New Cameras coming out do not have Timelapse…

None of the new cams coming out have the time-lapse option. Why is this and why are they not telling anyone. Why are they taking something away that is awesome and has been on every camera.

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I don’t work for, or speak for or represent Wyze in any official way, So just consider this as my own opinion, and not speaking on their behalf.

My belief is that it is a combination of reasons. Some things they have told us in amas and other events, and some of it is just pure speculation.

For one thing, they use a lot of different partners and suppliers. Their original code for the time lapse came in partnership with partner named Hualai. I believe it came on the default firmware in their early days. Pretty much every camera that comes from that partner as usually had time lapse on it. I think it’s a standard feature for them.

Some of the other partners and suppliers have produced cameras that they end up manually adding time lapse onto, but some of them don’t get it. In some cases they have told us they will add it, and then it appears to have been more complex than they thought to get the time lapse code to integrate easily, and they end up scrapping the project and not implementing it. I think this has caused them to hesitate. Trying to do it on a lot of newer cameras from other partners and suppliers. It seems sometimes the obstacles to integrated are more difficult. I do know that most of the cameras from Hualai are running on Linux, And some of the other suppliers use different hardware and software such as FreeRTOS and that may make it More difficult on some of those situations.

Also, they did tell us publicly that they ran a lot of research on what features people use and they found that time lapse was severely neglected and not used very often, and in most cases not at all for the majority of the users. It is an extremely niche feature, and it appears to be de-prioritized because it is rarely used according to their data analytics from the users that actually share their anonymized data for aggregate calculations. Though, I think they have to be careful with this because even though I’m sure their data is accurate, one has to always ask weather. The people who are more likely to approve sharing their data and usage statistics may be the ones less likely to use the time lapse feature, so maybe it is disproportionately telling you that basically nobody uses it when it’s possible that the people who disable sharing their data are the ones who use it more often. I’m not saying that’s the case, but it is something they need to be careful of when they make conclusions on shared data. The other thing that I think there are not taking into account is that a lot of people aren’t using it on a daily basis, but it is a highly valued feature a couple of times a year when they actually do use it for projects at home when they’re changing something around their house and want to time lapse the changes, or run it just on a holiday like Halloween or on the 4th of July to capture the festivities in a short time lapse video, or some people might use it for rare storms. I think there are a lot of people who use it rarely, but highly value it on those rare occasions when they want to use it. I would fall into that category.

They have recently confirmed that they do not have the intention to put time lapse on any battery powered cams anymore. I think this is a big mistake, because to me those are the best cams to actually have time lapse on. I used their wco to go hiking up to a waterfall with a WCO and I time lapsed the whole thing as if it was a GoPro or something. I often used my wcos to go record certain spots where I was renovating my property because they were portable and easy to move around. I would just set them up right before I start working. And then pause the time lapse when I was done for the day and go charge it and then bring it back everyday until I was done with the renovation. It let me do time left as in places where I didn’t have any power outlet available and I could get the camera in a specific location and as close as I wanted. I value the time lapse on battery cameras more than I do on my wired cameras for some of those reasons, but they explicitly told us that they were avoiding putting it on battery cameras now.

Anyway, there are a few other variables that may be involved here, but I suspect the above are the main ones.

As a side note, they did tell us that at least a couple of the newer cams will be getting time lapse in the future. However, take that with a grain of salt because they told us the same thing about the floodlight Pro and about the battery cam Pro and then they never did it, so it’s possible the same thing will happen here too.

Since you specifically tagged this topic for Cam Pan v4, one comment from Wyze that comes to mind (from another topic you started :wink:) is this:

https://forums.wyze.com/t/wyze-phone-call-about-the-cam-pan-v4-and-timelapse-and-snapping-back-to-home-point/337058/9?u=crease

I haven’t seen any updates or projections for release for that feature, but since they said that they’re “still developing it” I think it’s fair to hold them to that.

I also don’t think this is entirely accurate:

I don’t have Duo Cam Pan and can’t speak to that one, but I understand that the newly-released Window Cam has a time lapse feature.

I agree with @carverofchoice and would really like to see this feature added to Solar Cam Pan and Battery Cam Pro, as those seem like they should be ideal devices to capture time lapses at construction sites and other places that might not have AC power or Wi-Fi easily available at a desired camera mount location.

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