Is a Cam Plus subscription necessary with Micro SD cards?

Is it necessary to get the Cam Plus subscription if you have Micro SD cards in your cameras? I haven’t really been able to find much info about exactly how it works with the recording to the Micro SD card and if I need the subscription as well in order to see any past events. Thanks!

Welcome @maryagraves13

Cam Plus is not necessary if you have an SD Card. However, Cam Plus is necessary if you want to detect AI items like Person, Pet, etc.

In addition, if you want to use Wyze Web View, it will be required as well.

Also note: Without Cam Plus you will only receive Still images of an Event, but then the SD Card should have the feed.

What are you looking to do with the Cameras?

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Different uses - somewhat overlapping. Advantages and disadvantage or uSD card recording and CamPlus. For what it’s worth, I have a uSD card set to continuous recording in every one of my almost 50 operational cameras. They also all have CamPlus. Value in each.
BTW, my CamPlus unlimited renews in a few weeks and I plan on renewing it.

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Welcome to the Wyze User Community Forum @maryagraves13! :raising_hand_man:

I have all my cams recording to 256GB High Endurance SD Cards Continuously and they are all subscribed to Cam Plus. Almost all my cams are for security purposes, not bird watching or baby monitoring.

Here are the decision points that I considered when I got my first cams…

  • I want alert notifications on my phone when my cam sees a Person or Vehicle entering my property. Those are my Threat Objects. I can’t get those without Cam Plus. SD Card recordings do not initiate alert notifications.
  • I want my cams watching my property and alert notifying me every minute of every day. Cams without Cam Plus take a 5 minute nap after they upload an Event and notify me the first time. For the next 5m, they are wall art if not on Cam Plus.
  • I want my cams to record even if the Internet goes down. The only way to do that is with an SD Card Recording continuously.
  • I don’t want the cam to miss anything that might slip by all the internet and AI workings of uploads and object tagging. I want a 24\7 record of everything on a SD Card I can hand to my lawyer without having to download anything from the servers.
  • My 256GB SD Cards all hold more continuous video (21 to 28 days) than the server saves Event clips (14 days)
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Without CamPlus and the internet, how to you view the continuous recordings?

Clarification: Internet is an absolute requirement. Both the Cam and the device with the App must be able to actively communicate with the Wyze Server via the Internet to establish a P2P Live stream. Cam Plus, however, is NOT a requirement.

From your Cam’s Live Stream, depending on the cam model, you would:

Click the “View Playback” bar at the bottom (older cams using the older UI, V3 cam and prior)

Or, click the SD Card icon (newer cams using the new UI, V3Pro and newer)

This is the approach I also take with some of my cameras. I like the ease of quick use with Cam Plus, but I can also appreciate the continuous recording security of the SD Card.

I can neither confirm nor deny that we are looking into creating a 24/7 cloud recording subscription offering as well.

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Depending on my individual camera locations I have a mix. My mission critical cameras have cam plus and continuous recording to SD card, some cameras have only continuous SD recording, and the last few stragglers have events only to SD card.

My hope is that anyone going through these decisions to understand the pros, cons and functions that local storage (SD card) functions and cloud recording functions offer for the individual camera they are hoping to install and where to decide what is best for that use case.

/Edit. Forgot to say that my mission critical cameras also have a second camera nearby with overlapping coverage. Ex porch has doorbell and second camera watching area, driveway has two cameras.

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I was thinking more about this and here is one way the 24/7 recording would be beneficial and how it can be marketed well:

On a lot of my cameras, I use Cam Plus for AI detections/notifications within a detection zone and then I use the SD card to record things outside the detection zone.

For example, I may want my front camera to record EVERYTHING in view, including things that happens in the street (if someone speeds or swerves at my cats, etc), or if a neighbor’s house gets broken into, etc (which actually happened at my last residence, or a nearby neighbor out of view asked me to send them a copy of any cars that passed down the street between 2 am and 4 am when their house was broken into). So I like having 24/7 recording for everything in view in case something happens. However, I don’t want constant notifications about everything that happens in view. I only want notifications for things that happen on MY property. So I use a detection zone.

The problem is that when I use a detection zone, Cam Plus ignores recording all the other stuff that happens outside of my property. I don’t get recordings about things in the street, or across the street, etc. At my last house, someone ran over one of my cats on purpose, but since it was outside the detection zone, it wasn’t in cam plus events. Luckily I had an SD card. Also, when a neighbor asked about their house being broken into or what vehicles traveled down the road around a time they were burgled, those weren’t in cam plus either due to the detection zones.

Yes, that need is served by an SD card, but it could also be met with 24/7 cloud recording for those who prefer that. I am also a believer in redundancy. I have cases where someone wanted to go watch something on an SD card, only to find that the SD card went bad and stopped working and what they wanted to watch was no longer there. Having 24/7 cloud recording would provide some redundancy for those outside-the-detection-zone uses.

I also often do like @Omgitstony described. I will have overlapping coverage with another camera. Then I will have one of them using detection zones for notifications and another saving cloud recordings of everything in view. If I had 24/7 cam plus I’d probably get rid of a few of the redundancies in certain cases as it would be meeting that need. I’d still have some redundancy…for example, even though Wyze is my primary company, I have a couple of Eufy cameras covering my front and back yard just in case Wyze has an AWS outage or something, then I still have something backing them up during those times.

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:scream::scream::scream: WHO WOULD DO THAT!??!? :sob::sob::sob:

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Every one of my cams has a SanDisk 64Gb high endurance SD card except for the Wyze doorbell. The doorbell is the only device with Cam Plus because it does not have provisions for a SD card.

The front of my home has 3 cameras including the doorbell. The back yard has 4, all overlapping. Every cam records 24/7. When motion occurs in the detection zone, it is recorded in the events.

And what kind of sicko would run over a cat? I don’t like cats but I would never end one. This person will continue doing these types of things, and will eventually suffer the consequences. Quite often people who injure pets will also injure children.