Continuous recording to SD cards is very hard on the cards! Further; it is well known that Wyze cams EAT SD cards for lunch. I have had several SD cards destroyed by my Wyze cams over the years - INCLUDING brand name “high endurance” cards (2 of them in the past year). So that begs the question; why would I want to enable continuous recording on any of my cams? A couple good SD cards cost as much as the cams themselves. Why not just fix the issue, instead of deflecting???
This is what I mean about ‘creep’. I used my Wyze cams for years with free 12-second clips recording to the cloud. Then I was offered to keep that functionality for a small monthly fee (as a longtime customer). Next thing was; the doorbell would NOT even work without a subscription. That was a well-hidden secret that I found out only AFTER I bought my doorbell. What’s coming next? This is just bad business practice, and it’s exactly what finally soured me on Wyze products. I have watched the direction the company has been going over several years, and I’ve decided to get out now, while the dumpster fire is still small enough to walk away from.
I will extinguish yer dumpster fire 
I declare the dumpster, all the contents of it, and, yur experience with Wyze a total loss.
THANK You! It’s so much cooler in here now. 
Continuous record is simply a ridiculous ‘work-around’ or (cough, cough) ‘fix’. Imagine trying to find an ‘event’, when you’re recording everything 24/7!!! Good luck with that! No one is interested in what goes on 24/7. We buy cams to record EVENTS! I record 24/7 to my NVR, but I would never think of watching a full day’s worth of video to locate an ‘event’! On my system, I have the necessary option to search ‘events’ like 1) any movement, 2) person detection, 3) vehicle detection, and/or any combination of those things. That makes it very easy to find exactly when a car pulled into my driveway, or when a person or dog ran through my back yard, etc… What good is Wyze ‘person detection’ now, if you’re recording 24/7? Welcome to WyzeCam v1… Enjoy!
You are right. Continuous Recording shouldn’t be a workaround fix and event recording to the SD Card should work and play properly. I am certainly hopeful that you are reporting these issues to Wyze with log and ticket numbers in the threads that they are monitoring like the App Release and Firmware Release threads.
However, there are some misconceptions here. Wyze Cams aren’t hard on SD Cards. I have been using my 256GB HE SD Cards on continuous record for a very, very long time without failure. No issues at all.
Next is the need to scrub the SD Timeline for events when recording continuous. That is what the Events UI is for. Filter it for whatever AI event or Cam combination event you want to see and click the event to play the cloud video, click the SD icon at the bottom and bam, there I am at the event playing in playback from the SD Card… Every time. I can then back up or go forward a few seconds or drag the timeline to be anwhere before or after the event I want to be.
I am interested in what goes on 24\7. I have the ability to record anywhere from 21 to 31 days continuous, so I do. On all 25 cams. Without failures or any difficulty in finding events in playback on the SD Card. As stated above, one of the reasons for continuous recording rather than events if so that a full recorded record is saved of all time leading up to events. Many have found that the SD Event recording sometimes doesn’t catch all of what they want, especially if the motion occurs at the very tail end or begining of the recorded 1m MP4 file and the motion detection algorithms don’t pick up enough motion on low sensitivity to trigger the cam to save that minute of video, thereby being lost forever.
You are right. It shouldnt be an issue.
But it does look like something is happening. A new firmware update just was released.
Also you say Wyze Cams arent hard on SD cards. Yet this is what I received from Wyze Support…
Blockquote
Let’s sort things out. As the microSD card gets used some sectors on the microSD card tend to go bad. The camera is not capable of detecting and correcting these bad sectors. This causes gaps in the recording.
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So I have 3 different SD cards, in 3 different cameras, and they are tryign to give me an entry level troubleshooting step?
New firmware updates are released all the time. And, the issue at hand, as I understand it, isn’t isolated to the V3 but to the Cam V1, Cam V2, and the Cam V3 as you indicated when tagging this thread with all three. And, you also indicated that your V2 cams were also doing the same thing. This would indicate it isn’t a Firmware bug but a App bug.
I don’t see any correlation with the new V3 firmware release and this issue as “something is happening”. There have been several releases since the 4.36.9.139 FW your one V3 cam is on. Was something happening with each one of those too? Moreover, any time you see “Event Video” in Firmware release notes, it is referring to Cloud Upload Event Videos that show in the Events Tab Not SD Card Video. That will be listed as SD Card Recorded Video or Playback Video. I see nothing in the Firmware release notes that would suggest anything is happening with regards to the issue you are experiencing. I would encourage you to update though to see if it will fix your issue.
