Monitoring power consumption of a device that is connected to a managed RocketLinx® Power over Ethernet switch
Winter is setting in, the days have gotten shorter, and the nights longer. After a long cold day you find yourself lying in bed staring at the ceiling. You start thinking about the day’s events and as you drift off somewhere between consciousness and sleep, you start to think about a project that you did this past summer where you deployed several outdoor 802.3at PoE+ cameras for a good customer of yours. The thought of a summer project brings warm thoughts of fishing, camping and swimming… and your mind goes back to the project. You wonder, how are those cameras holding up as each passing day gets colder and colder?
You bold upright in bed in a cold sweat. Did I ever check to see if the cameras’ heaters came on??
If you have ever experienced a moment like this as a surveillance integrator, then we suggest you seek some professional help or take a vacation. Yet checking that your cameras are functioning properly during these winter months and making sure the heaters turn on when needed is probably a regular action item on a lot of integrators’ “to-do” lists across the country.
If in a deployment you have selected 802.3at PoE+ cameras with internal heaters and you had also selected Comtrol’s managed RocketLinx PoE+ switches, you would have had the ability to remotely monitor the amount of power your camera is drawing. When the heater kicks on, then the camera will and should draw more power compared to the amount of power it drew when no heater was needed – as you would expect.
To check power consumption simply log in to the switch interface, open the Power over Ethernet folder, and select PoE Status. It will open a screen where you can see exactly how much power your camera is drawing.
Knowing just how much power a PoE device draws is not only helpful for knowing if a heater has kicked on, though we thought it a fitting scenario for this time of year. Monitoring power consumption of any PoE networked device such as a camera, thermometer or radio can serve as a performance indicator. By using Power over Ethernet and our managed RocketLinx PoE switches for any PoE powered project, you can establish a working baseline for just how much power a given device is drawing under normal conditions and plot that against its performance over time.
For more information about Comtrol’s RocketLinx PoE switches, click here, or email sales@comtrol.com