Good and Cheap Portable Battery with UPS Capability

Looking for a portable battery 10-20,000+mah which can take a charge from USB C or MicroUSB and has at least 1 or 2 USB A outputs with UPS functionality.

In short I want to run a solar panel such as those eufy panels, to a battery and from that battery run 2-3 of those Xiaomi/Tapo 360 cams, solar panel will load up the battery during the day and then the cameras can draw down during day and evening (this is the theory anyway)

Things to note is the cameras do not have any onboard battery so the UPS function is a must as it needs to seamlessly be able to draw from solar and battery, I know the bluetti’s and all those do these functions but hoping for something smaller.

Only power requirements I can find for the cameras is 5V/1A

Comments

  • Somehow I don't think a 20,000mAh battery will run provide power for 2-3 cameras simultaneously for more than 2 or 3 hours. I guess that's fine if you really only need the cameras powered in the evening and not all night.

    Your other issue is depending on the weather and time of year, the solar panel may not generate enough power to fully charge the battery while also powering those cameras during the day.

  • Assuming you already have one of the non-battery cameras, connect it to whatever power bank you already own and check the run time. I tried this… results were surprising.

  • Surprisingly good or bad? I’m happy to run it but want to automate it with the solar charging the battery while the battery powers the cameras

    • Surprisingly bad, hardly any run time. You'll find cameras with batteries are designed to be trickle charged from a proprietary solar panel. Cameras without batteries are designed to run on continuous DC power. So you'll have to find a battery that can deliver that level of power, then a type of solar setup that can charge that higher spec battery.

  • Ah ok might need to just use the cameras for another purpose just have inherited 6 of them but they won’t be of use for the battery set up if that bad

Login or Join to leave a comment