Gotta say that I agree with most of the comments in this topic. I will gladly pay for this as a “premium” feature. When we use child care it would be nice to schedule recordings that get downloaded so that I can archive them. For now I’ll just pull the SD cards and download manually but man… I may have to dump these cameras and switch to another service if it becomes too cumbersome.
Couldn’t agree more… if we’re not going to be able to get an API, I could very easily write my own Node.js logic to use these files available from samba!
@appleguru is it correct to say that this DIrect Access capability has been blocked by Wyze? (security improvements)
It looks like the authorization hack has been blocked.
I was lost at DNS spoofing, but I had a few moments of hope as I read through the description. Now dashed against the rocks of dispair.
1 Like
+1
After scrolling through three years of posts asking for this simple feature, I now have a healthy case of buyer’s remorse. I have no interest in storing any footage of my cameras to the cloud and thought it was great that video files can be captured on an sd card locally. The need to get up on a ladder and completely removing the cameras from the mount because my cameras are in a housing, reversing the process and repositioning the cameras is something I do not look forward to when it is windy and below freezing outside.
To me, this is a safety issue, having to climb up on a ladder when we have snowy and/or icy conditions just to retrieve something that could be easily accomplished through a few simple commands on a computer or phone.
3 Likes
Couldn’t agree more. Too bad, I was forced to pivot to another approach for my camera / smart home setup for our new construction home.
Still hopeful they’re going to do more for the community in this arena.
1 Like
Earlier this month, my wife fell on the ice on our street. The Wyze Cam caught it along with the police and rescue squad response. Later, when I wanted to download the footage for safe-keeping, I remembered it was a “watch-and-record”. As I only had 10 minutes at the time, I only watched about 5 minutes. A couple of days later when my wife was back home and I could spare the time to record the 45-50 minutes of video I wanted to save, it was no longer on the card. This was understandable due to limitations of the SD card, but VERY disappointing.
My point is that I wanted to immediately and quickly download the relevant part of the video data on the SD card at the time, Not having this feature (apparently requested in some form or another for 3-4 years) led to the loss of this important video. I purchased my Wyze cams to capture events like this and the current design failed me.
It would be good to know if Wyze is going to provide this capability anytime soon as I really like the quality of the camera, but I can’t risk something like this happening again and may need to consider other options much as I would prefer not to.
1 Like
I hope you wife has recovered from this ice incident.
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Wyze’s official answer on this is “that’s what Cam Plus is for.” (or a bigger SD card.)
Reolink is expected to announcenew firmware with FTP support (i.e. on camera ftp server functionality) tomorrow January 20, 2022.
Of course each brand brings it own set of trade-offs.
Reolink already provide support the other way around. i.e the camera writes to ftp server as a storage target.
1 Like
@YetAnotherDave she is definitely on the mend and able to do more things now without a lot of assistance. Thank you for asking. 
I am a Cam Plus subscriber and I would like to continue to support Wyze and their products. Cam Plus is a work in progress and I’m sure will improve as time goes by. It isn’t without issues. For example, in the 35-40 minutes of the fall incident, it missed capturing several events including the arrival of the ambulance and when the police car left. There were probably other missing segments as well. I’ve also noticed other events that didn’t seem to trigger on my other cameras (e.g., animals in the backyard that failed to be noticed), but those events aren’t that important to me. Capturing video of accidents and porch pirate is important.
'The camera did record everything, but the camera and SD card were not safely accessible to me to remove to grab the video files. I’d be happy to bump up the SD card from the present 32 GB, but the present system of viewing to download the video is not acceptable to me.
I am investigating other options that will give me the functionality that I (and probably a lot of other people) desire and I’d like to stay in the Wyze ecosystem if at all possible. The people at Wyze are bright folks and I’m confident that they could address our concerns if they choose to do so.
It’s hard to stay in one ecosystem, I’ve tried on a number of occasions. The trick for me is to minimize the number of apps. I do my remote camera access using Home Assistant (useful for local access too). The Amcrest, Reolink and I’m sure other Dauhua based brands have useful but clunky built-in web servers that allow for file/video clip download (single camera access). Amcrest View Pro (PC and phone) provides mulit-camera access.
I’m happy with Wyze V3 (+RTSP) , I have V1 and V2 also. I’m new to Amcrest and am very happy with the 5MP resolution, Outdoor, POE camera and Home Assistant integration. An old requirement that I never worried about in the past is availability. Prices are up and so many choices are just out of stock. A good time to patiently investigate other brands/options.
At the risk of bike shedding, http or ftp should work fine and be WAY easier to implement.
