Review on SOLIOM S600: Advanced Home Security Camera with 360° Pan Tilt, Motion Detection, Solar Power, and Color Night Vision by Greg Peitz

I really like this camera, but it has a couple of major drawbacks. I keep it, I will update this review regularly as my experience changes. Pros: 1. Battery Life = If all cells are filled with 18650 you will not drain your battery unless you live somewhere like Norway. Solar cells keep these batteries very healthy.2. APP with easy navigation (after connecting and setting up)3. "SPOTLIGHT" is absolutely beautiful, you can set the spotlight for night use by clicking the lightbulb icon in the app. This causes a very bright light when the camera is turned on at night during a motion detection event. The light turns off at the end of the detection interval. I love this feature! 4. Solar and SIX 18650 slots, I love it. Hurricane Laura knocked out my CCTV system for over a week so that's my decision. I pair this with a 5 volt mini WiFi router which I can run off an external bank in the event of another storm outage and still be able to surf from my phone via the battery powered router. Nb4 you read cons, this camera is great but needs improvement. Cons: 1. Over the years I've installed 15-20 IP cameras for myself and others, this one gave me a lot of trouble connecting to my WiFi. The barcode works but takes forever. It took about 30 minutes to set up and I'm pretty good at IT/computers.2. Live TV shows a distinct pink tint when the device is charging with solar energy. Only when the panels are charging is the tint present. I don't know, not a big problem, but why? It seems like they made the DC/DC converter cheaper.3. You CANNOT save videos from an app stored on an SD card without physically removing the card from the device!?! I have many IP cameras that cost around $30 and THEY CAN ALL! It's like getting money to get you to sign up for their cloud service. Gross4. Good luck verifying the account they are forcing you to create. I tried twice in a sandbox environment via a virtual box because the email is quite "phishing". As this is very sketchy and I wouldn't recommend following the link. It looks like a phishing attempt, but works without verification for about a month, so I don't think it's necessary. made with wrong information, i'm not saying you should do it, but wink.wink.cough.cough Notes on what I did: Stay away from 18650s that advertise 3000+ mAh. They are probably fraudulent. Find some 2500-3000mah batteries, you need 3 to fill the slots. The bank is completely parallel, so it doesn't matter if you mix the amp sums. I found a pack of 6 3000mah here at AMZ lol that came with a flashlight. Just make sure you charge all batteries before inserting them into the device. Horizontal mounting provides the best range of angles (install the panel so that it is perpendicular to the sky without manipulation. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Adjust the panel so that it faces the sun at noon to Getting Maximum Math: The manual says 2W in working mode and 0.012W in standby I tested this with a USB multimeter and it was within 5% tolerance ie 3.7V = 3.7V x 7.5A = 27.75 watt-hours, ignoring voltage changes (4.2V fully charged), then we divide watt-hours by watts, or running electricity requirements, that's 2W 27.75 / 2 = 13.875 watt-hours, making it 13.875 consecutive hours during motion detection events In standby mode 0.012 watts 27.75 / 0.012 = 2312.5 watt hours but this is not really needed as the math is above but the spotlight is not included in the operation e costs, hence I would recommend buying these 18650s if you want to use the spotlight movement feature. I really needed to discharge the batteries and measure the performance of the panels, but I was too lazy. Judging by the size I would say its power is around 5-10 watts, I have other panels around the same size. So about 1-2 amps at 5v. Source: I lol have a BSc in Industrial Engineering, have a degree in Electrical Engineering and am an Electrician. UPDATE 28 Mar 21: THREE STARS I am removing one star because this device will not connect if there is no internet connection. Even if you have a Wi-Fi connection, the device does not work! I have backup systems in place in case of a power outage (so I can continue to use Wi-Fi enabled devices) but this device WILL NOT CONNECT WITHOUT an actual internet connection. Although it is connected to my wifi which has backup power. I have 5 other IP cameras that don't have this weird internet connection requirement. It should be noted that the device also works/records without a connection. Use it for live view or use the app to browse motion detection recordings when internet is off, well you are SOL.