This is for Wyze Cam Pan. I think there is a critical problem with the current Pan Scan feature working together with motion recording. The Pan Scan feature can be much more useful and actually a killer feature for Wyze Cam Pan. But unfortunately with the current problem, it is almost useless, and even more harmful to Cam Plus subscribers – it’s not a killer feature but Cam Plus killer.
Here is the problem: the cam cannot distinguish a motion caused by an actual moving object or by the rotating camera (nothing moves). When Pan Scan is enabled with motion recording, the cam rotates every 10s to a new waypoint, and a motion will be detected to trigger a recording. This makes the cam record all the time, never stop.
For free users (i.e., non Cam Plus subscribers), there is a 5 minutes cooling down time after a 12 seconds recording. The problem is more like the motion recording almost cannot capture any actual moving objects, because the 12 seconds recording is always triggered by cam rotating but not moving objects.
For Cam Plus subscribers, it becomes harmful because there is no 5 minutes cooling down time. The cam will keep recording all day long into 5 minutes video clips and uploading to the cloud. It’s pretty much a waste of the user’s traffic (e.g., Comcast has 1.2TB monthly limit before charging more) and also Wyze cloud storage. It seems each of my cam uploads about 1~2GB per hour – that’s 0.7~1.4TB per month – and I have 4 of them…
Since Wyze can do motion tracking, it seems to have the ability to tell the moving object from the moving background. Such ability can be used to Pan Scan w/ motion recording too, to distinguish moving object vs. moving background by rotating cam. So that only moving objects will trigger a recording when Pan Scan is enabled. Another solution can be that the cam turn off motion detection temporarily when the cam is rotating by Pan Scan. I chatted and confirmed with a custom that Wyze currently doesn’t support either, and they suggested to turn off Pan Scan or motion recording.
Pan Scan is a useful feature to greatly expand the monitoring area of the cam. But this problem makes it useless for effective monitoring and harmful to the users that Wyze want to serve better for (i.e., the Cam Plus subscribers). I hope it can be fixed in a future firmware update.
**//Mod Edit: Title Modified to enhance Search clarity