Capture all motion events without requiring sound, so motions of the 5-minute "cooldown" period will not be omitted

There are some important scenarios that are omitted with motion capturing:

  1. If the camera is inside a window facing outside, no outside sound can be detected and the 5-minite “cooldown” will always be enforced, missing all motion events in between just like my camera. (For example, there is a 10 second motion event for every minute, and the camera will miss 4 events of every 5 events because of no sound.)

  2. Even if the camera is outside, if a bad guy comes by within 5-minute of last motion event, and makes no noise, the camera will still be enforcing the 5-minute “cooldown” without capturing any motion events in between since there is no sound made with the motion event.

Using sound as the way of verifying separate motion events is really not working in such scenarios. I’m sure there must be quite some people need the capability of capturing frequent motion events (during certain time period of the day) without having sound related to the motions.

If Wyze can let user have the option to enable capturing frequent motion events without requiring sound, this will help cover much larger usage and user base. And a simple way to lower the burden of online storage space can be setting a online storage limit for each user. So user can change the sensitivity of the motion detection to decide how much motion he wants to capture within the limit of the online storage. I really think this will help both users and Wyze. Thanks.

@pcdmu2002, I moved your post to #ask-the-community due to some misconceptions in your original post. Let me try to clarify some points.

The 12 second motion detection clips are totally independent of the 12 second sound detection clips. The five minute cool down is present whether or not you have sound detection and/or sound recording enabled. The five minute cool down also applies to sound detection clips, but each type of clip has it’s own independent cool down period.

For example, if you had a motion detection at 12:00, you will not get another motion detection clip until after 12:05. However, if there is sound detected at 12:02 (but no sound in the previous five minutes), you will still get the 12:02 sound detection clip.

I’m not sure where you got the impression that the five minute cool down for motion clips is related to sound. But if there is documentation somewhere in the Support section that is misleading, please let us know so we can get it corrected.

At this time, the five minute cool down per detection type can not be waived or adjusted. It is there to allow Wyze to be able to provide free cloud storage.

If you want to bypass the cool down, you can install a microSD card in the camera and then record either continuously or unlimited motion events up to the size of the card.

You can also hop over to the post below and vote for Wyze to implement a subscription that will eliminate or reduce the cool down. Be sure to click the VOTE button at the top:

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Hi Loki,

Thanks for your detailed information. I got the information from email reply of Wyze support, and I was recommended to put my question/suggestion on the Roadmap.

You helped clear the misunderstanding. Now my question is: if I put in a microSD card, it will capture motion events without 5-minute cooldown (without sound), is this correct? And if the miroSD card is full, will it delete the oldest ones (I’ll keep clips at 12 seconds), and keep capturing new motion events? Thank you.

Best,

Kai

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Yes, the SD card can either record continuously or motion event only. In event only mode, it saves every one-minute segment from mm:00 to mm:59 that contains motion while discarding those that don’t. When the card is full, it overwrites the oldest.

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Thank you very much for your clear explanation. This will fit my usage well.

Kai

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I have changed to Local Storage: event recording only. I still only get 12 sec clips every 5 min. How do I change setting so that I get one minute clips stored locally without a “Cooling off period”?

Hello @leebennett2010, the 5 minute cool down is due to AWS (Amazon web service) cloud support this allow you to have free 14 day storage on event recordings.

You can vote for a paid subscription which would void this restriction with the link I’m going to post for you.

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See reply above from Loki How do I do this? “Yes, the SD card can either record continuously or motion event only. In event only mode, it saves every one-minute segment from mm:00 to mm:59 that contains motion while discarding those that don’t. When the card is full, it overwrites the oldest.” I wouldn’t be utilizing the AWS cloud storage but local so should not be hampered by the 5 min rule

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@leebennett2010,

The 12-second cloud stored clips and the SD card storage are separate and independent. They are set up and viewed in different areas of the app.

For the SD card storage, go to the camera settings, then Advanced Settings > Local Storage. That is where you set the SD card to record continuously or event-only (1 minute segments).

To view the SD card recordings, don’t tap the Events tab in the app. That is only for the cloud clips. Instead, tap the View Playback button on the live stream view. How you’ll see a timeline under the video frame so you can go back in time. You can also remove the card from the camera and view or download the 1-minute video files on a computer.

Got it, not what I was expecting but understand now

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There is also a proposed solution for still getting reports of motion during the cool-down in #roadmap.