SD Cards and Cam Plus Unlimited

I subscribed to Cam Plus unlimited. Do I need SD Cards on the cameras or even base station? I do not need Time Lapse, Event Recording and the like.
Also my Wyze Cam v3 shows a View Playback button, but the Wyze Cam Outdoor does not show View Playback Button.
After more ten 2 and a half hours reading posts from this forum and Wyze Support website and am getting each minute more confused. Help me please.
Thanks

I suppose you don’t ‘need’ the SD card with Cam Plus on all your cameras, but I have SD cards set to continuous recording in all my powered cameras, and I also have Cam Plus Unlimited.

I use one of those SD cards at least once a week. Like figuring out who dug in my lawn (a squirrel), to when did that car appear in front of my house (and who’s house did the driver go into), to any one of a number of other things a cam wouldn’t normally capture.

So they are very useful for solving little mysteries. :wink:

And being a backup to the cloud, and recording more of an event.

Also, I find 32 GB cards are plenty large enough for most people. Gives you about 2-1/2 days recording in HD. I find that if I don’t look for something in 2-1/2 days, I probably won’t. There is one camera I need to go further back on because I don’t pay attention to that area much, and for that I bought a 128 GB card. Point here is you don’t need to break the bank buying large cards for all of them.

SD Cards do little good in a battery-powered WOC. No continuous recording available there because they are battery powered and normally sleep to conserve battery power.

3 Likes

If you want to record motion events to an SD card use Scheduled event recording with an SD card in the camera and use this method, Set it for 30 days, motion only, no cooldown period, max length for each event to 5 minutes.

2 Likes

Thank you so much Newshound e Antonius for the usefull tip.
Still a bit confused though. I keep reading and in point 4 of the article

Brenda wrote:
Enable on local recording to your microSD card so you can record Event videos directly to the card, rather than in the cloud.
Does this mean that despite being a Cam Plus subscriber, the detections do not go to the Cloud and are saved during the 14 days?

Record events to the Cloud and to the SD are totally different. If you just want videos recorded to the SD turn off detects motion in the event recording settings. If you do that you will not get any notifications or cloud videos. I recommend both if you want events on the SD card and the Cloud recordings. To view the events on the SD you have to open the cam to live view, tap more>album , scroll down to see scheduled recordings. You have to tap on the download icon to view the video and when you do that it will also save in the photo/video album of your phone/device.

Yes, the SD Card and Cloud Recordings are two totally separate systems.

For powered cameras, like the V3:

Cloud Events

  • Saved to the Cloud
  • Are found on the Events tab
  • Gives you get at least a snapshot of the Event (Cam Plus Lite can instead give you a 12-second video on compatible cameras)
  • Gives you a notification of the event
  • Has a 5-minute cooldown (one event recording & notification every 5 mins)
  • Keeps the Events for 14 days

Cam Plus enhances only the Cloud Events

  • No 5-minute cooldown
  • Records so long as it perceives motion, in up to 5 minute increments
  • AI detections (Person, Pet, Vehicle, etc available)

The SD Card

  • Available on wire-powered cameras (scheduled recording available on battery cameras)
  • Saved to the SD Card
  • Is found using the Playback buttons on live view, and in the Cloud events on the Events tab
  • Gives you as much recording of the event as you ask for – i.e. – if you record continuously, you get 24-hour coverage of what the camera sees.
  • Keeps the event as long as the SD card allows. For a 32 GB card in continuous recording mode and HD resolution that’s about 2-1/2 days before it overwrites the oldest files with the newest files. Larger cards (or lower resolution) keep a longer timeframe on the card.

For battery cameras I defer to @Antonius, as they are a pretty good expert on those. :slight_smile:

1 Like