QUICK QUESTION: Could someone please tell me if I can record continuously without paying for Cam Plus if I put a 32 gig SD card in each camera? I understand that it will only save 12 seconds to the cloud, but can it record and store continuously to the SD card without Cam Plus?
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Yes (for the V2 and V3).
Not to beat a dead horse, but to be clear, since I live in a cul de sac (meaning very little street traffic,) I don’t need person detection (to avoid false motion alerts from cars) and I’m good with local storage on the SD card, so there’s really no significant benefit for me to get Cam Plus.
Am I correct?
Correct
The only other reason you might want it is to have notifications not be limited to once every five minutes.
Example: a plant blows in the wind, setting off the motion detection and notification. 4 minutes later a person walks by, you would not get that notification because it hasn’t been 5 minutes since the plant motion set it off.
Yes, in fact, I often refer to my micro SD card to view a video because the camera itself does not sometimes record an “event” at all, (despite that I actually see the “event” happening as it happens), or the Cloud video is not long enough even with a CamPlus subscription.
I think you’re mixing up SD card and cloud recording.
When you claim, “camera itself does not sometimes record an “event” at all”, that’s true only for cloud recording. SD card recording does not miss an “event”. It just does not send notification.
The missed cloud recording is due to “cool down”, an attempt to limit online file hosting cost. Getting rid of the cooldown, along with removing the 12-sec max recording limitation, these are what Cam Plus subscription service offers.
Edit –
I think what’s needed is for Wyze to post “local event” notifications within the app. This will satisfy a lot of folks. But will lessen demand for Cam Plus. And there will be no notification delays 
Actually, I do have CamPlus and so there is no “cooling down” period yet, it does miss events of a person walking by orca car going by. That same event is caught on the SD card every time. I’m only alerted that the cam missed an event when the other cam alerts as it passes it… 20 seconds after the event happens.
I cancelled my Cam Plus 2 months ago and really do not miss it. I have an SD card and I catch the action. I just do a timelapse video. Cam Plus has too many errors and glitches that are never never fixed, and half of the events I can’t see anyway and have to rely on the SD card so I figured I may as well just not pay for a service that to me is useless.
The only issues with using only the SD card is if someone steals the camera… there goes the video… and trying to “look back” on hours of video to see an event when you’re not sure of the time is very, very frustrating. Their scrapping of video on the card timeline is cumbersome at best… and that could be intentional to keep people locked into CamPlus. (I still get LOTS of false detections… even with strict “detection zones” that seem to be ignored.)
Only when SD recording continuously. When on events only recoding, it’s easy to skip forward/backward to the next event.
I wish Wyze would add some sort of an index to allow doing the same functionality for continuous recording.
You bring up a good point. The only issue that I wonder about is if you don’t have CamPlus does the camera still have a “cool down” period on the SD CARD, too? I leave my card on continuous record because I have found that, even using CamPlus, some events are missed. I think the viewing of events on the card is purposefully tedious to keep cam owners subscribed to CamPlus.
No “cooldown” on SD card recording. It’ll record as long as there is still motion.
Yeah, SD card doesn’t have a recording cooldown, just a notification cooldown. So it will always record 24/7 if you set it up to do that, but you will only get notifications a maximum of once every 5 minutes if you don’t have cam plus.
You can look at it that way, or in my case, I look at the notification system as applying only to the cloud recording.
It just so happens that it partially maps to the SD card recording as well, if no CamPlus.
Thanks for letting me know that information!
Can I watch videos recorded on the SD card on the app, or do I need to remove the SD card from the camera in order to watch recorded videos?
You can watch video from the SD card using the app either by pressing the ‘Playback’ button on the live feed page when it is in portrait mode (will jump 5 minutes back in time), or pressing the Playback button below an Event video (will jump to the beginning of the event, but on the SD card).
You can also remove the card and view it on a computer if you like.
Thank you!
I live in a pretty rough neighborhood and I have yet to see someone try and steal a $25 cam. It still makes no sense to pay $2 a month for a sub on one cam when you can’t even view it because of the constant error of 06, 07 09 or whatever new glitch they come up with. So even if the cam gets stolen Cam Plus is still useless if all it does is gets glitched. But a stolen cam is pretty rare if you hide it well or in a spot that would require effort for someone to get up there to remove. Timelapse helps with seeing all activity and you can set SD card to events only. I have done comparison and the SD card is 95% more accurate than the Cam Plus.
I have Cam Plus on my doorbell camera because there is no SD card slot.