I had someone break into my cars. I had a camera (pan 2 I believe) pointing out the window and I have a video doorbell. The camera pointing out the window picked up the headlights coming down the road but then stopped recording. The car stopped at my driveway, broke into my two cars, turned around, and then left. My doorbell never recorded once and my camera in the window never picked any of those actions up. I know this because I am the last house at the end of a private drive. I have tried to talk to support but being that they are only a call center, they are useless and cannot help. They heard the word police once and freaked out that authorities maybe involved so then they completely shut down. When your cameras fail you and you have no evidence for the police, they cannot be involved but these call center individuals do not care. I would like to understand how to better protect my family and my house.
Are you using Cam Plus or do your cameras stop after 12s of recording? Do you have an SD card in your cameras for continuous recording? Those might be the first steps. Upgrade the service on your cams for long cloud recordings, and add SD cards so you can see full-time recording of a few days.
I never thought I would need SD cards so those are not in the cameras. I currently have Lite and was considering Plus but then this incident happened. If my cameras did not fail and I received adequate support then I would have went through with upgrading from Lite to Plus. It is frustrating though as I have been a Wyze customer from before the days when you had to pay. Now it is pay for this, pay for that, oh and our support is not support anymore but rather a call center with scripts to follow. I wish someone at Wyze and not a call center would step in at some point to address all of the failures from cameras to staff at the call center.
I think Cam Plus lite has a 5 minute cooldown between recordings on plug in cams and a lot can happen in 5 min. The battery powered cams have a 1 min. cooldown. Good quality high endurance cards in the cams is the way to go recording 24/7 with or without Cam Plus or Cam Plus Lite.
When I had Cam Plus, rarely did I have Cloud videos within 5 minutes of each other (because I live in a quiet neighborhood). CamPlus Lite with all my v3 cameras having High Endurance SD cards set to Continuous Recording works for me. Also, I never update v3 firmware until I read positive comments on this forum.
I would try getting High Endurance SD cards set to Continuous Recording in your cameras as a first step to see if this works for you too.
That would be a lot of SD cards which is very frustrating that I would now have to invest in all of those. Wyze should have provided cards with their cameras then as I have received them with cellular trail cameras before. I invested in Wyze cameras back before cam lite, plus, or any of those existed. The costs keep piling up for their product and it still does not account for the doorbell not ever working nor their lack of support.
With CamPlus lite, you are getting exactly what you are supposed to get. CamPlus would have continued past the 12 seconds. uSD cards can be set to continuous recording (recommended) or event only. In either case. you would have had recording on the uSD cards.
Personally I have uSD cards of either 64 or 256 GB set to continuous recording in every camera, and I have CamPlus Unlimited on every camera. Both CamPlus and local uSD card recordings each have advantages and limitations. By having both, your chances of getting useful video improves. Also overlapping camera views.
One name brand High Endurance SD card should be about the same cost as 4 months of Cam Plus for one camera. The SD card should last longer than 4 months which is why I suggested trying SD cards before going to Cam Plus. Maybe, try an SD card in 1 or 2 cameras and then evaluate your next steps.I understand that what works for me may not work for you.
I agree with others about adding SD card to at least your primary/high-traffic camera.
But to be honest, even if you had SD card in your camera, depending on the distance and lighting, it may not have been able to capture anything good enough as evidence.
At night license plates are reflective, and unless the people in question were looking straight into the camera it probably would be hard to capture enough facial details. And hardly anyone would be close enough for the doorbell to detect/capture if they were staying in the driveway.
One recommendation I have is to setup a rule to sound the camera siren (if yours have one) when it detects a person during the middle of the night. Hopefully that would deter any would-be thieves.
Another option is to setup some motion sensor lights so anyone approaching the driveway would be greeted with lights.
As for your doorbell camera, if you provide enough evidence that it should have worked, Wyze should be able to at least refund some of its cost. I repeatedly complained about a faulty camera until I got enough $5 gift cards to replace my camera and get a new V3. Now that camera is sitting in my basement, watching almost nothing.