If the camera was visible in the wifi network, it would be very easy to see and be able to transfer video files from the camera’s SD card to the computer
That’s true (an ftp server on the camera would be nice), but with Wyze the clunky playback/local-record) method OR RTSP to DVR/ffmpeg/other are your only options. If easy remote access to the SDcard is a high-priority then there are better options available.
Wyze is optimized for easy setup/cloud acces/low cost entry point. No so much for the topic of this thread (or the RTSP threads). i.e. Optimized for 95%+ of their users.Cam Plus+
Note: this thread is in its 4th year…
@darwin-t said “It would be very easy…” – you would think so, but in practice it is not. You can do the very tedious playback & record method but not a winner. And if you don’t know the approximate time of the event, the scrubbing functionality built into the app leaves something to be desired.
@YetAnotherDave My use case is that I need to be able to access recorded material quickly, easily, and not have it go away after a day or two later (when the SD card deletes older files). There are a number of ways to meet those goals. The current solution (video stored on camera available via playback/record or Cam Plus) leaves something to be desired. It’s not a bad out-of-the-box approach, but after four years, I would have expected more refinements. You are right about easy setup and low cost and maybe 95% of the users don’t care about my use case, but I suspect that if they use Cam Plus, they don’t know how many events they are missing.
If improvements aren’t forthcoming, and they probably aren’t since they are focusing on rolling out other new products, At this point, I don’t see much of a reason to continue to use Cam Plus and will be looking for better alternatives for at least my “critical” cameras, which is a shame since I want to support Wyze. I have flashed other firmware on one of my Pan Cam 2 units and it shows great promise. I can stream and access the recordings on the camera’s file system. That may be the way forward for me.
1 Like
I’m devastated to learn recently from recent articles and an announcement from Wyze that this 8th most requested wishlist item/feature has been possible for the last several years, and has only recently been disabled on all but the V1 cam now. 
For the last several years there has actually been a way to access our camera SD card files on our secure networks. None of us knew this existed, and recent complaints made this feature get disabled on all but the V1 cams now.
A few quick points: It could only be accessed on your private secure network, so no outside hackers or strangers could ever access it. It was only accessible by anyone with permission to be on the secure network, and you could browse and download the files from the SD card exactly like we’ve all been requesting for YEARS now.
I wish Wyze hadn’t “fixed” that feature. Now I want some V1 cams if they still have this feature enabled.
With all the dishonest fearmongering going on about this for sensationalism clickbait and ratings, I expect Wyze will be weary about looking into activating this again any time soon now, and I can’t say I blame them…thanks a lot to the media for their lies about the non-risk. Why couldn’t the media have been honest that only people with access to the secure network could ever access anything anyway, just like we’ve been asking for.
6 Likes
Maybe it’s time for you to reevaluate your opinion of this company. People have been alluding to is a possibility that everything is not as they say…
My opinion of Wyze is the same as it has always been. They’re a great company that has disrupted the market in so many categories, and caused immeasurable innovation and competition in several market areas to make things so much more affordable and better. I love their dedication to single-digit profit margins. I want them to continue disrupting the markets in as many places as they can and I will support that effort because I really believe in that idea in general. I do have devices from lots of other companies, including close competitors to Wyze, but Wyze is forcing so many of them to compete with lower margins too and I love that.
They’re also still a Private company, not a public company (which is a big difference here IMO) and I don’t think they’ve done anything that almost any other non-publicly traded company would not have also done in a similar situation. That’s not to say that there weren’t other options or things they COULD have done differently, just that there was obligation or expectation to do so considering there was no breach or incident that ever occurred and private companies do not have to report on every single security update or patch they make or detailed disclosures about every line of code especially when there is no known incident at all). I am saying I wish I would’ve known using this feature was possible for the last few years. I totally would’ve been doing this on all my cams on purpose. I personally wish it was still there on all the cams, or at least turned into a toggle for those of us who want it to be there for us to access our SD card files on our secure network that only we have access to, as though it was any other Network Drive shared on our network. That’s my main point here. I would love for this feature/wishlist to be made a option [again] for all our cams, even if it’s just a toggle we opt in to.
2 Likes
I recently equipped an entire property with wyze cams and SD cards. I love the simplicity of use.
There was an event I need from a camera which is mounted on a pole. Physical access is not possible.
How do I download 7 hours of footage? It’s quite unclear what my options are.
If this is genuinely not possible (without recording at 1x), they’re gonna have to come down.
Better start pulling them down!
2 Likes
…and definitely before the critical footage gets overwritten by new stuff…
2 Likes