Hello,
Thinking of purchasing a Wyze cam and during my research learned about the 5-minute cooldown and I’d like to understand. I’m seeing a BUNCH of posts and its a bit confusing. So I thought I would ask my specific questions and see if I can get an answer.
So, assuming a SD card is available.
What EXACTLY happens if someone say, wanting to do illegal activities, came in front of your wyze cam, walked calmly by, triggered the motion and moved out of view. Then 40 seconds later came back and started pulling up your lawn gnomes? Will I personally have to go and review second by second the next five minutes after the first notification to even see if this could be happening? I understand it won’t alert you to the next movements for those 5 minutes, but on the app will it log in a those movements found on the SD card or will I need to go home(or through the app) and view all 5 minutes to even determine if there was motion?
I’m trying to determine if the 5 minute cooldown is a deal breaker or not. If it records still on the SD card and categorizes/separates the movement and non movement videos and through the app I just need to review any SD card recorded movement during those 5 minutes, that I can live with. But if the SD isn’t on the app or doesn’t separate the movement from nonmovement then I’m not sure how effective this would be for me.
How are you all dealing with the 5 minute cooldown?
Recording to the SD card is completely independent of the 12 sec notification clips.
Say there is motion at your door like you say, and it trips the cameras motion detection. The camera then records and then send you a 12 second clip for notification purposes. Now the 5 minutes cool down starts, and you won’t get another 12 second clip til that 5 mins is up
If you had continuous recording enabled to your sd card, you can take the time stamp from the 12 second clip and go to that time in the playback to view what else occured at, and after that time. In my personal opinion, I highly recommend continuous recording. There is also motion recording to your sd, where it saves a clip from the minute that the motion occured.
Playback can be viewed from anywhere your device data allows it with the Wyze app. A way around the 5 minute cool down is to use a Wyze sence motion detector, that once it detects motion is alarmed (in rules you can set it up to trigger various things). It takes about 45 seconds for the motion detector to clear before it can trigger again. So you know if you motion is not clearing, something is still moving.
Welcome to the forums! Check the Wyze site for lots of tutorials on the operations of things
The video would be saved on the SD card, If you have the SD card set to record only on motion events, you’d only see clips on the timeline during each 60-second period during which the camera detects motion. If it’s on continuous recording, then yes, you’d need to go through the 5 minutes after that in order to find it. But you can scroll ahead with your thumb and jump to a point that’s a minute or two ahead. You wouldn’t necessarily need to watch the whole thing. And you can watch it through the app whether you’re at home or not, assuming you have a solid internet connection at both ends.
You can also install the Beta app and check out the “Complete Motion Capture” feature that they’re currently testing out. My understanding is that it will save ALL motion to the cloud. No 12-second limitation, no cooldown limitation. (It’s only been available for a couple of days and I haven’t managed to get it working yet. But that’s why it’s still beta. Haha.) That will be a premium feature once it gets rolled out to the masses, but it’s free to test for the moment.
Hi Chickey, Great Question! As a newbe camera owner I am also confused??? My Question: (Assuming I have a SD card, I have turned on continuous recording, I have enabled person detection only for notifications(I receive way to many notifications if I enable notifications on “all other motion!”))
If a UPS delivery person drops off a package on my from porch while I am at work. I assume I will see him/her in the 12 second clip(as long as they get out of the truck within the 12 seconds of triggering an event) I will receive a notification.
However if a porch pirate removes the package on the 50th second. Will I receive a notification? Is the only way I will know that someone has come on my porch and the package has been stolen “is” when I get home, many hours later, and notice the package is not there. I realize I can review the info on the SD card when I get home. However that could be many hours after my package has been stolen. Is my scenario correct? Will the upcoming Wyze outdoor camera work the same way? I hope not? I would like to receive a notification anytime someone comes on my porch.
Thanks!
Currently, the 5-minute cooldown period means that if a porch pirate were to come on the 4-minute-and-50th second after your UPS guy leaves, you would NOT receive a notification. Unfortunately, that’s true whether you have an SD card or not. (Although with an SD card, you’d certainly have access to the video of this happening)
They’re testing a feature right now in the beta app called “Complete Motion Capture” that will mitigate this to a certain extent, although it’s not perfect either. It removes the cooldown and 12-second limitation, although it still only examines the first 12 seconds of a video for person detection. That means if a non-person motion event starts the recording, and the person doesn’t appear until the 13th second, you still wouldn’t get a notification.
