Composite Video Sag

Did you provide any voltage regulation to power your camera or you just used the battery as-is? If you want stability you must power it with stable voltage too. S.M.

The warping happens towards the end of each day of recording. I have the camera on for about 8 hours a day then I take the battery in at night to charge it. The voltage to the camera never drops below 12v.

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You haven't mentioned anything about re-charging the battery. I assume you do?

When do you re-charge it? Always the same time of day? What happens if you re-charge some other time? If the battery is not being re-charged, how does the system work? Is there a mains power supply in the circuit? What is the camera power requirement? Is your shed being orbited by a magnetic object?

We are not mindreaders. If you want even a reasonable guess at what's going on here, please fill in all the missing details.

The obvious answer is that the transmitter is very sensitive to supply voltage. Eight hours of recording is dropping the voltage. Exact voltage is important. Cheap units might leave out any voltage regulation, and depend on correct voltage. Or your monitor is sagging when your wall heater goes on. Are you running your monitor off wall voltage? Incidentally, lead acid batteries dislike being deeply discharged. They will do a pretty small number of discharge cycles before quitting. Are you measuring that 12.0 volts under load or after you bring it in for charging? What's the loaded voltage at the beginning of the record cycle. What's your meter read? How many amps does your camera draw?

This could be component drift caused by heating, which may be worse at days end. What happens on cloudy/rainy days?

you might also try a car battery for a day, just to slay that dragon

You might try not turning it on for about 4 hours, then see if it occurs around the same time, this will tell you if its due to not enough current from the battery after 8 hours of use or perhaps heat related causes as the shed heats up.If it occurs at the same time regardless of when you turn it on then it is less likely battery related, and if it occurs after approx same amount of run time regardless of when you turn it on it is more likely a battery issue.

If you delay the start time of the recording and it still has a video fault at a particular time of day, you may find its related to brightness levels at a particular time of day. Have seen heaps of cameras that have a meltdown when they get too much or not enough light, usually they will have some of AGC or gain control to limit such distortion but in cheaper cameras sometimes they don't do an overly fantastic job.

hydrogenhead,

I have two wireless IP cameras, one is a Linksys and the other is a LevelOne.

The instruction manuals for both state that video deterioration is common and to momentarily disconnect the power supply to restore video quality.

That having been said, I think in your case, having this happen on a daily basis is unusual.

The fact that this happens at the end of the day as the battery has been discharging all day, I suspect the battery voltage drops below what is required to have the camera operate within factory specifications.

Try the following:

Run an extension cord to the camera location and connect the camera to a plugged in power supply.

If it is impractical to run a cord out to the camera, bring the camera to a cord.

Watch how the camera behaves over a 24 hour period.

The camera draws 150 milliamps and at the end of the day, I measure the voltage. At the end of the day I still have 12v in the battery but I charge it anyway to avoid battery damage. I have brought the camera inside to test it next to the receiver and the problem goes away. This video warping might be due to some sort of interference but I have no idea. It might be due to slight voltage drops.

Could it be happening around the time your neighbours get home, and turn on washing machines/food processors/coffee grinders/whatever else anyone can think of which could be interfering?

You could try a screening box (earthed foil or whatever - obviously leaving an aperture for a line-of-sight to the receiver).