Is it better to connect base station for outdoor camera via cable to router or is wifi connection just as good? I wonder if there is a difference between connection between those two options. Right now I am connected via wifi, but I could plug the cable to router, if that would make the signal better.
Do you put microSD card in the camera or in the base station… why there are two? Is the micro SD in the base for all outdoor cameras (in case you have more than 1)? If I have one microSD card for 1 camera, should I just put it in the base, instead of in the camera?
I don’t know what the wireless connection is between the Outdoor Camera and the Base Station. However:
Since that connection can only handle 4 cameras and is terribly slow for SD card downloads, I would say it is the bottleneck. Thus, it probably won’t matter whether you use wireless WiFi or wired Ethernet at the Base Station.
Also, 802.11n single-stream WiFi has basically the same throughput as the 100Mbit Ethernet interface that is on the Base Station.
Also, the camera stream is never higher than 200KB/sec, so a 1.6Mbit connection would be plenty (if their capitalized ‘B’ means bytes).
That said, I personally use a WiFi connection, so I can put the base station halfway to the Outdoor Camera.
A SD card in the camera can store captured video, photographs, time-lapses, and scheduled recordings.
You can access those recordings from More > Album, but any recordings over a few minutes in length you should just go out and get the card and view it on a computer. Large downloads are very slow on the Outdoor Camera, and will take almost as long as the recording length.
A SD card in the base can only backup event clips of 12 seconds or less for up to 4 cameras. Those same events are still available from the cloud, so it is a protective measure only. A SD card in the base will not store captured video, photographs, time-lapses, scheduled recordings, or even backup Cam Plus event clips.
Thank you for comprehensive answer!
From what I gathered on other cameras I already have, the microSC will also allow me to do playback of all the past, since the clips saved to the cloud/microSC might not capture all event (if it is lengthy), or in case I want to look back. I realized that cloud stores only clips, and those can be deleted. I have one camera without the microSD card and I was not able to do playback at all, only look at clips.
Another reason I wanted only to use microSD in the base is that the outsdoor cam can be stolen… so I am surprised that base stores less. I can see why, however.
Yes. On a powered Pan, V2, or V3, the SD card can be set to record 24/7, and any clip you call up will have a button to jump to that exact moment on the SD card. So if the default 12 seconds every 5 minute clip doesn’t capture the whole incident, you can jump directly to that moment on the SD card to see all you had the card configured to record.
However, the Outdoor Cam is mostly powered down all the time to conserve battery power, and only powers up when it has to. So no 24/7 recording available there. You can fake it by creating a 24-hour ‘scheduled’ recording, but that is temporary, and will kill your battery quickly.
