Eufycam teardown

[Haloweenhamster]

I thought I’d look at modding one of my cameras (the one with the worst signal) for an external antenna so I needed to open it up to see what I had to work with (hoping there was an ipex connector)
Hopefully Eufy / Anker don’t mind, ps I know the warranty is now void on that camera
Here goes
4 T5 screws on the back

No need to remove the back, it’s only the magnet

Slide it out the front

The antenna are printed onto the top front, I’m going to leave the ground plane & replace the active antenna

Right if anyone is interested here’s the rest of the strip down, internal screws ph000

I’ve not modded it yet, hopefully have time tomorrow, if you want any pictures or info while I have it open just let me know

If I disappear Eufy obviously disapprove

[Haloweenhamster]

Sorry about the order, thought it would order by selected or time taken, seems to be random

[yamyam]

Excellent Job done @Haloweenhamster and nice pictures!
I am curious about the result and how much more range you will gain then!

It is just sad and a shame for eufy, that their customers, who payed a bunch of money for the eufy cam, need to open it (and therefore compulsorily lose warranty!!!) just add external/additional antannas to finally get a useful range and to weed out the horrible range of the cam itself and original.

Keep us updated about the result. Maybe eufy afterwards will hire you, pay you and fly you to china to finally fix that horrible range issue

Perfect moment to remind @AnkerOfficial that their promised and announced eufy cam range extender is already several months overdue.

[yamyam]

Sorry about the order, thought it would order by selected or time taken, seems to be random

That is the reason why i always upload one picture after another to get the order i want it to be!
The forum is kind of silly if uploading several pics at once and orders them “randomly” then.
It needs more time as you always need to wait until one by one picture is uploaded and added in the post, but at least the order is correct then

[TechMan]

I hope it all works out for you! This is an extremely interesting project! Good luck!

[yamyam]

I hope it all works out for you!

I hope this too, but even more i hope he will get all the stuff correctly back together!

If i would disassemble and reassemble one of my eufy cams,
it would be a toaster afterwards and could boil eggs!

[Haloweenhamster]

WiFi IC

20180601041905928.pdf

Battery management
southchip sc8801qder (can’t find English datasheet)

Low frequency wireless processor
http://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/CC1310

128MB flash

MX25L12835F,%25203V,%2520128Mb,%2520v1.6.pdf

[Haloweenhamster]

Put it back together & tested (all ok) as all I should need to do is remove the 4 screws & slide it out tomorrow

Ps what I thought was a ground plane must be the low frequency antenna, wonder what they use 433MHz possibly, 868 / 915 is country dependent

[yamyam]

@Haloweenhamster

I do wonder why your picture is showing just a 6700 mAh battery!

If i remember correctly someone from eufy posted some months ago, here or at kickstarter, that the capacity of the battery would be around 14.000 mAh

But i am old, can be wrong.

Or are there two of those inside?

[Haloweenhamster]

I was looking, thought I read on Kickstarter that it was 5700mah
Perhaps whomever said 14000mah thought they were all parallel not series parallel

[yamyam]

I was looking, thought I read on Kickstarter that it was 5700mah

That did not leave me any peace … so i just tried to scroll and search through the 3K+ kickstarter comments but failed in the short time. But then i remembered that i also read it on some reviews and BAM! … here we go:

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/anker-eufycam,review-6126.html

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Also:

Source: https://www.connect.de/vergleich/ip-kameras-outdoor-indoor-smarthome-ueberwachung-vergleich-3199424-8384.html

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Source: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/4/16/17244706/evercam-anker-eufy-smart-security-camera-ai-365-day-battery-life

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And i thought the battery is original from Anker, i guess Hu Nan Giantsun Power Electronics from China produced them in the name of Anker?!

But i knew and had in mind that it was something around 14.000 mAh!

So i wasn’t wrong … Maybe @AnkerOfficial or anyone else with a clue can explain and tell us why there is only a 6700 mAh battery build in and how they get to 13.400 mAh please?! Thanks … we are willing to learn

I mean USB Fast Charging from the homebase got an output of 18W (!) … (9V at 2 Ampere).
So a 6700 mAh battery makes sense to me because i need pretty much 4 hours at fast charging of a empty battery to full. A 13.400 mAh battery would need much longer at 18W i guess. (Not calculated yet but brainstorming)

[yamyam]

Ok … on the basis of the indicia (6.700 mAh battery photo of the disassembled eufy cam and the following calculation) the 13.400 mAh battery seems to be a “lie”?!

