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walterbell

Blink cameras can run on battery for a year! A worthy platform to be liberated from app/cloud.

https://awesomeopensource.com/projects/camera/firmware

Thanks for the supply chain diagram: https://astrid.tech/_/2022/08/03/0/blink-companies.svg

Microsoft's ThreadX RTOS was also used on RPi GPU, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoCore#Linux_support

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There are several security camera manufacturers making long battery life claims. I found Eufy's "6 month battery" claims to be grossly overstating the reality (1-2 months in normal conditions using various units) and would be suspicious of 365 day claims made by Eufy, Blink, and others.

Blink has custom silicon, which may be forcing competitors with generic SoCs to exaggerate. Blink's claims are precise, https://support.blinkforhome.com/en_US/f-a-q/how-long-do-the...

> Blink Video Doorbell, Outdoor and Indoor (gen 2), and XT2 cameras can expect battery life of up to 2 years, based on 5,882 seconds of Live View, 43,200 seconds of motion-activated recording and 4,788 seconds of Live View with two-way talk. This is roughly 70 seconds per day. For the Indoor (gen 1) and XT cameras, 2 years of typical use is defined as 40,000 seconds of Motion Clips and Live View. This is approximately 50 seconds per day.

> 43,200 seconds of motion-activated recording

Ahh 6 hours of continuous recording. That's a lot more reasonable. You could build something similar by combining a low power PIR sensor with a camera

I have several Blink camera's, can attest they do indeed last more than a year. Front of house that gets more than usual traffic has lasted around 2 years between battery changes, back of house around 3 years so far. Using Duracell batteries if that makes a difference.

Same here. The squirrels in the backyard are definitely a drain on the batteries. Another reason to hate them (the main one is that they eat my nectarines).

I have a bunch in the roof cavity to monitor for roof rat incursion. They have been going for about 3 years now.

I found the Blink camera was the best for a battery camera in terms of startup on PIR detection. In comparison my newer Eufy and Arlo cameras take a second or two (sometimes more) and have much less battery life.

The downside on the Blink is that you have to buy high end lithium AA batteries

It depends on the level of activity. Some of my Blinks last over 1 year, and some last a couple months.

I use a Blink Camera in an semi active zone (backyard) and it lasted 1.5 years without battery change. Blew my mind since it offered almost the same functionality with better performance thank top of the market competitors.

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