Canary Flex devices have a rechargeable battery designed to last months on a single charge with normal usage.
How long the battery lasts and what defines normal usage depends on a number of factors, including Watch Live usage, how much motion activity is in the area, whether night vision is activated, your Wi-Fi router/environment, the temperature, and placement of the device.
Motion detection and usage
Canary Flex uses the most energy when recording motion with night vision activated. The more activity it is detecting daily and the longer it is activated, the more battery it will use. Motion detection will reduce your battery from 1-2 months on a full charge to less than a week if recording constantly.
To reduce the frequency of recorded activity, configure your device to be set to private while in Home mode and turn on Auto-mode switching, especially if the device is indoors. You can customize Auto-mode switching in your Modes settings.
Note: Home Mode can only be edited with Premium Service.
You can also control the recording range of your Canary Flex. Adjusting the range of your device can help conserve power, allowing your Canary Flex to record for even longer on a single battery charge.
Note: To learn more about adjusting your PIR sensitivity, visit How can I adjust the recording range of my Canary Flex?.
Wi-Fi connection
Canary Flex needs to be connected to the internet in order to record video. If the Wi-Fi signal is weak, it could cause your device to lose connection to the local network.
If your Canary intermittently disconnects from the internet, repeatedly searching for the network could shorten its battery life.
When operating wire-free mode, Canary Flex uses a low-power standby state. If the device loses its connection to our servers while unplugged, the device will attempt to re-establish the server connection less often than it does when wired - this is in order to preserve battery life.
To learn more about improving your Canary's connection, visit How can I improve Canary's connection?.
Low temperatures
Canary Flex has an operating temperature range of -4° to 113 °F with deviations permitted to 122 °F. At temperatures below 40 °F (4.4 °C), the extended-life, rechargeable 6700 mAh lithium-ion battery is less effective at holding a charge and will also take longer to recharge.
Placement
Place your device to eliminate as much background activity as possible while still monitoring the desired area. If your device is operating in wire-free mode and constantly recording activity, even more so when the environment is dark, the battery will drain faster.
Device placement is particularly important if the devices recording range is set to long range as the more background activity your device picks up the further it will reduce battery life. To learn more about device placement, visit How does Flex detect motion on battery?
Power Alerts
Let Canary Flex tell you when it needs to be charged. Keep an eye on your battery level right on the Home Screen of the Canary app, or enable power alerts to be reminded when your device needs to be charged again.
How to enable Power Alerts:
1. Open your Canary App.
2. From the Dashboard tap the gear icon in the top right corner.
3. Tap My devices, and choose your Canary Flex.
4. Tap Power Alerts.
5. Tap the toggle next to ‘Power Source Alerts’ and ‘Full battery alerts’, ensuring that they are both green.
6. Power alerts have been activated successfully.