Or do i make a wrong calculation?

Indicia 1:
The photo shows a 6.700 mAh battery pack, not a 13.400 mAh.

Indicia 2:
By knowing the charging of a eufy cam with USB Fast Charging (9V at 2A) at the homebase takes about 4 hours (totaly empty cam which gone off itself to fully 100%) the following calculation proves that normaly there just can’t be a 13.400 mAh in the eufy cam, as charging at the homebase would then need about 6-7 hours!

See here:

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So by guessing that 6.700 mAh is the truth and not 13.400 mAh … we now know why the cams are draining empty so fast! … OK just kidding … as 13.400 mAh is the double of 6.700 mAh and i am not a trained electrician, there may be a trick or technical way to make it 13.400 mAh.

@AnkerOfficial Please tell us or ask one of your electricians why a 6.700 mAh battery pack is promoted as 13.400 mAh with the eufy cam … and why does it then only takes 4 hours to charge it instead of 6-7 hours, which would be regular with 9V at 2A and 13.400 mAh?! thank you!

[andrewGholden374]

This is really cool! Thanks for sharing!

[ikari04warrior]

Definitely not something we see every day in this forum. It was very interesting!!

[Haloweenhamster]

I’m guessing that whomever released the 13,400mah was a non technical employee, probably from the marketing team

If it was wired as a 4p battery then that would be the correct information but it’s a 2s2p battery

In series you add voltage but keep the same capacity
In parallel you add capacity but keep the same voltage

It’s just 4x 3,350mah 18650 batteries

I was going to open the battery compartment to see if the batteries had any more information but it was plastic welded and as I’m still using the camera this was a non destructive teardown, that’s also why I didn’t completely teardown the front, looked difficult to reassemble

[Chiquinho]

I like people who are doing such “repairing”.
Great you have been successful.
Thumbs up!

[Macgyver15]

This is awesome! We’ve got our very own Jerryrig everything in here

[Haloweenhamster]

I seemed to be all thumbs today, took me longer than it should have

These things were designed well, almost no wasted space, I had to chop down the magnet to get it to fit (hard brittle material, nightmare to cut down without proper tools)

Using a Bluetooth antenna I had laying about at get 1 more bar of signal which got me an extra 15m through an additional 2 brick walls

Got a 5dbi antenna arriving today, got to love Amazon same day delivery

Main thing with antennas is most companies lie about the dbi gain, was looking at some 10dbi and people were saying they were worse than the stock antenna they were using, one was listed as a 20dbi directional rubber duck, no such thing, 5, 6 & 9 dbi are the main omnidirectional ones but as I was looking for white Amazon only had 5dbi unfortunately

9dbi & 5dbi

[yamyam]

Thanks for the very informative feedback about the battery!

So let’s see what @AnkerOfficial says about the 13.400 mAh battery is in real just a 6.700 mAh.

Mhhhh …
I am asking myself why the eufy cam (original) needs to be that big then, if the battery pack is just twice as big as my batter in my SMARTPHONE!? And why there are power packs on the markt with similar physical scope but having 15-20.000 mAh!?

Is there any reason eufy, why the battery pack of the eufy cam is so much smaller than advertised, even if its viewed relatively so big?!

[yamyam]

That is really awesome (looking) … excellent work @Haloweenhamster !
One bar is better than no additional bar. So great work and nice extended range!

But i wanna repeat to “put pressure on eufy” (don’t know what “Finger in die offene Wunde legen” is in english):

It is really a shame, that a customers, who payed a lot of hardly earned dollars for his eufy cam, needs to “DESTROY” it and LOSE WARRANTY, not to talk about the “waste” or invest of worthy lifetime, just to finally get some reasonably acceptable range!

@AnkerOfficial @AnkerTechnical
That should give you something to think about.
Bring the eufy range extender … now!
Thanks!