topic Nest Camera Outdoor - Excess Power Usage in Cameras and Doorbells

Nest Camera Outdoor - Excess Power Usage

pt44 — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 15:59:06 GMT

I own 5 outdoor Nest Cameras. I've connected all but one to some Tapo P110 energy monitoring plugs. 3 of the cameras use around 2 watts power, which is what I expected. However, one of them is using over 8 watts, nearly 9 watts all day long.

That seems odd. Is there any reason one of them would be using 4x the amount of power as the other cameras?

Re: Nest Camera Outdoor - Excess Power Usage

MplsCustomer — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 16:10:39 GMT

@pt44

I don't know (unless there's a lot more activity in front of that one camera), but you could try swapping your Tapo P100 energy monitoring plugs just to make sure the plugs aren't reporting differently.

Re: Nest Camera Outdoor - Excess Power Usage

pt44 — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 08:29:58 GMT

Will try a different plug on it, to see if it reports the same. Regarding does it have more activity. This is a possibility that I considered. It is on the driveway and there is the occasional passing car (it's a country lane, so it's not busy traffic). However, all of the cameras are surely streaming 24/7. So their usage for uploading anything to the cloud should (I would have imagined) been the same amount. If it had to upload specific notifications, I can't see why that should use 4x more electricity.

The patio camera for example may not get much traffic, but it's still uploading the same amount of data 24/7 to the Nest server.

Re: Nest Camera Outdoor - Excess Power Usage

EdmondB — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 20:44:44 GMT

Hello pt44,

Checking in — did you get a chance to try the steps shared by MplsCustomer? About the camera streaming 24/7, that will depend on what Nest aware subscription you purchase. We have the Nest aware base, which is event-based recording, and the Nest aware plus, which is 24/7 continuous recording. Check out this link to learn more about the Nest aware subscription.

Thanks for the help, @MplsCustomer.

I look forward to your response.

Best,
Edmond

Re: Nest Camera Outdoor - Excess Power Usage

pt44 — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 11:36:52 GMT

Totally my mistake this one. While swapping over the Tapo P110 plugs, I noticed that it was powering not only the camera, but also a Mesh Network disc too. They are up in the corner of my garage, so hadn't noticed that they were both off the same Tapo. Have now split them and the camera is reporting the 2 watts usage I would expect. The BT Mesh Disc is using the other 5 watts. Which would explain the 7-9 watts total usage.

Re: Nest Camera Outdoor - Excess Power Usage

EdmondB — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 19:55:56 GMT

Hi there,

Glad to hear that is working. As we got our resolution here, I'm going to mark this one as resolved. Please feel free to open up a new thread if you need assistance.

Best,
Edmond