After >16 months, I noticed my battery trend for the last 30 days to be <20%. In the initial months, I saw the trend at 100% so I stopped looking at it til recently. Right now it is <13% so I turn the camera off and check it in the morning . With the camera turned off via the app, the morning reading just shows a red icon ( must be <12%). I’m on version 1.1.6.4. I have clear sun and no obstructions and plenty of year round sun with no clouds…
Any suggestions including how to revert to older firmware ? (I’ve seen comments 1.1.5.2 is reliable).
Hi, I would disable the motion detection and then take the camera down and charge it to 90% via USB cable.
Mount it back up and enable motion detection, see how the solar charging performs, if no change occurs then you could try contacting support to see if they can send the old firmware to your camera, they’ll want to know the serial number of the cam.
If they are able to do that… the only issue I see is that the cam will Auto update to the newest firmware in a few days.
Chances are that it isn’t a firmware problem. Eufy sizes their battery life calcs based on an average of 10 detections a day and recording time of 30 seconds per event. If you are getting more detections or longer recording times, that will draw your battery down quicker.
First thing to check is how many detections you are getting per day. You can check this in the camera menu under Power Manager | Detection Statistics. If you are getting more than 10 detections a day, then chances are the small solar panel on the camera will not be able to keep up. You can change event recording time to a lower value and that may help or you can decrease the motion detection sensitivity.
I don’t have Detection Statistics under power manager screen. Did I mention the camera is turned off yet battery still drains? I do not set it for any notifications and I log in to check events once or twice a week. I do see motion detections when camera was on but never see much in shadow changes or any motion in my one and only activity zone.
Forgot to say… Maybe a power setting has changed.
I believe there’s an option that says external solar and battery power. I think it’s worded like that, anyhow I believe it should be on battery.
Unless you pull the battery and unhook solar, the camera is never completely off. It still communicates back to Eufy’s servers for updates and has a constant draw to keep the electronics alive. This happens whether or not you have set the camera set to enabled in the app.
The fact that it only has a software switch to disable the camera tells you that it has to stay awake and communicate with the app so that app can enable or disable it.
I don’t have that particular camera, but have measured current draw of other Eufy devices and they never drop to zero when disabled by the app.
The draw shouldn’t be enough to drain it overnight, but if you are getting a lot of detections, they all get evaluated by the AI before being classified as events. That takes power.
Not sure where your detection stats are on that device, but I would look around and see if you can find them. Every Eufy camera I have seen has that information somewhere.
I have the same issue on two fairly recenty purchased S40s. One was pruchased no more than a month ago and the other maybe two months ago.
I have three S40s in total but the newest one suddenly drained overnight last week. The second one has recently sent me a message the battery’s nearly flat.
All firmware versions are 1.1.6.4
They’re all in areas that get sufficient sunlight and they would be at 100% charge each day.
What helped me was that TechSupport identified it as low wifi power. I had added a guest network few months ago and router apparently reduces my main ssid by some dbm. When I deleted the guest network my battery level on s40 is climbing back up . After two weeks it is >70%
Hmm… interesting, that’s good to know.
I suppose the camera was trying to maintain a stable Wi-Fi connection or constantly searching for a better connection. Thus consuming battery power.
Since the dBm of your router was reduced, (transmitting distance power, signal strength),
I don’t think that’s what’s happening in my case. As mentioned, I have three of the S40s and two suddenly started to drain. But one of the draining ones sits right to fully-working one in the same sunlight and same distance from my router.
I might return the two faulty ones.
I might restart my router before I do return them but it’s been reliable device and I dont have issues with the third S40 and also my S340 which is also close to the faulty S40s
Edit:
I confirmed there isn’t a guest WiFi on my router and my router’s firmware is current. I guess I’ll retrun them.
@mar59866 just a thought, maybe the cameras are too close to each other. Possibly one of the cameras could be interfering with a Wi-Fi connection for the other??
I did try that but the first S40 that failed is an area where’s there’s no real movement. And as mentioned, it worked and charged each day to 100%. I’ll try it again tonight but nothing environmentally has changed over the 6 weeks or so I got it,
The remaining two are indeed close but they have been co-existing for a couple of monhs. The second S40 located right next to the third has failed. The third remaining one, which is the oldest one, is working fine and its battery use is working as expected.
This is the dashboard from the first camera of the three that failed. I did reset it to troubleshoot but you can see the immediate dip in power storage.
This is the second of three. This too shows an immediate dip but was placed in the next to the last one. But, since its purchase, it was reliable until one day it simply lost power overnight.
