Solved: Google Nest battery camera battery quickly draining with Wasserstien solar panel

[jaychis]

This is a possible solution for people having issues with the Wasserstien solar panel draining their camera battery. I recently purchased the Wasserstein panel for the nest battery camera. When the solar panel is plugged into the camera,  they behave as if “plugged in” and will go into wired mode for 24/7 viewing and drains all the battery. If you go into the settings menu on your camera and click on battery, the message should say solar..y camera was saying plugged in. I believe this was acting like it was plugged into a power source. I'm not sure what the pin configuration is on the power cable that plugs into an outlet. I could not find a solution after searching for an answer. The one thing I noticed was my camera was saying plugged in while others said theirs said theirs said solar. I decided to clean the pins for the battery charging on the camera. I used a q-tip with a small amount of alcohol. I wiped the pins. The q-tip didn't look that dirty, but when I plugged the solar panel in, the camera then stated it was plugged into solar and not plugged in like it was in an outlet. I hope this helps.  

[MplsCustomer]

@jaychis 

Interesting!

There have also been several posts in this forum from customers with floodlight cameras where the battery is depleting even though the camera is hard-wired to power. There are also some posts from customers with plugged-in battery cameras where the battery is also depleting. Since they all have the same camera and plug, maybe they're getting a little corrosion on the pins.

We've had a battery camera for over 2 years, plugged in with the optional power cable. It's been online and "Live" the whole time, and whenever we've unplugged to check the battery level, it's been between 77% and 100%. Our camera is under a camera shield and stays pretty dry even during Minnesota winter snowstorms and summer thunderstorms.

(We have 2 camera shields, one for our battery camera and one for an older Google Nest Outdoor Camera; they are similar to this one: https://www.amazon.com/DS-1250ZJ-Universal-Camera-Hikvision-Outdoor/dp/B08D34JZ4F/ref=asc_df_B08D34J....)

[jaychis · Accepted solution]

I'm not 100% sure this is the issue,  but it worked for me and I haven't seen this mentioned in any of the comments. The pins are fairly well protected and they looked okay to the eye. There may have been some oxidation on the pins or a single pin that cleaned up. Something else I noticed is charging took close to half the day. I contacted Google about this and the only thing that they could think of was it was the cable. They sent a new one and it improved slightly. I  cleaned the pins and decided to charge the camera a little because it was down to about 10%. I put the camera on the charger for a couple hours and expected between 20-30% and when I checked it was 70%. It's definitely something cheap and easy to try.