bloom (first time in 3 years and only one of my 3 plant will give flower apparently) so I wanted to timelapse it.
Unfortunately it still didn’t bloom and right now I need to put it on full sun but I will still try to catch the few real blooming in a few days when it happens.
Here is about 1 week of my moving pre-blooming plumeria:
But I also did a small 24 H recording with one of those small $18 Diggo M1Q camera positionned in a tree and with modified lens (put a 16mm instead of 3.6mm to get closer view) and as it is USB powered I used a 10.000mAh powerbank that last the whole day long and I tought it was a lonely bird but surprise they are couple
some trick, you may us some of those Wifi extenders, also try to put one in the attic so the wifi relay get a “view” that will go easier into garden because it will only have to pass thru tiles instead of thick wall
I use an Apple router (by far best router I ever had) so could only be extended by “more” Apple routers which I did so now I have 2 of them. Actually wifi in the garden is not that bad but it’s the really cheap camera which was my candidate for this project that is really bad at catching the wifi so only gets it within the apartment (+ anyway isn’t weatherproof): http://www.snov-globalsecurity.com/productn.asp?ArticleID=2090
I bought this camera for implementing onvif ptz at the time and despite it’s onvif it’s not ptz over onvif compliant but it works on 5V so could be powered with a simple usb port so it seemed a good candidate.
I was also hoping that my solar power bank would allow to stand more than 24 hours but by doing tests on my terrace it wasn’t the case.
I also buy a lot of cheap chinese cameras because it’s fun, it’s cheap (bit often crap) so no fear to teardown/hack/change the lens… and you say no waterproof ? let me show you something this is on of the 3 Xiaomi XiaoFang I bought for fun (23€ each using FangHack to get rid of the P2P and Xiaomi App) this one is under the gutter and absolutely no waterproof (only the IR projector is)
And guess what ? I just discovered that the gutter at this very place is overflooded when water come from the other gutter’s roof when it’s raining a lot … no fear man !
I have finally hacked my Fang camera but at least once a day I need to restart it.
Do you have this problem as well ?
The interface still answers at http://192.168.1.193/cgi-bin/status but the rtsp stream is not provided anymore after many reconnections so I have to use the camera’s UI and press the reboot button.
It takes a few seconds and it’s again running but still not really reliable.
The camera is in my garden with quite bad wifi (and it’s super hot these days so may not help), it’s one of the reason why it often looses the stream while operating.
When RTSP is down you don’t need restart camera but go into Boot scripts page and do a stop/start of RTSP server
RTSP server is not very “strong” I mean it can easily crash especially if wifi quality is bad so to solve the problem I reduced it down to 1280 x 720 with 1024 bitrate for the worst “wifi” one outside in the garden (I do have 3 XiaoFang) and since then no more RTSP crash.
You can also lower the framerate I do only 15 fps or 10 fps as I don’t need 25 fps and this permit to keep good video compression as you lower birate but also lower fps so compression is still good.
You can also CRON a little script every minute that check if RTSP process is alive and start it if it dissapear.
I didn’t start playing with settings as they are not really convenient to put in place (i mean no interface for this) but we’ll i’ll probably try.
I’ve upgraded the firmware of the camera to 3.0.4.20 and it seems slightly better however I already had to reboot it once after upgrading.
I suppose i’ll dig into how to setup the stream resolutions etc… to see if it helps further but it’s a shame because apart this problem it’s quite ok camera.
However when I do the 2nd then i have the service 21-ir control going in error. Some people say it’s because of IR that it heats and because of heating that it crashes
I like those timelapse, by the way if you have USB powered IP Cameras I found an USB Power transformer 5V/2.1A but with integrated 2 x 18650 batteries that make this power transformer act like an UPS in case of power failure
I also found other product like this one (5V but also 12V for Routers, NAS and usual IP Cameras…) but that plug between a power tranformer (5.5 jack connector) and the powered device, they also use 18650 batteries so easy to change or to buy may be more powerfull one like 3500mAh NCR from Panasonic (I guess they do provide only 2000~2500mAh 18650 batteries)
Interesting, I’ve ordered these power bank so that I can continue my autonomous garden camera project:
It’s also based on 18650 (which anyway I have a lot since I use for e-cigarettes) and I plan to combine this with my Anker solar panel so that I can have a totally autonomous Xiaomi camera.
Currently the principle already works with the only power bank which I have which allows pass-through however it’s capacity is too limited and it’s pretty bad at pass-through (so that it can be used as an extended UPS (which should be able to stand 14 hours in my case) so i’ve ordered the 2x and 4x 18650 versions of this Tomo Power Bank and hopefully this time it will be ok
As you know such Power bank run with 3.7V internal voltage so they have to raise voltage up to 5V thru a DC-Boost component (usually 92% efficiency) so as the P = U x I law apply you can remove a big 30% to the value displayed on the case of all USB power banks (or the 18650 batteries) to get the final “5V” result.
If you use the 2 x 18650 TOMO version with 2 x 3500mAh 18650 (I guess it’s the highest value possible in such battery size and it’s some Panasonic or LG battery that own the record if I remember) you’ll get 7000mAh max and then you’ll have to remove 30% (power law plus the DC-Boost not 100% efficient) and you’ll get around 4900mAh enough to run the Xiaomi a “big” half day, so yes I think your 14H estimation is correct if you use very good batteries.
If you want to be 100% solar you’ll also have to size your solar panels capacity so they can both reload the batteries AND power the camera AND do both things also when weaver is bad/rainy/cloudy so the minimum is to double or triple the theorical solar cell power capacity.
So your solar panel capacity will have to be able produce enough power to do it let say if they have light enough to run at 25% of their max capacity for example.
And to do all this calculation the “good thing” is that your camera always use same power on a 24H cycle, but not exactly as it will vary depending how long IRLed are active that use +50mA, so in winter it will eat more energy on a 24H cycle than in summer.
But problem with the usual USB Solar panels is that they use DC-Boost/DC-Buck and have no MPPT technology to increase power efficiency. (as PWM technology that is less effciient than MPPT).
