Door peephole cameras are recording units installed within a door’s peephole area. They are fairly small, but their display screen on the other side can be quite big. The whole point of the door peephole camera is to give the home owner or premises manager a much bigger and wider view of security footage the camera is recording. It also records footage to supplement the security footage shot closed-circuit TV units and other security hardware protecting the premises.
As you probably already know, anything that is powered by electricity either has to source its power from a direct line or a battery. While closed-circuit TV cameras do really well, as autonomous or freestanding units because they can be powered by both direct wiring and a battery as a backup, peephole cameras are a little trickier. Given their size and their placement, a lot of them use batteries. This doesn’t always pan out well.
Keep in mind that for the most part, most of the footage being shot by your small recording camera-the peephole camera-is going to be ‘waste’ footage. That’s right-this is footage of a whole lot of nothing going on in front of your door. Maybe you’d see a squirrel scurrying to and fro from time to time but that’s pretty much it. There usually isn’t footage of people stealing packages left on your porch or people vandalizing property or anything exciting like that. Sadly, recording worthless squirrel footage still takes it out of your peephole cameras’ batteries. Power is still required to record such footage.
While there is an increasing number of models entering the market that are fed simultaneously by a direct electrical line, as well as a battery, for the most part, many of the existing models are powered by batteries. As you probably can well imagine, battery-powered units are a bit problematic. The obvious question is that begs to be asked is what happens when the battery runs out.
This is why the battery life is extremely important to door peephole cameras. Thanks to modern battery manufacturing technology, battery life is rather extended. Depending on the brand that you buy, a typical lithium battery can last you a fairly long time. Still, this has not gotten us any closer to the real question which is how important is the battery life for the door peephole camera?
The worst-case scenario is when your camera dies while bad events are happening. For example, there is a robbery and the door peephole camera could not record the faces of the suspects coming into your premises because its battery gave out. This is just as bad as the CCTV cameras not adequately recording the faces of the perpetrators as they rob your premises. This is the worst-case scenario you could ever find yourself in as far as security recording hardware is concerned. While the obvious answer is that a battery life is extremely important to door peephole cameras and other security hardware, this is just part of the answer.
The other consideration is you have to have an adequate enough power system not only to ensure that the security device is continuously recording, but it has to be robust enough to provide the right image clarity. In fact, I would argue that image clarity is even more important. There is nothing worse than for the police to look at the CCTV and door peephole camera footage and see blurry images. Sure, the crime was recorded, but the footage is not really going to do any much good because it is very hard to make heads or tails of the images they contain. Do you see the problem here? Image clarity is extremely important, and unfortunately, recording units that have high image clarity and high resolution also suck up a lot more energy.
Accordingly, you need high-quality recording and access with the right battery and power combination. The best approach here would be to pair a direct power line with a battery backup. The battery must not in of itself be the main power source. It has to be a supplement to the direct electrical line.
For CCTV cameras, this makes all the sense in the world. In fact, this is how a lot of CCTV models are designed and set up. Early on, CCTV camera makers have learned that they need a dual power solution to ensure 24/7 365 day coverage and operation for the typical CCTV setup. Unfortunately, for door peephole cameras, you are still dependent on batteries and as mentioned above, this reliance can leave you vulnerable.