Travel mode for Wyze battery cam pro

[chamburn]

Ok since the Wyze battery cam pro came out and from what I understand its meant to replace the wyze cam outdoor and I bought it so that I could use it. But to my surprise I could no longer see the travel mode option and only now realise that this option has not been included and it was the main reason why I bought that camera for. So I want to have the travel mode feature be available again and also below are the list of features that it should have and improvements based on my experience with the wyze cam outdoor.

1 - Travel mode with all its existing features
2 - Be able to open the wyze app offline and control the camera in travel mode instead of having to turn on mobile data to activate the app and then disable mobile data and be able to activate the travel mode and connect to the camera to configure it.
3 - Since the battery would drain even when connected to a solar panel when there is not enough sun, there should be an option to auto power on when the camera has been charged to a certain amount or let the camera charge to atleast 50% and then automatically power on from its dead state.
4 - When the camera has turned on after the battery was depleted, it should be able to re-enter travel mode and continue with the operations that it was at and not require the user to go back to the camera and re-enable the travel mode manually which is frustrating especially that if the camera is in the middle of nowhere or very high up.
5 - There should be the option to see for how long the camera has been running like a simple graph with the dates so that we can track if the battery was dead and not powered on and recorded for how many days.
6 - The moment that the user has configured the camera for travel mode and that he has disconnected, the camera should stay in travel mode and do its job as its one of the issues where it will say out loud that travel mode has been disable but on the app it says that I can log out and close and the camera will continue to record which was not the case.
7 - The options to have a status led change color or blink for some time, or like an audible sound thats on repeat for some time just after configuration to show that the camera has indeed entered into travel mode and that its recording.
8 - Led indicator light to show that its being charged and in operation when connected to solar panel. The user can have the option to turn it on and off.
9 - Add the options to be able to connect and view many cameras at the same time when in travel mode instead of going manually to each one and connecting and disconnecting each time.
10 - be able to connect to the camera and able to hotswap the microsd card or atleast give a message to reformat the card on site so that it can record normally and be done within the app.
11 - The moment that the storage is full, have the option to select to overwrite the existing data.

Other people can comment to add other features or fix existing ones.

[chamburn]

To add to that, there should be the options to just record as much as it can with no cooldown period. The schedule recording was great but it would only allow for up to 30 days and then has to be reconfigured which is annoying.

[Seapup]

Voted, but please note that Wyze has basically already nixed the idea of Travel Mode for Battery Cam Pro:

Bitter-Painter-3661 • 1y ago

• Travel Mode - No, we don’t plan to add this anymore because the user metrics gathered on Wyze Cam Outdoor showed that features like timelapse and Travel Mode have relatively low usage compared to other security-related functions.

[carverofchoice]

I was also very disappointed these don’t have Travel mode.

Of course travel mode has low usage…people aren’t traveling constantly, but when I DO travel I like the option of travel mode, such as for camping, etc.

I also loved taking a WCO with me when I went hiking to a waterfall with my daughter and one of our cats (hiking with the cat on a leash and harness).

Some pictures of us taking our cat hiking...though these aren't from the WCO which is a REALLY long video above the 5MB limit the forums have

@Crease You should take your cats hiking

I made the WCO do continual recording of our hike and do a timelapse at the same time.

Point is that I REALLY loved being able to have a WCO record the entire hike of us walking our cat to a waterfall and do a timelapse of the whole thing. I’m rather sad I can’t do that with a BCPro.

I may not use the Travel mode OFTEN, but it is still a beloved feature I really miss not having in the BCPros.

[Crease]

@carverofchoice

You should take your cats hiking

I’m not sure how my guy would take to that, as timid and skittish as he can be. Maybe it’d be worth trying if it’s not a busy area. He’s got a leash and harness which has been useful for keeping him from bolting out of an open car door during stops on road trips, but he’s also managed to Houdini his way out of the harness numerous times.

Since I don’t have any of the wireless Wyze cameras, I wasn’t even aware of this feature. I can imagine a use for it, though, and I’d generally like to see more feature consistency (where it makes sense) across Wyze products, especially when something seems to be a newer version of a preceding product. I voted.

