I have three solar pan cameras. One was automatically put onto the free month trial of the subscription. All three have micro SD cards. According to the AI help, I should be able to record video of events on all three cameras. I got a notification of an event on one of the cameras not on the free sub. It was a picture, not a video. When I checked the camera itself, It had no events recorded, video or otherwise. Looking more deeply into the AI help, it says this is a “known problem,” then checking that article it starts talking about Cam Plus Lite sub, which I later discover doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t for 4 years. I guess that explains why all the step by step instructions have steps to click things that don’t exist in the app. But now I am back to why didn’t this camera record a video, because the AI tells me you CAN record video with SD cards installed, you DON’T need a sub.
So can a real living human being tell me…. do I have to pay these people money in order to record video of events or not? Cause everything I’ve been able to find so far (excluding the 4 yrs old bad info) says I should be able to. Thanks
No, a subscription is not necessary, though all Wyze Cams have some feature benefits with a subscription and Wyze tries to encourage subscribing when you attempt to view recordings from your microSD cards within the app.
You were probably looking at this on the app’s Events tab and saw the event’s thumbnail. Is that correct?
Two questions:
How did you check?
How do you have recording set? Specifically, I’m wondering about Solar Cam Pan’s Live Stream screen’s Settings ➜ MicroSD Card settings.
If you have a microSD card inserted and set to record (continuous recording is possible only when the Cam is plugged into an AC power source[1]), then you should be able to see your event recordings in an least a couple of ways:
On Solar Cam Pan’s Live Stream screen, tap the SD Card button in the icon strip beneath the live view pane. This should show you the microSD recording timeline that you can navigate (swipe along the timeline to see event markers, use spread and pinch gestures to zoom in and out) for finding event recordings.
From the app’s Events tab, tap an event to see the thumbnail. If the overlay menu isn’t visible, then tap a blank area of the screen to activate it. With the menu visible, tap SD Card. I believe this should take you to Solar Cam Pan’s microSD recording timeline, but when I tried it just now it took me to the Cam’s main plugin page (the Live Stream screen), so I had to go back to Step 1 as noted above.
As a side note…
It actually does exist, and some long-time Wyze users who subscribed when it was still available continue to use it, but it’s been closed to new subscriptions for a few years.
I feel your disappointment with the AI-generated “answers”. I hope this helps.
The Cam takes DC power input but using a typical AC/DC USB-A power adapter would accomplish this. ↩︎
Thanks for the response. That made me poke around some more, and I THINK I’ve figured out what’s going on. The alert is just that… it takes me to the app and shows me a pic of the thing that caused the motion. (annoyingly, there is what looks a LOT like a “play video” arrow button to the bottom right of the pic but it takes me to a “ADD CAMERA TO CAM PLUS” ad page. I get a LOT of those on the app) I have to actually go to the home page, select the camera, then click around until it lets me play from the SD card. Then it’s a really awkward left/right scroll with time across the top and good luck finding the right spot. The alert apparently doesn’t link you to the actual event, like, I don’t know, 99% of people would expect? It’s not very intuitive and not the least bit user friendly, but at least it appears events ARE recording as videos. Even if not paying a sub means i can’t have events more closely spaced than 1 min, and can’t record more than 12s.
The play video button is to play the cloud video, which if you don’t have a subscription, doesn’t exist and will just give you an advertisement. Right below that is an “SD card” icon which will play the video from your SD card. Agreed that this is confusing. You do not have to go to the home page, you can tap the SD card button right on the event page and it takes you directly to the event video.
Yeah, that’s why I wrote Step 2 in my previous post. That button causes confusion as a prompt to subscribe. You have to use the SD Card button instead when you’re on that screen and want to view an event video without a subscription. (I thought the “play” button was probably still there and behaving that way, but I didn’t want to make an assumption about the non-subscriber experience because I’ve been using a Cam Unlimited subscription for a while, and I know Wyze has been making some UI changes. Thank you for confirming that this behavior is still the same.)
