After we started out ‘trying out’ a couple V3 in the house and thinking ‘hey not bad’, we then thought yeah those battery Outdoor cameras would be great for us, lets go all in and get a couple battery powered Outdoor (with of course the really dumb should be unecessary “base station” which is just another router in the house which we should not need).
To make long story short after lots of trial and error and digging because Wyze does NOT make this information easy to find - as far as I can tell finally after a lot of wasted time:
SD card in an Outdoor cannot record Continuous “because battery” (OK I can grant this maybe)
SD card in an Outdoor will not even record Event videos for some reason (!?!?!? this is really the kicker)
The only thing an SD card in Base Station can do is to “Back Up Events” from the slave Outdoor cams - but - you can’t view these at all without taking it out and putting it in a computer
The only possible thing that SD Cards can do in an Outdoor is Time Lapse or Scheduled for some reason
If I have this right its really a big scam to still promote the Outdoor camera with SD Cards. Nowhere in the sales material does it make clear “hey if you buy an SD for this camera and/or base station be aware it really won’t do what you expect it to do”. I now have a couple SD cards that are basically pointless to have. I have no use for “Scheduled” or “Time Lapse” really.
Please somebody tell me I’m wrong, I would love to be, but as far as I can tell that’s the deal.
You’re not wrong - although I can’t specifically comment on your specific items. In my opinion, the battery powered outdoor cam is so horribly crippled in order to make the battery last that it is essentially useless. You could not give me one.
Yeah honestly if it would just record events onto the SD card then even if they said “OK the battery life is half what we promised” I’d be OK.
Between that and bugs with the V3 cam and SD Event recording I’m super sorry I went Wyze. I want to love it because of the price and relatively easy setup and the interface isn’t terrible, super easy to just get setup… But they are making it hard, and mostly by not delivering very simple promised or implied features (ie “buy this SD card to record for your camera! ooops we didn’t mention you can’t really use it to record things or view the things you recorded…”)
Yeah we are using that for our “Front Porch” and it works great for driveway and “face of dude walking up to the door” but there’s other front yard stuff and side yard that we can’t get that way. We are using the rubber window sticker thingy which is awesome.
We have one Outdoor out on a shed that covers the backyard and one of the side-yards that works great, if that one could just do Events then I’d be thrilled. We have another Outdoor that was supposed to similarly cover the gaps in front yard and the other-side but now I’m disappointed to find false advertising on the SD stuff not sure what we’re gonna do.
The shed cam could in fact be converted to a V3 + solar and that could either be still outside or even on a shed window maybe (wouldn’t be as good for angle)… but the remaining-front and other-side coverage we really would like is trickier. No good windows, etc.
And of course that would be at more $$$$ for Wyze and I’m still then sitting on these outdoors plus illy archaic ‘base station’ which I can’t return because I foolishly tossed the packaging in my enthusiasm that they were gonna be similar-just-slightly-more-lmited vs the V3 I had already.
It would take you all of one minute to set up the battery outdoor cam to do scheduled event recording for 30 days, motion events only, no cooldown period and a max. duration for each motion video up to 5 minutes long. View results on the app from the camera album.
Well if that’s how you have to do it, it, ahem “would take all of one minute” for Wyze to make that super easy and part of the interface and/or help system. If that works, then great I will try it but its clearly a hack-around the way that most people want to intuitively use the product. I have to “fake” a “schedule” to record motion events? Uh. OK. If that works then well I guess thanks (not thanks for the attitude but thanks for the tip at least). That is why I phrased this thread “so do I have this right”. By the way, your answer, should you like to come off as a nicer person, could have been " Yeah you do basically have it right, but there’s this workaround that works pretty much the way you want, hope that helps".
The outdoor cams are pretty useless totally. I’m still using four V1’s, but the resolution is horrendous, half the time they disconnect, and why can’t they continuously record when they’re attached to the solar panels? Solar powers my entire house, but Wyze thinks that a panel won’t power a camera thats continuously recording? Then they need a bigger panel.
Can’t say I disagree with anything said here regarding the WCO unfortunately.
I only use mine for “entertainment” as critter cams.
If you can get power to your camera locations you would be better off with the V3. While not as weather resistant as the WCO (I have had lens moisture issues with V3s in direct rain), if you put them under an eve they will do just fine.
Yeah. I’m close to packing it in with wyze. I bought 4 cameras including a garage opener. The V3 Are “ok” yes but still don’t record to SD as advertised all the time, so, in fact, they’re not that much better. and just today randomly ALL MY CAMERAS showed up turned off for no apparent reason. What the hell.
I also recently tried a different brand for my business and wow. So much better. Easier to use, far more “does what they IMPLY it does in the promotion” . They are about 50% more but damn. So much better.
I might just have to chuck these in the trash and chalk the $300 up as a stupidity loss. I thought I was being smart by starting out with V3 and trying it for a while but I obviously did a bad job of testing it, and of assuming that these outdoor cameras were capable of what they’re advertised.
I considered doing the same, but my house is completely integrated with Wyze at this point. Home Monitoring, 2 Flood Lights, 20 cameras, a bunch of bulbs. I don’t think I can change it all out without spending a mint.
Yeah I’ve been mulling keeping parts like maybe the garage cam with the opener, but, then I have to keep two apps on my phone for different things etc. I think I just suck it up and get the other guys garage unit also. The fact they have so many software bugs AND are raising the service prices is a real motivator.
I know there are angry super fanboiz here who will come around and rip anybody who says a bad word and insist we don’t know how to run our home routers, but, I’m super technical former IT. My whole network works fine. The live streaming works fine, the interface is simple and relatively easy. Its just these things that kill me:
Misrepresentation of what the system does and how it works (SD cards & recording, ‘cloud events’ vs * ‘local SD events’… ) in the promotional materials
Hard bugs in the software
Functional software design choices that are maddeningly poor. (won’t record to local SD if there’s no internet connection !?!?, creating some weird dichotomy in the user interface of ‘cloud events’ and ‘local events’?!? why would you make that hard and confusing except just to try to shove subscriptions down people’s throats? )
What about if the outdoor cameras have the solar panels connected to keep them charged? Before I go and buy some, are all of the limitations that I’m reading about in this thread intentionally designed where the recordings to an SD card will definitely not work no matter what? Or are we saying that these recordings effectively render the camera useless due to the battery drain?
Not me. Once it’s dark, the reflection is all I get through my big window. Day time is great but at night nothing, unless something turns on my motion detection lights. Sometimes that turns on the V3 through the window, but not always.
Do you have the IR illuminators enabled on the camera? You absolutely MUST have them off if you are shooting through a window. Same thing with the camera status light.
One use for time lapse is to see what happens to your house and/or boat during a hurricane you have to evac for. It can explain how the boat ended up in the spare bedroom and the dock piled up on the neighbor’s roof. Still don’t know where the dog came from - only responds if you speak Portugese.
