I have a Wyze Cam V3 mounted on a post outside. It gets power from an outlet on a power pole 10 feet away. It is set to record to the SD card 24/7. It is also subscribed to my Wyze Cam Plus for recording events.
That said. A few days ago there was a vehicle collision that took out the power pole and several other things in its path. The camera being 10 feet away survived the crash. The collision did sever the power cord which understandably killed the camera. The last event on my SD card starts at 16:19:01 and ends at 16:20:01. It seems these events are 1 minute long. Based on the time stamp from another camera system (not wyze), the collision happened shortly after 16:20:15. I am assuming that video is not recorded directly to the SD card or to the cloud, thereby losing the minute immediatly prior to loss of power. (There would be aproximately 15 seconds of video of the approaching vehicle before impact.) Is this how these cameras record?
Thank you for the reply. Does it matter if SD card or Cam Plus. I would guess the Cam Plus would be a stream and Iâm hoping there might be a way to get that last minute. Could one of the file folders on the SD card have the partial clip that might be in a âcorruptedâ state that I could try to recover?
Cloud clips are not one minute files. They start when there is an event that triggers them and end when that event is completed. They are streamed, but I donât know if or how much of a delay there is in that stream.
Now, as to what is saved in the cloud depends on if you have a CamPlus account and at what level.
As I understand it, no. The live video is stored in memory from the top of one minute until the to of the next minute. If the camera is set to continuous recording, that one minute buffer is then written from memory onto the ”SD card. If you have Events only recording, that one minute buffer will be written to the ”SD card IF and ONLY IF, there was some event anywhere in that minute.
Given the buffer design on the cam, they theoretically could be uploaded in 1 minute chunks, it just may be transparent to the user. Since Iâm not a subscriber I canât watch the network and see what the behavior is like (streaming instantly or buffering and sending chunks) so just theorizing.
I guess the fact that the still frame and notification happen pretty quickly on non-subscriptions, might go against that theory, but maybe it sends the still first and the video after (if youâre a subscruber). Dunno.
So I have a Cam Plus subscription. Didnât know there were levels of Cam Plus. Is the only place to see that video under the âEVENTSâ tab? If so, that starts at 16:19:50 and ends at 16:20:02 for a total length of 12 seconds. The motion in that clip is out of the picture in about 2 seconds and there is 10 seconds of no movement before it ends. (seems correct). The video Iâm interested in would be the very next motion that wouldâve triggered the next event (which doesnât exist) or the video that was being recorded 24/7, (which also doesnât exist).
Based on the time stamp from a different camera system that is not exactly the same as the Wyze, the video Iâm looking for would be less than 1 minute after the 16:20:02 end time above, which seems to me indicates a 1 minute buffer. (about)
What Iâm hoping for is that that 1 munite got streamed and is save somewhere in the cloud. Thoughts?
There is CamPlus and CamPlus lite. There is also Wyze Home monitoring, and one of these days CamPlus Pro. CamPlus Unlimited is the same as CamPlus except it covers up to 99 cameras - a FAR better deal if you have very many cameras.
With CamPlus lite, there is a 5 minute cooldown between events. That does not exist with Camplus
Currently the only way to get 24x7 recording is locally in the cameras with a ”SD card installed. That is one of the expected features of CamPlus Pro when it gets released.
Nope. Once the event ends, the camera stops uploading. That will change with CamPlus Pro.
BTW, I have ”SD cards in all of my about 50 active cameras and CamPlus Unlimited.
I have an SD card in this camera as well, set to 24/7 record but the video is not on the card either. So Iâm guessing there must be a buffer before it writes to the SD card. I would think it woud write to the SD card instantly⊠I guess not.
This is from the Wyze Site and seems to indicate the video is directly recorded to the SD card:
Continuous Recording
Your camera will continuously record video to the microSD card, giving you the option to have constant recording available for playback later - no subscription required.
If you have a microSD card inserted and Local recording to microSD card turned on in your settings, the camera will continuously record to that microSD card, even if offline.
Been lurking on this thread as @JKB has brought forth a situation I had to think about. âA catastrophic eventâ.
From the comments in this thread it would appear that the SD recording (continuous) can record the âlastâ 0 to 59 seconds. It depends if it just committed the last minute to SD card (0 seconds lost) or if it is at 59 seconds getting ready to commit to SD card (59 seconds lost).
Initially I thought this unacceptable until I put it into the deep thought side of brain.
I said to selfâwhat is a âcatastrophic eventâ. The only real world comparison I could find was a power failure or my unplugging a camera. Neither caused me to look at the SD card to see what was recorded in the last âfull minuteâ.
What @JKB described is completely different. Within a matter of a few seconds the car in question came barreling in at xx mph and took out the cameras power source.
So why was all of this not recorded. It was in the 0-59 second âlostâ window.
So couldnât wyze just commit to the SD card more often. Maybe every second. Yes that would have captured most of what @JKB wanted to see. But the redesign and overhead would be prohibitive and you might not get that last second of car hitting pole.
This is where brain took over. What if the event was not caused by a car at slow speeds. What if the car was going at 65mph? What if the event was caused by a meteor, traveling at 100âs of mph. Do we expect the SD card to capture the last second, the last ms, etc etc.
So on reflection Iâm OK with the balance Wyze has chosen. My only solution is to have more than one camera viewing the area in question, which I do for my front yard, doorbell, and driveway. If one cam doesnât get it maybe the other ones will.
Good stuff. Wyze just got back to me with this which seems to indicate it records to the SD card constantly:
The camera should be able to record to the microSD card until the camera is no longer powered on. Have you tried checking other folders in case it was saved on anorder folder?
It has been reported by other users here that if wifi is lost the cams will continue to record but sometimes to a different folder that the cam can not see or read. You need to take the card out and read it on another device and look at all the folders/files.
Yeah, did that. Other than the .txt files, other folders are empty. Unless there is a hidden folder⊠not sure why that would be.
Even the âALARMâ folder which has the stills (.jpg images when it detects motion) only has the picture of the motion immediatly prior to the car that was coming in and cut the power. I would have expected the snap of the motion about 4 seconds before impact to be there, but it is not. Leading me to believe none of it got recorded to the SD card.
That seems odd tot me. In you original post you said the camera was set to record continuous 24/7. I could understand why the last file might not be there but all the previous videos should be on the card I would think?
Just to clarify. There are weeks of previous videos and stills on the card. Just not the last minute when the camera did have power until the power was cut.
Wyze support just said it should record EVERYTHING up until the power is cut. They asked me to submit a log which I just did.
Unfortunately their support is not all that knowledgeable when it comes to details like that.
This is why dash cams in cars have batteries or supercapacitors in them, so the camera is able to write the final buffered video to the SD card if a crash or other event causes power loss. Unfortunately these Wyze cams do not have any built in power source to allow that. If you are recording 24x7 you will lose somewhere between 1 and 60 seconds of video at the end (however long it has been since the last 1 minute file wrote). If you have event only recording, youâll lose the entire event if it is still âin progressâ and has been less than a minute.
You would not want it to constantly âstreamâ video to the card, then youâd lose everything since it would be just writing one big file and that file would likely get corrupted (could be recovered, but not by the average user). This would also make rotating/overwriting essentially lose all your history too. If they wrote a new file every 1 second not only would watching the 1 second videos be annoying and painful but the cardâs file system wouldnât be able to handle that many files.
