I don’t know that I would say good experience. My battery lasts about 40 day in a relatively high traffic area (30 to 40 events a day) and with a 1 min cool down
If that is the case I would probably contact Wyze support
I’ve not tried all of the steps yet, no. But if the battery says it’s at 100% , does it really matter if it was charged from the base station or another charger? I’m curious about the science behind the battery lasting longer if charged from the base station, if that’s the claim they are making?
Camera was at 100% charge yesterday when I took it outside to do a time lapse, taking a still photo every 15 seconds… So 4 photos a minute. So how long SHOULD the battery last under those conditions? Or was a feature Wyze advertised that was desirable to me. But I would say overall, the camera recorded maybe 4 hours total of time lapse photos over the course of the entire day (not 4 hours in a row.) Motion detection wasn’t on and it wasn’t streaming video during that time, and it has a strong WiFi connection to the base. Yet my camera was dead… 0% battery… at the end of the day.
Maybe that’s expected? But I certainly didn’t expect that. If I wanted to do an actual full day of time lapse photos, I’d have to use a USB battery with it. It wouldn’t be close to able to endure an entire day.
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What I like is how they do not give you any step by step instructions on how to set up your cameras properly, instructions just say use the app to configure and you have to go over all the settings blindly read what they do and figure out how to set it up and there is no explanation to how things work within the system. It is not that the settings are not easy to understand on their own, it is that they do not provide you a road map to properly explain how it all ties together in order to either live stream it 100% or go max battery with just what you need to capture events.
I setup a rule to use motion detection and upload video to cloud when even detected, then the app asks me if I am sure I want to do that the when and action are on the same device, which leads me to believe I am doing something wrong but who knows nothing says exactly what to do. I mean yes I want my one camera to detect a thing and record the thing…
in a short 3 days with little to no events being recorded maybe one a day and the camera is at 67%, so by my math it will last 21 days at best.
I just installed my first (and maybe last) Wyze cam yesterday. It was fully charged but this morning it’s already down to 78%. The only event was my wife going to work this morning.
Is there a way to make it not live stream and only wake up and record if it captures motion?
Live streaming for a long time with the battery powered cam is a bad idea. Do you have an SD card in the cam or the Base? Open the app, tap on the cam to open. Tap the gear icon top right to open settings, turn event recording on, set cool down for 1 min, turn on back up to the base if it has an 32GB SD card in it. Make sure you turn on notifications. Also in the settings tap detection settings and make sure the area you want to catch movement is in the PIR zone, the shaded area. The cam detects motion best when movement is across the zone not straight at or away from it. Don’t use the cam looking out a window, it won’t capture anything. In detection settings set sensitivity to 100%
Other information about WYZE Cam Outdoor can be found here:
https://support.wyze.com/hc/en-us/sections/360011338891-Wyze-Cam-Outdoor
Hi Antinious, thanks for the reply.
I have a 32gb card in the camera, but I can’t tell you why I put it there verses in the base (I’ll swap it round.)
Notifications is on, Event recording is on. Cam cool down is 1 minute. I have cam plus (the trial) but not sure if I’ll continue when that’s over.
The camera is above the garage and just watches the cars. I don’t want live streaming. All I want it to do is to see motion, record it, and notify me. How do I make it di that and not live stream?
The only time the camera live streams is if you open the cam on the app and leave it open. when not live streaming the cam will sleep until something (Movement) wakes it then it will record for 12 seconds without cam plus. Since you have cam plus now set the cooldown to no cooldown and the cam will record as long as there is movement. As for the SD card: The card in the base will have all the video events recorded on it (BUT) not with Cam Plus, all those videos are saved to the Cloud Servers. Without CP the videos will be saved to the SD in the base. I have cards in my 4 cameras because I do not have cam plus on them, I am doing scheduled event recording which is recording all movement to the SD card which is like cam plus but you have to take the cards out to view anything over 12 seconds. If you are watching your cars I would not have the face of the cam pointing straight at them. Put the face of the cam at an angle and make sure the cars are in the PIR Zone. Attached is an old picture from one of my WCO watching my truck. The red line I drew on it is where the face of the cam is pointing, the PIR zone is very wide.
This is a screen shot from another cam that I use to watch the gate at the end of the fence. The red line is where the face of the cam is pointing but as you can see it will tag the garbage truck out in the street moving by.
If you really want to watch your cars on a continuous you should purchase a powered cam like the V3 and put a SD in it also. I am using a V3 for the driveway now.
