Battery, temperature & humidity logging. Bug fixes.
We've released some software updates for the DOC AI Cam:
- Low power mode is now working reliably
- A short press of the button will now turn the light off
- We are now logging battery voltage, humidity and temperature
- We have reactivated alerts when the camera is off for more than 24 hours.
- We have fixed bug with custom recording windows.
Low power mode
We have fixed a number of bugs with low power mode and it now seems to be working reliably again. It also makes far less recordings than it used to. We expect that low power mode will be the most popular mode to use with the DOC AI Cam. In low power mode, operating at night you should get about a month of use from a single battery. It will be about 15 days if you are operating the camera with a 24 recording window.
High power mode is still useful if you need to get real time alerts.
Button operation
We've made it so you can turn the light off on the camera with just a short button press. Without the button press the light will turn off after 5 minutes. We added this because some customers would like to be able to leave the camera with the light off, without waiting 5 minutes to check that it does.
Here's the updated diagram showing how the button works and what the light means.
Battery voltage, temperature and humidity
We are now logging battery voltage, temperature and humidity and these can be viewed on the Cacophony Portal. At the moment the only place you can view these is on the All Event tab. You can access this by clicking on the camera name, then selecting the All Events tab.
Scroll down or search on this page for tempHumidity or rpiBattery and you will see the values.
The temperature is in degrees Celsius and the humidity is a percentage. You shouldn't need to look at these. We use them to understand how the temperature and humidity vary inside the camera. A high humidity can indicate a water leak. We have had a handful of leaks in some of the early cameras which we have repaired or replaced.
The battery voltage is more interesting and we will be surfacing this in more accessible places over the coming weeks. The first number is an estimate of the battery percentage at the time it was taken. The second is the battery voltage and the third line is the battery type. This is derived from the battery voltage:
- lime battery
- lead acid battery
- unknown
The battery voltage is measured on one of the pins on the connector that plugs into the bottom of the camera. If you are using a adaptor with the old batteries, a mains or other supply that doesn't have this connected then this will read close to 0 volts and the battery reading will be of no use. It will show as unknown.
Alerts
We have re-activated the stopped camera alerts and added a little bit of explanation as to what they mean. You will receive these if you are an admin of a group/project, and the camera hasn't connected for more than 24 hours.
Bug fixes
We fixed a number of software bugs, including one that stopped the camera from recording if you used a custom recording window.
How to update
If your camera is connected to the internet via a modem or Wi-Fi then it should update automatically, overnight. If not, then the next time you visit it, we recommend connecting the camera to your phone's hotspot and updating it manually: on general tab, press the Software Update button.
