I’m renovating my house, and I’d like to set up a couple of Wyze cameras to have a time-lapse of the process. The reno will last 3 months, and I’ve seen other posts mentionning that the time-lapse feature is limited to 30 days, but that isn’t an issue, as after 30 days I can just remove the SD card, copy the file to a PC, and the put back the SD card to start a new 30-day time-lapse. Since I plan to take a picture every hour or so, I don’t think I’ll have space issues.
I do have a few questions :
1- is it possible to only take pictures from say 6 am to 6 pm every day ? or even better, every WEEKday ?
2- is it possible to get a notification only the first time in the day that the camera detects movement, and then ignore all movement until the next day ? IFTTT ?
3- Since this is a reno, power will probably be cut from time to time, sometimes for long periods. I’m planning to buy a USB power bank to supply power to the camera during those times. Right now, it seems the largest power banks are in the 25000-30000 mAh range :
3a- how long would the power bank last if the only action taken by the camera is taking the time-lapse pictures, e.g. does the camera use less current if it’s only taking pictures as opposed to detecting movement/taking video ? What if I want to be able to connect remotely to get a Live stream from time to time ?
3b- anyone know if those power banks can remain plugged into the wall 24/7, so whenever current is switched back on, then the power bank would be recharged ?
Unfortunately most of the available USB battery packs will not power a load at the same time that they are charging. I have one that does, but that manufacturer no longer allows that function - argh! I have reports that there is one, but I have not tried them yet.
What you could do is use something like this. Use a 12V gel-cell battery (similar to what is commonly used in UPS systems) with a suitable charger. Then hook a 5V regulator to that to power the camera. If long outages are expected then use a larger battery.
setup a schedule on the camera to turn is off for the times you DONT WANT IT TO RUN and when the camera turns back on at the scheduled time the time lapse starts right back up. this is also a great feature for people that want to do multi-day lapse but dont want to have it capture night time or things like that.
remember to always test everything and make sure its running the way you want it to.
I have not tested turning/ or stopping power completely to a camera but it seems like it should behave in the same manner. I make no guarantees on that one though. a while back this nearly same question was asked and a few of the mavens took it upon ourselves to test it and much to our surprise the scheduling worked flawlessly with the time lapse. it only takes a minute to test a given hypothesis such as this and if I remember when I get home I will try it out.
