And yet other camera manufacturer do it… and the camera sensor itself may not be powered, but the board is always powered, just in a low power state, as the WiFi connection (or connection to the hub/bridge) would need to stay active , and the PIR would be pulling power all the time as well to detect motion,
Which other BATTERY-POWERED camera records continuously in order to keep a 1-2 second buffer? There isn’t one, I promise you.
Anyway, it sounds like what Wyze is making will be the best of both worlds. If you can plug your outdoor cameras into a power source, I’m sure it will be able to show you the recording prior to the motion, as the indoor cameras do now. If you can’t, it will wake after the motion starts. (I’m not speaking with any authority on the subject, but I assume this is the way it will work.)
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How does one request an on-demand stream from a device that is off the network because it can’t afford the power to keep the wifi alive all the time?
How does it hear your request when it’s deaf?
As mentioned earlier in this topic, the camera communicates to the hub over a wireless protocol that is more energy efficient than wifi. This allows it to remain available without burning up the battery in the way that wifi connectivity would.
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Yep that’s how Eufy work, low frequency between 400MHz & 900MHz, frequency unknown but that’s what the chipset is capable of
When you go to live view the hub sends a signal to to camera
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You could do such a thing with Zigbee, but even that will give you battery life issues if it runs all the time. The last Zigbee transceiver I deigned with was 3.5mA in receive mode. That doesn’t sound like much till you start doing the math. That 3.5mA would deplete a 2500mAH battery in about a month if run continuously (actually you’d be doing well to get 80% of that).
You can of course power down and occasionally power up to check for queued requests, Maybe power up once a second, check, then power back down. But, now your Zigbee access point has to be transmitting that request pretty much all the time while it’s pending. Not the end of the world I suppose. You have to balance your available battery with the duty cycle and frequency of your receiver power ups. If you do things too infrequently the system gets very sluggish in responding to requests.
Yes, these things can be done. But you start driving up the cost and complexity of the product. You’re just so much better off taking advantage of mains power if it’s available. I know people want to put a battery in these things and stick them to the side of your house, but it’s very difficult to do that and get every feature that people seem to want and get a decent battery life.
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Oh, it’s a tradeoff for sure. If you want battery power, you won’t have a full feature set, that’s understandable. But that’s why it’s nice to have options.
For me, I’ve got 3 battery powered cameras on the front of my house. Eventually, I may decide to wire them, but the Blink cameras I use now don’t really give me much incentive to do that – I wouldn’t have the change the batteries, but it’s infrequent in the first place, and they’re not that difficult for me to access. If the cameras could be always-on when wired so that I can have a buffer before motion events, I might decide to actually wire them. But they don’t do that.
But I ALSO have 2 battery-powered cameras AWAY from my house, pointing TOWARD the house. One of them is mounted on a telephone pole, and the other is mounted on a tree in the backyard. They’re really useful angles to have, but it would be much more difficult for me to wire those. So no matter what, I’d probably keep those as battery-powered cameras, even though it will limit my features on those cameras somewhat. But if I’ve got other camera angles, and if my wired cameras can wake my battery-powered ones, I think I’ve got the best of both worlds.
The other nice thing about battery-powered cameras is that they can be “roving” if you need them to be. My property shares a CBU mailbox with several other neighbors, so my mailbox is actually located next door. I leave a mount on the telephone pole in front of the mailbox, so that if I’m expecting a package, I can move one of the cameras over to the telephone pole and get a notification when the mailman comes. (The wireless signal is weak on that camera because it’s so far away, but so far, it has worked every time I’ve tried it.)
Hey @UserCustomerGwen @WyzeDongsheng – I’ve got a question about how the outdoor cameras will work, but if it’s too early to confirm this detail, I understand… Somewhere in this thread, I read that there will be a hub for the outdoor cameras, and that the memory card will be at the hub, rather than in the cameras themselves. (Which sounds perfect)
If that’s accurate, I’m wondering if it will ALSO be possible to connect indoor cameras to the hub, so that the recordings from those cameras can get centralized at the hub, too?
The cameras also have a microSD card slot. At this point, I don’t believe you can connect Wyze Cams (other than the outdoor one) to the hub.
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Ah I see. But in addition to the memory cards on the cameras themselves, recordings can also be centralized at the hub, right? Anyway, if it’s possible to do the same thing with any indoor cameras on the same system, that would be really useful. 
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Thanks for the feedback! 
You know, I forgot entirely that they have a hub. Maybe they have done the low energy channel option to get video on demand. If so that’s a very good feature.
I know that you guys don’t seem ready to announce your product, but can you announce when you will have an announcement?
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I can confidently announce (since I am not a Wyze employee just a fellow consumer) that there will be an announcement RSN! And I am totally unanimous in that.
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Poor Mrs. Slocombe. 
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But are you being served?
We’re still aiming to have the outdoor camera out this year so you can expect an announcement between now and the end of time. 
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Tempus fugit.
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thanks , a lot of what you suggested is possible via software. It is a matter of priorities and resources that it takes to implement such features.
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Come on Wyze, chop chop! We’ve been waiting almost a year for this core product while you’ve been distracted with other product not in your main wheelhouse. There ate already cheap plugs and bulbs, get with the camera making!
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