I have 2 Cam v3 pro running with a cam plus plan. My wifi is through a sim card router that has max 20GB of cellular data. It pretty much went through the whole 20GB of data in 1 week.
It was working perfectly fine during the first week but now it’s not because the sim card data has been throttled to be slower.
Any one run into this issue and how to solve it?
Some possible resolutions:
upload only event footage – is this possible?
if i lower the video quality to SD would this be enough for 20GB of data for a month?
How are you using the data? Streaming the camera live somewhere? How many events are you getting?
You could disable cloud events and only save events to a SD card in the camera. You’ll loose app notifications, but you’ll gain back all the monthly data usage depending on how your using the data now
Lowering data usage can be achieved by reducing the image quality, but I would think that your data overage may be due to quantity rather than quality.
Every movement in the FOV produces an upload. With Cam Plus, that means back to back full length uploads. Without it you have image only uploads every 5m.
Best way to limit data use is to limit uploads. Study your Event Videos. What movement triggers them. If it is the same bush or tree or shadow or leaves, use the Detection Zone to block it out so it doesn’t trigger an upload. Reduce the sensitivity of the cam so it doesn’t trigger an upload at the drop of an acorn. Adjust your cam’s FOV away from high movement areas.
I run a combination of V3’s and V3 pans on one of my cellular based networks.
This particular network has 16 cams on it, they average about 7-10Gb/month each depending on activity.
Below is a screenshot of the data used by these 16 Wyze cams on CamPlus Unlimited.
I only view the v3 pro about 1 hour at most per day and its only using 140MB/day there. I do view that mostly using Wyze Alexa plugin and the Fire TV stuff can’t do 2k res. Its probably SD quality there. That’s how you can get it lower.
Actual streaming of the cam will eat data. The v3 non-pro, I also have, streaming a lot at probably 1080p and its eating about 6.6GB/day. As a comparison.
I guess i am a bit confused on how the camera data works. Isn’t all(full 24hrs) the footage get uploaded to the cloud? Because I can access all the SD card footage on the app whenever I want.
I am not understanding the above when you also stated this:
Can you explain?
Only motion detected clips get uploaded to the cloud and use data. If your phone or device with the app is on the same network then more data will be used when you download the clip from the cloud.
If you have SD card recording enabled, it records to the SD card in the camera and no data is used at that time.
No. The cam does not upload to the cloud continuously. Only when it is Motion Activated. It will upload video until the motion stops. The fewer motion activations you have, the fewer uploads.
Motion Activated Events Uploaded to the Cloud are viewed in the Events Tab and are being streamed from the cloud back down to the phone.
SD Card footage is seperate video from the Cloud Events. This records either Continuous or Events Only and is saved in 1m segments to the SD Card. These are accessed thru the Playback feature.
Oh shoot I guess I was understanding this wrong. So here’s the full explanation on my set up, I should have add that into my previous msg.
I have that sim card router at house #1 and I access my WYZE app at house #2. Completely different WIFI connection. So, if I turn off events let say, would my house #1 sim card router not use any data than?
I guess I am confused how I am able to access SD footage from house #2 when it’s not even on the same WIFI or if it’s not being uploaded.
Cams at house #1 will use house #1 upload data when they experience a motion event and upload a video to the cloud server. These are the videos that show in the Events Tab. Viewing Event Tab videos will always use download data on the network the phone is on as these are streamed from the Wyze cloud servers.
If you then watch those videos from the Events Tab while at house #2, download data will be used at house #2.
If you live stream the cams located at house #1 while on the house #2 network, you will be using upload data from house #1 and download data to house #2.
If you view the SD card recorded and stored Playback video of cams located at house #1 while on the house #2 network, you will again be using upload data from house #1 and download data to house #2.
The only time viewing Live Stream and SD Card Playback will not use data is if both the cam and the phone are on the same local WiFi network.
In both the case of watching the Live Stream from the cam and the Playback access of the SD Card recorded Playback video, you can access these from almost anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. Wyze enables this by creating a direct Peer to Peer (P2P) video stream session from the cam to the phone that does not travel through their servers. It streams direct from the cam to your phone.
The features of the cams on your account are not limited by the network, even mobile 5G \ LTE, that you use for the app. They are true IP Cams.
ohh I see. Yah, this makes a lot more sense. Thanks for the explanation.
Is there a way to set up events so they just mark a spot in my SD footage without actually uploading using house #1 data?
OR any other way to set this up so events don’t get uploaded using house #1 data.
I am not sure if you know what I mean by those marks but I wouldn’t mind not having events but just access the SD footage the only issue I see is I wont know what day/time to check if there’s no markings on the SD footage.
No. The icons that appear on the SD Card footage timeline are actually pulled in real time from the Server Events List of uploaded Events and then overlayed on the timeline when you view the timeline. It updates from the server each time you view the timeline. If you have an SD Card that stores more than 14 days, you will see that the Event Icons will stop at 14 days since that is all the history that is saved on the server. So, No Event Uploads = No Events = No Event Icons on the Timeline.
BUT… If you have Events Only selected within the Record to microSD settings of the Advanced Cam Settings menu, only Motion Events will be saved onto the SD Card. These will not be motion clips though. The SD Recordings are saved in individual 1 minute MP4 files from second 0.0 to 60.0. If a minute contained motion it gets saved.
The only way to prevent uploads of Motion Events is to turn off Event Recording. This means no notifications as well since these are server functions also.
The only hope to reduce data use and still get any notifications is to use highly restricted Detection Zones, reduce the sensitivity considerably, and adjust the FOV away from objects that move regularly. You may also consider using Rule Schedules to automatically turn off Motion Detection during peak upload times or non critical hours.
Ok understood. Is there a way to set up events to be just images? I would imagine the data that’s being uploaded would be way less and maybe a good work around?
Remove the cam from Cam Plus. You loose all the AI Tagging features and the cam can only upload one image every 5 minutes max (subject to 5 minute cooldown between uploads).
Correct. Sort of… Without Cam Plus, you will only get Motion Notifications for anything that moves… Be it a bird, bug, or branch. And, once it notifies, it will not upload or notify for the next 5m. That is the mandatory cooldown period. You will also loose AI Tagging for Pet, Vehicle and Package.
However… The V3Pro does have on board Person Detection AI which is a fraction as good as the Server side AI which is what Cam Plus uses. So you will get a Person tagged upload thumbnail, but you will not get a notification for it without Cam Plus and it will still be subject to a 5m cooldown.
No, sorry. I have Cam Plus Unlimited on 26 cams with fiber internet with no cap. So I don’t meter my cams. It would be a fraction of the use though.
You can unassign that cam from Cam Plus now in the app, Account → Services, and let it upload a Motion Event Snapshot or two. Then download it to check the file size and do the math.
