Body Camera Battery Life

[lwt16]

For those of you rocking body cams.......


What is your typical battery life when utilizing these things? The reason that I ask is that our Panasonics have terrible "standby" battery life or at least I think that they do. On a full charge, I can have the cam on standby and not be using it with all the wifi functions turned off and I can't get more than three to four hours out of it. My shift is a full eight so naturally I feel that this is not cutting the mustard. However, this may be the norm for these things so I pose the question to you all.

For some reason, the department didn't issue me a home charger and instead opted for a cigarette outlet charger for the car. I can stay tethered to that thing all shift long and it still won't bring the batt up to full charge. Depending on call volume, sometimes it can't even keep up if I am recording a lot.

Are there better cams out there as far as batt life? They recently put out that failure to record will now be met with discipline so I have sent a rocket back up the chain stating the drawbacks. It, naturally, has caused some strife.

Not my first time for that by far. lol

Thanks in advance.

[txdpd]

I can get 2 shifts out of my Axon flex, but it starts to do the obnoxious low battery beep in the last hour or two of the second shift. 14-15 hours total time, with up to 3 hours of recording and the rest on standby.

[Erick Gelhaus]

I've used both the VieVu and Taser's Axon. Over the roughly 6 months I wore the VieVu, I got about two shifts, maybe a thirdone too, of battery life. That was going from Off to On/Record back to Off, etc, and then on to download.
With the Axon, turning it to StandBy & buffering when I left the Office with recording as needed, I had no issues getting through a ten hour. Eleven hour shifts were a bit iffy. Now that we are on 12 hour shiftsI canot leave it in StandBy and make it start to finish. While I can get through a shift by turning it off when not on a call, that becomes problematic something appears in front of you & you need to deal with it before the camera spins up.

[AMC]

We are just introducing the Taser Axon Body 2. Camera is docked and charged at the end of every shift to download all video. Not sure what the manufacturer claims as the battery life, but no trouble at all going through a 10 hr shift with plenty of juice to go. Might even make it most of the way through the second shift. The technology is OK....the issue for us is policy. It's changing on literally a daily basis. Only 70 cameras deployed so far. We're gonna be the trainers for everyone else. Even now...three weeks into the program...they are panicking about the data storage costs. It's clear we're going to need at least twice as much storage as we thought. No wonder LAPD just ditched the idea. Supposedly Seattle also, but I've seen no confirmation of that. Data storage is going to bankrupt some agencies. And don't even mention the Public Records Requests!

[txdpd]

Even now...three weeks into the program...they are panicking about the data storage costs. It's clear we're going to need at least twice as much storage as we thought. No wonder LAPD just ditched the idea. Supposedly Seattle also, but I've seen no confirmation of that. Data storage is going to bankrupt some agencies. And don't even mention the Public Records Requests!

The unlimited plan is the only way to go. We went with the standard plan at $25 per user per month. Word around the campfire is that we a paying close to $80 per user per month in overage, trade in, and service charges. We saved $54 a month over the unlimited plan by spending $26 extra.

[Erick Gelhaus]

Supposedly Seattle also, but I've seen no confirmation of that. Data storage is going to bankrupt some agencies. And don't even mention the Public Records Requests!

Have a close friend who is a Washington state version of a deputy district attorney, currently he does public records act cases. He can (and does) go on & on about their Public Records Act issues up there. While what is open is part, the vast majority of his rants are the time & cost in complying coupled with the fees for failing too.

Anyway, back on topic about battery life ...

[lwt16]

Wow... so basically, ours are junk.

Thanks for the replies. It will help me in my next chain of command email.