[carverofchoice]

@Crease

not sure how my guy would take to that, as timid and skittish as he can be.

None of my cats liked harnesses at first. We trained them to enjoy going on walks with the harnesses by starting them just walking around the block, or the church next to our house. Or walking on a sidewalk next to a fence to train them to walk on the sidewalk. It takes a lot of patience. My most skittish cat (the orange one), went to the bathroom on me a couple of times during training, he was so scared (either scared of barking dogs or cars driving by). But eventually they get comfortable with it and start to enjoy it. We were then able to take them on hikes and stuff and they will even walk on the hiking paths, etc. It’s really cool once they decide it’s okay. But they do walk more slowly. With a dog you can basically walk non-stop, but with a cat on a harness, you sometimes have to stop once in a while when they stop for a second, gently nudge up and forward to tell them you want to keep moving forward, and then they will come. But at first, to train them, you have to basically pull upward and forward so they’re almost on their tip-toes once in a while to train them when they should walk forward.

After enough training and patience and rewards (not necessarily food/treats) they do pretty well at it though and even come to enjoy it. I’ve trained more than 5 cats to enjoy going on walks on harnesses and leashes. Well, ENJOY may not be a completely accurate definition of what it is, but many of them come to be okay with it and still able to enjoy visiting new places to some degree.

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@Crease

managed to Houdini his way out of the harness numerous times.

I have had this happen a couple of times with certain harnesses. I found one that works really well that none of our houdinis have been able to escape out of no matter how hard the try, but it looks like it’s currently unavailable on Amazon.

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Related to this Wish, basically what we would do when we went hiking, was connect the Wyze cam to a flexible tripod, then wrap the tripot legs around the backpack or something else we are carrying, and have it watch everywhere we go and what we see and timelapse the whole trip…plus record the full trip continuously so we can pull out certain recordings of the trip that we may not have thought to record until the thing was already done (ie: maybe we saw an animal run by but didn’t have our phone recording when it happened or something). It was kind of cool to basically use a Wyze cam as a Go Pro in places that don’t have internet access.

I also have long planned to use it if/when I go camping (ie: set it in a tree to watch our campsite and record events), but I haven’t gone camping much since Covid. In my old age, I don’t like the cold and hard ground at night, and I hate smelling like smoke (Campfires), so I mostly send my kids with their aunts/uncles to go camping in tents. I spend most of my vacations with nice beds nowadays. I guess I’m old and spoiled now.

Regardless, some Wyze cams don’t do recording without internet very well now (even if you start them with Internet so they’ll keep recording) and might record things on the SD card in weird date/time formats if there is no internet. I told Wyze they should add Travel mode to these, but as we saw in the AMA quote above, it sounds like they think it wasn’t worth the time since the feature isn’t really used very often.

Oh well, I guess Wyze is right that Travel mode isn’t a “Deal breaker” for me…basically nobody else does that feature either…but it is sad/disappointing that it’s gone.

[Crease]

@carverofchoice

None of my cats liked harnesses at first.

My tolerates the harness. It’s just that if he’s in a car and not zipped into a carrier then he wants to roam around and will find a way to wrap the leash around something so he can create enough tension to wriggle out.

Mostly he stays in the carrier during travel, and he’s relatively okay with that. The carrier is always open and available to him at home, so since it’s part of his normal environment he doesn’t seem to see it as a container where he’s unwillingly placed only at certain potentially uncomfortable times (like trips to the vet). He can use it at any time, so it doesn’t seem like a scary place.

@carverofchoice

It was kind of cool to basically use a Wyze cam as a Go Pro in places that don’t have internet access.

Yeah, that actually seems pretty cool. I get why someone would want to use a Battery Cam Pro like that.

I forgot to mention earlier: Welcome to the Forum, @chamburn!

[chamburn]

Honestly, even if the travel mode did not exist, I would not mind at all but all those features that I mentioned should just be normal settings as a if a camera has battery that can be put anywhere and recharged it should just record and save locally to the SD card.