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Ring cameras are pretty common these days to protect your home around the clock.
We have 5 cameras around our house too to keep the women of the house always in control of the surroundings.
4 are battery-based ring outside cameras and 1 is a wired Ring doorbell.
The pain point with battery-based cameras is the battery charging every month.
Since, we had 4, and one of them will run out of juice someday, I found myself stepping on the ladder and taking out batteries for charging almost every week. This was painful and since this task requires no skill, I wanted to automate it.
The ring is smart and hence sells solar chargers for cameras separately at a good price for a single charger.
I was very interested in installing solar chargers but the cost of each panel demotivated me.
This prompted me to try non-ring brand solar chargers which are easily half the cost of ring charges.
This article will discuss:
Wasserstein – Solar Panel (Half price of Ring – Works)
I then bought a Wasserstein – Solar Panel for Ring (2-Pack) for the same cost as a 1 Ring solar panel to just try and see if it works without hassle.
After trying these for 2 months, I went a step ahead to try the generic solar panels from Temu, which are supposedly shipped directly from China to your home in the USA.
Temu Ring Solar Charger (Cheap – AND Works)
I bought two $11 Temu solar chargers costing me a total of $22 thinking that it might be worth a try. They did work without any hassle and connected to the Ring camera.
The problem with Temu is that most products are taken off the shelf after some time. Not sure if it is only me that I am unable to find the same item again if I have to reorder after a couple of months.
I am unable to find the link for the same solar chargers that I have tried now but these look and feel pretty the same as the ones I have:
Reliability and Charging
They have all been through the harsh Texas sun, 70 miles an hour winds, hail storms, snow storms, and heavy rain.
These solar panels have now in action for more than 12 months and they have been doing their job of charging the Ring stick-up camera battery normally.
I am pretty happy with them and my whole purpose was to extract at least 12 months of usable life from unbranded solar panels to keep the smart home costs low. I think I have achieved this and you can save money too.
Let me know if you have questions about this setup.
FAQ
Yes, 5W is sufficient.
It takes about a week to fully charge the Ring camera battery.
If you have set your ring to record only motion events, this battery will never run out.
At least, in my own 1-year experience, the battery reached 30% level only once, and that too when there was continuous rain and no sun for 7 straight days.
If you record 24 hours of video footage, you may need a higher watt/voltage battery preferably a 12W one or above.
There are no issues caused by solar panel charging.
Solar panels only charge the Ring battery and then the battery powers the Ring motion detection.
