If you put a 32GB card in your camera (V2, V3, and Pan Cam), you will be able to use the continuous recording option. But this will only be to the SD Card. The 12 second recording and 5 minute cool down has to do with the Cloud storage and notifications. A number of us paid for the year plan of CamPlus to get the AI processing, longer recording times, and not requiring a 5 minute cooldown.
I have most of the Wyze equipment, and personally have not had any major issues with my setup or use. I do acknowledge that the V1 sensors had an issue where they wold be bricked if the battery went dead, but those sensors are no longer available. The V2 Sensors work very well and cover greater distances.
That’s essentially what a person has to do. I had messaged with a customer service rep who told me that the new motion sensors and hub do not require a subscription to work, however, you are required to sign up for the subscription in order to purchase the sensors.
I’m glad to see others fed up with this new introduction. its extremely money grabby!!!
To be clear, you do not need a monitoring subscription in order to purchase sensors. You do however need to get a 1 month of monitoring for $5 in order to buy the hub.
Of course if you buy the sensors without a hub, then you can’t use the sensors.
But, once you buy a hub (and the required 1 month of monitoring for $5,) you never need to pay for monitoring ever again. You can buy sensors at any time without a monitoring subscription.
If you want the hub as cheaply as possible, then it cost you $80 + $5 for 1 month of monitoring. However, that includes a $15 motion sensor and 2 door/window sensors which are worth $10 each, so, unless you don’t want the window/door sensors, then you get $35 worth of sensors plus the hub for a total cost of $85.
Not ideal, but not horrific. It’s not necessarily a money grab because the new sensors communicate with the hub instead of communicating with your router. The hub allows the new sensors to have a greater range and a longer battery life, so it does serve a purpose other than monitoring.
I appreciate the detailed response! It’d be nice if Wyze’s website would make it as “clear” as your reply. Otherwise, it doesn’t exactly say that these new sensors will work without a subscription.
As @HowardYehti stated, you don’t need the subscription for the Hub and sensors to work, you only need it to purchase the Hub and setup at this time. However, it is my understanding that the only item you will not be able to use is the Keypad. But if you only need the Hub and sensors, similar to the V1’s, then the keypad will not make a difference.
Okay see this also bothers me. I understand needing to purchase the hub to make the new motion sensors work… HOWEVER… I do not like being required to buy the keypad that I don’t see myself having a use for.
Wyze really should have an option to buy the hub on its own.
Ah, good to know! I’m still tempted to just go ahead and buy the old Sense kit (v2 camera, two door sensors and a motion sensor) on Ebay for $35-45 and call it a day vs messing with the start/stop subscription malarkey!
Wyze Sense v1 had the same issues. I just bought a bunch of spares since I intend to continue self-monitoring. Verified all were operational and REMOVED the batteries. That seems to be best practice… don’t install batteries until you go to deploy sensors.
V1 sensors are the only ones with the problem. The V2s are a completely different beast and, at least so far, show no signs of being bricked by a low battery.
I think that is just a confusion regarding the classification of the sensors. The V2s haven’t shown any sign of a problem with low batteries and loss of MAC. Completely different hardware.
Their mistake was not having a way to actually monitor voltage and make it possible for users to see the battery voltage of each device so you know when it needs to be changed. Dismal failure of imagination, but that is what you get with kids playing engineer who lack the engineering chops to design even a hobbyist level piece of equipment. If you know a device bricks itself at a certain battery voltage you better find a way to monitor for it and alert on it. Wyze’s choice was to abandon their customers and expect they might be dumb enough to buy more.