Can Wyze Cam capture its own theft?

Amazon. More info here:

I saw a video of a guy placing his camera on the inside of a window, turning the Night Vision off, and placing a battery powered motion detecting light (Over Lite — Amazon) on the window, outside, by the camera. I have a couple of these lights ordered and will try it this weekend. Hopefully, that setup will eliminate the bug false detections, take a very clear HD video of the person’s face, protect the camera from being stolen (thus allowing it to upload to the cloud), and scare the person off. We’ll see.

Good thread.

Is this essentially correct? What have I got wrong or left out?

Yeah, I keep waiting for the IR light control to be rolled out so my insect false alarms will go down.

Looks good to me. The fact that Streaming is, essentially, without lag, MaxDrive should be the answer BEFORE and AFTER an event…

Thanks, tom123. Here’s a good thread for those looking for some background on MaxDrive (I’d missed it):

From a CES vlog video Loki linked there:

All right, the other big thing that is different than what I originally thought and told you guys is - this is going to be a backup only. And right now, as of this recording (1/30/19) Wyze can only backup from the SD card.

You still have to have microSD cards in every single one of your cameras, and what it does is it will backup from those SD cards to the MaxDrive.

You know, in the future they want to be able to change that to where you can record straight to that single hard drive in the MaxDrive from multiple cameras.

Now, they have tested this up to ten cameras and they have not had any issues, and they have already said that there is not a limit on how many cameras you can backup to your MaxDrive.

Is my impression that the SD card is a weak link (instability requiring physical maintenance: reinstallation, rebooting, etc; card corruption and/or bricking) mistaken?

Maybe the percentage of customers experiencing SD trouble is lower than it appears (if one is judging by the high volume of posts on that topic in this forum.)

What, you’re not a fan of contraptions? :yum:

In support of that last point, I have two cameras that have been set to Record-on-event for three months and I haven’t experienced any instability of the SD card file system. I’ve been reformatting them in the camera about every three weeks and only once have I let a card fill completely and delete oldest events to make room for more (as designed) - no problems.

Update to my Previous Post;

SETUP:
— Wyzecam mounted Inside looking Out, through a Window.
— Night Vision OFF (IR LED’s off).
— 300 Lumen, Motion Detecting, Dusk to Dawn, Battery Powered LED “Puck” Light like the Over Lite (Amazon) mounted Outside on the Window, Inline with the Camera’s View.

BAD:
— At close range, the Over Lite is WAY TOO BRIGHT. I had to cover 95% of the LED’s with Electrical Tape to prevent “Washout”.
— The Motion Sensor of the Over Lite is WAY TOO SENSITIVE. I had to cover the upper 50% of the Sensor with Electrical Tape.

GOOD:
— The Camera provides Motion Alerts, with ZERO False Alerts.
— The Camera Records CONSTANTLY, as long as there is Movement (the Puck Light stays ON).
— Because the IR is OFF, Clarity and Color is excellent.

CONCLUSION:
— For monitoring a Front or Back Door, this Setup checked all of my boxes; albeit, with a little “tinkering”.
— Combining a Battery Powered, Extremely Loud, Audible Alarm like the Swann Driveway Alert (Amazon) mounted Outside, pointing at the Door, with the sudden Puck Light turning on, presents a would-be perpetrator with a Serious Dilemma — “I wonder what ‘Other Surprises’ are in store for me if I continue”.
— Because it is Inside, the Camera would be very difficult to steal.
— The Setup would be WAY TOO MUCH WORK for a thief to dismantle. They are likely to go to the next house.
— This Setup is very good for Security at Night, but doesn’t affect the Camera’s Daytime default.
— It does not address the Outside Mounted Camera with situations of False Alerts and Theft.
— To accomplish the ideal 24 hour Monitoring Device, MaxDrive MUST record Live Streaming. It will be USELESS as a Backup Device.

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Second Update: Have made just a couple of minor tweaks. 1. Purchased a less intense light (about 50 lumens – pack of 3 for $!! on Amazon). Works much better. No “washout” of face detail. 2. Moved the location of the light in relation to camera. Apparently, there exists some kind of interference from the camera that affects the PIR feature of the light. Moving it about a foot away seems to greatly reduce the light coming on at random times. In all, I’m very, very pleased with this setup!

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