Portable Wyze Cam

Mobile Wyze. We always want to keep an eye on the little one, so having a camera on him at different locations is idea, but of course these need to be plugged in.

Years ago I bought this New Trent travel charger (model NT700C) and it’s been used pretty much all over the world in our travels. It packs 7000mAH. What I love about it is the built in plug that folds away.

It’s pretty heavy, and it dawned on me that if I stick one of those metal Wyze pads on it, and used a short (6") USB cable, I have a portable Wyze cam. So I did that. I think it lasted around 5-6 hours.

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I’m using a Samsung 10000 mAh

in the same way, but it’s a lot less bulk.
Lasts about 23 hours, cost was $16.

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Bulky is relative. At 6" x 4" x 0.8" (the Samsung one) I find it bulky, while the New Trend is 3.7" x 2.6" x 1.4" (almost half the area but double thickness).

Just checked out the footage, on the 7000mAH I get roughly 5h15m of footage, and that is at night with the IR one, maybe it would be more during the day.

More juice though, that’s pretty great!

On the New Trend, I can actually plug it into the wall receptacle and the camera stays on the unit due to the strong magnet. That is pretty cool!

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Great way to power the cam. Thanks for posting. I use a 10k mAH Anker version for this and it lasts as long as I need it to (so far.) The cam pulls enough power to keep the Anker battery on. (Smaller devices like a bluetooth earpiece don’t, and the unit turns off.) . I have a solar power mat that I might try. I bet it won’t put out enough power to keep the cam powered (and would be worthless at night of course), but worth a shot!

Great idea, just one question, if ur using this while traveling what are you using for wifi, how do you switch wifi setting to what’s available???

I can’t speak for the OP, but an inexpensive travel router solves this issue. You set up the camera once to the travel router, then using it as a bridge, you connect the router to the location’s wifi. The router will remember the settings for different locations.

See the last section in the topic below for more details:

https://support.wyzecam.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022501071-Wyze-Cam-Setup-Guide

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Yeah, that’s a good point. I suppose if I had to travel with it, I would hope I had my cell with data and always piggyback on my own wi-fi on the phone, this would be the the only way I’d feel the connection would be secure enough…

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The travel router solution I mentioned above also has another benefit. It effectively walls off your camera behind a firewall and separate WPA encryption away from the local wifi network.

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Weird, I can’t find a way to quote from another post… I didn’t see your post @Loki

If you set your phone up with the same SSID/encryption/password as at home, then the camera will connect to it easily; same as you suggest using the travel router but over cell signal.

I have a travel router, with a built in battery actually, so technically I have the ideal thing to use it for travel :slight_smile:

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When you select text from an existing post, you should see a quote button pop up above it like this:

That’s certainly true, but it’s then burning up cell data as opposed to presumably free hotel/shop data. But if you have unlimited cell data, it may not matter.

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I use a travel router, ssid and password is the same as home. Don’t have to reprogram any devices. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P5QDQ1B/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_XHN0CbNM2RGK2

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This is what I did the other day, strapped the camera to the battery pack that has one of those metal plates stuck to it, mounted it all on the back of my bike facing the trailer, mom could watch the ride the whole time…some hiccups but all in all worked ok. Around 500gb for the hour ride used up

That sounds neat but… wouldn’t a securely mounted cell phone (maybe an old one) be a much easier, more elegant, and longer lived approach?

Well, first off we don’t have unlimited data. A cell phone (even older) would broadcast video in 30fps, which would double the bandwidth/data used.
Secondly, not sure how a cell phone would be more elegant, I mean are you referring strictly on the looks of it? The application to watch it remotely would be what? I’m perfectly capable of doing something like that, but it would require 3rd party app both on phone, and on the remote viewing side, unless I have always on VPN connected to home, then it would be a local IP, and at home you could likely watch it in a browser. Not a lot more complicated, but more complicated for sure.

My phone tether is set up with same wifi SSID as at home for that, I just turn on the wyze cam, it connects, and mom can watch on wyze app at home. It’s super simple; and the small “rig” is held on the rear bike rack with bungees, and and elastic (camera on battery) to prevent the camera from rotating.

Really, I did it just for fun and to see how well it worked, and it was very good. The downside is the 15FPS and of course the quality of the picture sucks (WyzeCam1) when compared what a cell phone could do. Still near though!

Now I’m confused. Are you saying your “phone tether” setup using 500 GB of your cellular data allowance was more efficient than loading a camera app on the phone and cranking down the resolution / fps ? Regardless, sounds like a fun little adventure.

Yes, this is what I’m saying, super simple and fast to set up this way. My ride was an hour long. :slight_smile:

What is your idea using and old phone, what software on the phone, on the remote side, how do you connect the two, etc. What are you thinking? I’m curious, run me through it start to end, I have a few older phones, who doesn’t these days :slight_smile:

I’d rather do 10fps at 1080p with a better sensor.

Keep in mind that wyze has a nice FOV and doesn’t need to be far from the subject.

The “old phone” part was just to avoid risking strapping in your “daily driver” phone. And I was just envisioning using ordinary apps. Google Duo for example will throttle down to 14 fps or so with a bad connection. You might limit yourself to 2G mobile data or something.

Other apps such as Skype have “video quality low” settings and / or restricting data on an app level.

Didn’t give it a lot of thought. :wink:

Ok, but those apps are full-time, watching a wyze cam is on demand on the app and only consumes data when you open the feed (remote end) and once set up its hands free. Basically, turn on thethering, plug in Wyze cam, you are set for the duration of the ride. Easy peasy.
Duo/Skype etc require manual intervention if you want multiple “sessions”, . :slight_smile:

Thanks for posting the pics & info on your battery pack Wyze cam! Very cool and I can definitely see using something like that for quickly testing cam locations and time lapse projects. :slightly_smiling_face:

Re the bike ride cam project :

Have you looked at Manything or Alfred ?

I have used the free levels of both apps on both Android & Apple for several years with very good results, and they do play nice cross platform so you can mix and match hardware.

Last I checked, both will stream video from incredibly old devices to the app on another device for free.

But, Alfred will also stream free to a web page and you can share that feed with a trust circle ( https://alfred.camera/ )

Manything has gotten into more serious video monitoring stuff, but I believe the live streaming from one device to another device is still free ( https://manything.com/ )

You can adjust the resolutions for bad connections or to lower data usage.

I also believe that they only stream data when someone is watching - just turn off the clip capturing and motion detecting, etc.

Anyhow, another alternative to consider…

Hey pretty cool, didn’t know about this stuff, really good to know. I have a few Wyzecams so we are using the app already on our devices; basically using the v1 Wyze cam and the battery was the simplest to implement since there was no need to install any new apps, configure anything, etc, etc.