That’s the current state of things, but I’m hoping they’ll address this in some way or another soon. Having the option to limit the recording length with CMC would address this satisfactorily, I think, although it would require a subscription.
Hi Nerdland,
Thank you very much for your response! I understand a lot better now. I wish I had know this before I purchased these cams. Hmm, I thought I had done appropriate research.
I am very disappointed with Wyze and the web sites that I looked at for reviews, for not prominently mentioning this issue! IMHO, if they don’t fix this, the value of the cam is greatly diminished(especially if their upcoming outdoor cam functions in a similar way!)
Do you know if this is a Wyze only issue? Do other cam vendors have this same issue?
I don’t know the specifics but I do know some other companies have a cool down period unless you pay a fee to basically have it removed and get better cloud service. WYZE is testing something currently that will eliminate the cool down and cap of 12-second length.
I’m not aware of tons other cameras that offer “person detection” in the first place… Arlo does, but they’re a lot more expensive. I’m not sure what Arlo’s cooldown period is.
As for motion notifications generally, I expect any camera would have SOME cooldown period in place for motion-type notifications, or else you could end up with like 10 motion notifications in the span of 30 seconds, which would be rather annoying. But some of them are user-configurable. I have some Blink cameras as well. There’s no person detection with those. The minimum recording time is 5 seconds, maximum is 60 seconds, and the minimum cooldown period is 10 seconds. That means in theory, you could get notified every 15 seconds with continous motion, if you have the shortest recording time set. But there’s no continuous recording option for those cameras and there’s a hard limit in place for the cloud storage. Pretty much any camera that offers free cloud recording is going to have some limits in place.
I don’t know if it’s an “issue” so much as a limitation. As for not “prominently mentioning it,” I mean – what product prominently mentions the things it lacks? People complain about all sorts of things they unrealistically expect to be in the product. Some people expect it to have a built-in siren. Should the marketing material say “WARNING: DOES NOT CONTAIN BUILT-IN SIREN”?
But I agree it would be nice to optionally get more notifications. They’re not likely to change the 5-minute cooldown for free cloud recordings, as this is affects their bottom line, although the optional subscription upgrade is coming soon. Right now, the notifications are tied to the cloud recordings, so they inherit the same limits. If Wyze separates out those systems, it may be possible in the future to get motion notifications that are separate from the cloud recordings. That would be nice for people who have SD cards installed, for example.
Thanks for an opinion. However as paying customers we both can call this what we want.(tomato -tomato) My opinion is that this is a self imposed issue(This was a design decision selected for their cams). Also if Wyze wants to be different from the typical company hawking cams, IMHO, they should be more transparent and explain prominently the implications of the 5 minute cool down. Maybe I was unrealistic in expecting more from Wyze? My hope is that Wyze is looking for long term relationships with their customers and not just concerned with the first sale? This does not happen if after the initial sale, customers find issues with the product that they believe were not properly explained up front.
It’s a self-imposed limitation, yes. (“Issue” is your word.) Every product has self-imposed limitations. Anything the product designers decide not to include because it would increase the cost is a self-imposed limitation.
When you use their cloud recording services, your bandwidth usage continues to cost them money forever. In perpetuity. That’s despite the fact that you only paid for the camera once. So any company that offers something like that has to make sure the numbers make sense. They either need to charge a TON upfront for the camera, or they need to charge a subscription fee, or they need to impose some limitations so that costs are controlled.
So far, I haven’t found any company offering more than Wyze does for less. Very few companies include free cloud recording at all, – and all of the ones that do offer free cloud recordings impose limitations of some kind. (Even the ones that I consider to be expensive upfront.)
If you think Wyze has failed here, I’m curious which company you think is better. I think Wyze IS looking for long-term customers, and their customers seem to be pretty loyal. That tells me they’re doing something right. In my opinion, they’re doing it way better than ANY other company I’ve found yet in the smart-home realm.
The issue is the cost of video storage, not the technical difficulty of making it adjustable. They’ve now launched a premium feature called Complete Motion Capture that allows you to remove these limitations.