First time my M1 MacBook battery has let me down…

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3.5 hours on a Zoom call using Camo as my camera and my MacBook Air was giving me the “Your Mac will shut down soon” message.

I mean, I wasn’t too sad because it was a 3.5 hour Zoom call that I was obviously ready to leave, but still…

I assume Camo’s processing much chew a lot of CPU or something, because the MacBook was literally not doing anything else except running Zoom (I was using my iPad for everything else).

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at what resolution?

tried EpocCam?

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I’m not sure, probably the default which I think is 1080? Although zoom only uses 720 so I probably should have changed that.

This was the first time I’ve had need/opportunity to use my iPhone as my camera, so I tried Camo. I do have EpocCam and look forward to trying it out. Certainly a much less-expensive alternative.

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I don’t see how Camo would drain the battery faster if Zoom is capped at 720p.

The 100% passively cooled design might also be a contributing factor.

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I assume Camo’s processing much chew a lot of CPU or something, because the MacBook was literally not doing anything else except running Zoom (I was using my iPad for everything else).

I suspect that it’s your iPhone that’s draining your Mac. The iPhone camera tends to draw quite a bit of power in my experience and my understanding is that most (if not all) of Camo’s processing is performed on the iPhone and not the Mac.

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If the phone is plugged into the Mac, isn’t the Mac also charging the phone? How was your phone battery at the end of it all?

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