Events should show markers on the timeline to make things easier to find. Especially with Solar Cam Pan that’s battery powered and doesn’t do continuous microSD recording, finding events should be relatively straightforward, but maybe this is something they still need to work on since this is a relatively new product.
If you’re viewing a thumbnail from the Events tab and tap the SD Card control, then for some other Cams the app navigates directly to that point on the microSD card recording timeline to play the event. I just tested this with a Cam v4, and that was my experience. Maybe it’s not doing this for Solar Cam Pan because of that “Increased Battery Usage” speedbump? (I haven’t ever ticked the “Don’t show this to me again.” box to see if that would fix it.)
I’m not sure what the limitations are on Solar Cam Pan without a subscription. With a lot of the Cams, there’s a mandatory 5-minute cooldown between events, but if the Cam in question is “wired” and able to record continuously to microSD you still get everything recorded but just wouldn’t have an event notification within that window.
Odd, can’t see why a battery cam would need to eliminate that shortcut. I guess another reason to avoid the battery cams.
Hopefully it at the very least has the forward and back buttons on the SD card screen (as well as the list of events) so you can easily navigate between them?
Actually even if set to “motion only” or whatever, the SD card still records all events, but it will only tag/notify a max of 1 every 5 mins. There will be recordings in between the “events” if there is motion (or sound, or whatever is enabled). Most of my cams are continuous but a few have no reason to be, and I noticed quite a while ago that they all behave this way.
Like I said, it may be because I haven’t “permanently” cleared the speedbump[1], or it may be a buggy pathway in the app for these Cams, but I haven’t specifically tested that.
The playback pane shows those overlay controls (as well as the forward/back 30 seconds).
That’s essentially what I was indicating, though not in so many words.
If you tap the SD Card button on Solar Cam Pan’s plugin page, the app displays an “Increased Battery Usage” pop-up that the user has to “Cancel” or “Continue”. It briefly describes the impact of microSD recording/playback on the camera’s battery. ↩︎
@crease mentions that it may not be there or may not work right on that model of cam (maybe a bug they’re working on). But even on the SD card screen for the cam, you should be able to see a list of events and jump directly to them? My cams (non battery ones) also have forward and back buttons overlaid on the video that jumps to the next/previous event.
Fair enough, you just mentioned “continuous” so was noting that isn’t a requirement, since that was not clear to me in the beginning that it does actually record motion during the “cool down”, even if not set to continuous. Before I stumbled upon that, I never would have expected it.
I set my “wired” Cams to Continuous microSD recording, so that’s where my brain is, and I didn’t think to mention that this could also apply if someone has microSD recording set for Events Only on those Cams that allow it.
Yeah most of mine are continuous but I have a few OGs that there is really no need for it, so I just tossed some old 32G cards I had laying around in them and set them to events only. Was a bit surprised when I first realized they were recording motion during the cool down period, just not tagging or notifying on it.
@crease mentions that it may not be there or may not work right on that model of cam (maybe a bug they’re working on). But even on the SD card screen for the cam, you should be able to see a list of events and jump directly to them? My cams (non battery ones) also have forward and back buttons overlaid on the video that jumps to the next/previous event.
i get a list on the camera’s page, but as far as i can tell, it’s only events for that day. maybe not? dunno. I dont get many events and they are usually just me leaving or returning, or the deer moseying thru the area, eating whatever they eat. If i click all events, that’s when i get that horizontal timeline. I haven’t seen a next event button but i’ll look for it next time.
I think that depends on how many events your Cam has seen recently. When I visit a Solar Cam Pan’s Live Stream screen just now, I see events from today and yesterday listed in the Recent Events section. If you tap the SD Card icon and begin navigating its horizontal timeline, you should see a icon that allows you to set the timeline for previous days.
If you click the All Events button at the bottom of the Recent Events list on Solar Cam Pan’s main Live Stream screen, then the app should take you to the Events tab and its vertical list/timeline of events and their respective thumbnail images.