This is true of any and all SD Cards in any device that writes and rewrites to the card. All SD Cards fail at some point. They all develop bad sectors. They all have a set life span depending on the quality of the card. The cheaper the card, the sooner they go. Not all cards are created equal. This has been a fact of portable storage since we started writing to magnetic tape and floppy discs. It hasn’t changed.
Any device that writes and rewrites will experience this with the SD Card it uses. That is why High Endurance is so important. It is a function of the card, not the cam.
There is nothing in that statement you quoted from Wyze Support that indicates anything other than the fact that SD Cards will develop bad sectors and the Wyze Cam doesn’t look for those bad sectors. There isn’t anything in that statement that indicates the Wyze Cam is the cause of these sector losses or card failures. You have inferred, through your own reasoning and opinion, that Wyze Cams are hard on SD cards. I have yet to see empirical evidence of that opinion.
I have 25 High Endurance 256GB SD Cards running continuous in 25 cams. The cards are purpose built specifically for Dash Cams and IP Security Cams with continuous recording and overwriting. But, they too have a life expectancy of only 40,000 hours of recording in continuous HD (4.5 years). There are other cards available that are warrantied far and beyond 40,000 hours. This is a function of the card you put into the cam, not the cam recording the video to the card.
Wyze cams ARE hard on SD cards. A quick Google search will yield many, many user complaints to that effect. The fact is - the problem was so bad that Wyze started selling their own SD cards, for that very reason! I have no experience using Wyze SD cards, but I have had two SanDisk High Endurance cards go bad on me in Wyze Cams, in the past 2 years. I have used lower-end SanDisk (Ultra, Ultra Pro, and EVO) cards in several Raspberry Pi’s (24/7), as well as in phones and drones, etc., for years and years, with no failures ever.
I’m glad to see Wyze releasing fixed firmware, however, one of my v3 Cams refuses to take an update now. I let it go for hours, and the ‘gear’ was still spinning and never finished. Same with my one and only v2 cam, AND one of my Wyze Cam Pan units. So, 3/4 of the Cams I still use won’t update now. TDF - Total Dumpster Fire…
Correction: Seems the Cam Pan is updated, and the v2 finally updated as well. The v3 still won’t.
Wyze started selling their own SD Cards because too many users were using cheap junk SD Cards that fail and blaming the cam.
The same reason they started selling their own router. Too many people were using cheap junk routers and blaming the cams.
The fact is that too many people are blind to even considering the possibility that the infrastructure equipment they choose to support their cams has more to do with the device success or failure than any other possibility. It’s never their fault. It’s always the cam’s fault. Why? It’s the only one that has a forum where they can vent and share their opinion.
We shall agree to disagree.
Best of luck resolving your issues.
You are ignoring the FACT that I have had GOOD cards fail in my Wyze cams. You’re ignoring the fact that even lesser quality cards DO NOT fail in my other devices.
I know my infrastructure is not to blame. I use the same (pfSense+) router that I use when I design systems for the DoD. I run (2) separate DNS devices, same as I run in my DoD Data Centers. One is running on hardware, and the backup is running in a Docker container (though you probably have no clue what a Docker container is). I have multiple enterprise-grade WiFi 6 Access Points (no ‘mesh’ silliness). I have a 54 port Gigabit switch, with a patch panel that provides (2) wired CAT6 ports in every room of the house. If I can hard-wire it, it gets hard-wired. My home automation consist of a full Crestron Home install. Yeah… can’t blame tens of thousands of dollars in professional infrastructure here.
What does strike me as curious is how you seem to elevate Wyze products to the level of ‘serious’ systems. They produce cheap, non-professional novelties, intended for uneducated DIY folks. My initial interest in Wyze cams was a quick and CHEAP way to monitor my property. I was able to make due for a while, but Wyze originally over-promised on their cams. They had miscalculated the cost for cloud storage, and had to walk back on their promise and start charging for things they once provided for free. That’s a bad business model all around. People looking for a cheap DIY system can overlook that. People who are serious about security cannot. As cyber threats increase, I want a firewall appliance, not just a brand-name router. I want to control my own DNS. I want VLANS separating my networks. I want my security footage stored at home, and not traveling around the world. I junked my Nest t-stat because I want my home automation to stay at home, not be run by servers located who knows where.
You are correct in this. I will take this back and see what comes of it.
We can mark this thread as completed.
Wyze support is requesting more logs and marking my case as complete, as there is nothing more they can do.
Thanks for all the suggestions.
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