New solar cam not recording important events at all

I want to like this brand of camera so bad I have the solar pan cam. And I also got the unlimited Pro sub. This camera I’ve had up for about 4 days and unfortunately I feel like it is not doing the do. I will get random notifications and recordings of cars driving up and down my street and other stuff. But when it is something that is truly needing to be recorded such as a package delivery event or my husband pulling up in the driveway getting out of the car my camera deems that of non-importance. I had a package delivered yesterday that was damaged. But the only thing on my feed is the package sitting on the porch. There is not a recording in my past feed of the courier walking on my porch delivering it mind you this is the third package that has been delivered and neither deliveries have previous delivery video with it. Also I had a friend who was held at gunpoint in her vehicle one time in my driveway. So it would be helpful if I could also see recordings of my husband getting in and out of his vehicle versus a 10 or 20 second recording of my husband already out of the vehicle walking up the steps coming into the home by then. I’ve exasperated all efforts I went to the settings multiple times. I’ve reset and restarted my camera as well as factory reset the new camera one time already even though I didn’t want to lose some of the things I had already had on the camera. Support agent left an email ticket open just in case if I still had the same problem was told to reply to that support ticket which I did just waiting to see on what they suggest next. I have seen a lot of older posts with similar issues with no resulted answers. I may just go to another brand of camera if this doesn’t rectify. I was suggested this brand by someone in an Best buy store Who said it was a good buy.

I don’t have a solar one so I’ll let others comment on possible tweaks and settings. I will mention that the battery powered cams (which the solar ones are) have to have measures to conserve energy and be less sensitive, so that will always be a bit of a battle. You may want to post an image of what your camera normally is looking at, as height and distance could be playing a large part - the smart detections require being able to identify objects from fairly normal angles and not too far away.

If using a wired cam is an option, my Panv3s have been quite good, and the Panv4 is higher resolution (though haven’t tried that one personally, it seems to have had the kinks worked out at this point).

I live in a duplex this is the angle of my porch the camera is angled perfectly. This is what my angle looks like in the daytime as well as night, not too far at all from the walkway or my porch. I may try another style from them. Not give up on Wyze just yet.

Again I don’t have that cam but from looking at those images, They’re mostly going to see things on the stairs. Maybe the front door. Battery cams come out of the box with conservative settings so that the battery life matches what was advertised, so I’m sure there are tweaks that you can do.

Are you able to angle the cam down some - do you need to see that far in the distance? Getting the roof line out of the shot a bit and having more of your front doorstep in the frame may help, along with some tweaks to sensitivity (which will obviously consume more battery, so may need to find a happy medium).

The angle is somewhat high which is going to be a challenge for “Smart Detections”, but I don’t think it is high enough where it won’t be able to identify things, just may be a bit harder for it.

Welcome to the Forum, @kmm2207! :wave:

Thank you for including the photos of your Solar Cam Pan’s view! That’s helpful for providing an understanding of at least some of what your Cam is capable of seeing. :+1:

I noticed in your original post that you mentioned a driveway a few times and that you want to see that. Where is it in relation to your Cam? Is that something you would see if you panned the Cam to the right from the views you shared here? I’m trying to get a better understanding of what the Cam can see at its current location and what you’re trying to prioritize.

It’s also important to note that Solar Cam Pan’s image sensor is not always active when the Cam is being powered by solar + battery. Instead, it uses a passive infrared (PIR) sensor to detect motion, and that’s what triggers the Cam’s image sensor to begin capturing video for recording and analysis (the Cam’s built-in person tracking). PIR works most reliably for targets that are moving laterally across the Cam’s field of view (FOV). If something in the Cam’s FOV is moving straight toward the Cam, then the Cam’s PIR is less likely to detect that than if the target is moving left-to-right or right-to-left across the FOV. That’s my understanding of how this thing works, anyway. Anticipating your motion targets’ expected paths is something that they should probably describe explicitly in the Installation Guide and other parts of Solar Cam Pan’s Help Center section.

You also mentioned missing package deliveries to your porch, which makes me wonder if a video doorbell might be a better fit or something you’d consider for additional coverage, especially if you have the ability to wire something like that for continuous power. Wyze has some battery-powered options, and all of their doorbells (even the battery-powered models) also have provisions for wiring to a compatible low-voltage AC doorbell transformer. The three newest models can also ring a home’s compatible built-in chime when Chime Controller is installed.

If you want some feedback from community members about the settings you’re using for your Solar Cam Pan, then feel free to share some appropriate screenshots. Those can be helpful for troubleshooting some issues.