I bought solar panels for my outdoor cams, if I want to buy the new and improved cam v3 (??) I will have to have an electrician install an outlet to plug it in for power. Why would Wyze make an oudoor camera without a battery so I could upgrade to and use the solar panels that Wyze was happy to sell me. To me this is Wyze just dropping the ball. I like Wyze products, this just bewilders me the lack of thought put into the development of the Cam v3
[Mod Edit]Merged from the #wishlist as this appears to be a discussion topic rather than a request for product or feature.
Different products are made to cover multiple use cases. The WCOs are good for those use cases that want to use either the PIR detection system, have no way to get constant power to a location, want a more portable camera, etc. The V3, V3P etc are outdoor rated, but made for those use cases that need continuous recording, have power at a location readily available, etc.
The Solar panel is to assist the WCOs at their locations where power isn’t available. The WCO has its “sleep mode” where the small amount of power the solar panel can supply can charge the WCO fairly well, dependent of your event frequency of course and live view usage.
There is this existing wishlist topic:
to help the cameras that need the constant power. Give it a vote if you want to help it along!
Yes, the real difference is between battery-powered and not. Battery-powered cameras sleep between detections, and thus don’t record 24 hours a day. But they are rechargeable by a solar panel.
The more powerful V3s can record continuously, but because of their higher current requirements they can NOT be run by the current solar panels, certainly not at night without a battery.
So your choices are really battery-powered/no continuous recording or no battery/continuous recording. An affordable battery can’t handle the latter.
You can consider UPS systems on the latter, I suppose.
