Hello Wyze’ians - I consider myself a smart guy, and I like to dive into the details. For the life of me, I just can’t get my head completely wrapped around CamPlus. Here’s the scoop, for me, and I’m sure for many of you, the primary requirement of your Wyze Cam is to provide some record of what happened, in case something bad happens to your property; ie/ car theft, house break in, etc. In order for Wyze to fulfill that requirement, I really need to completely understand how, and where, my video’s are being recorded and stored. I wish Wyze would produce a flow chart to help us understand this. So here goes;
Continuous video recording - from what I understand the only way to get this, is to insert an SD card in the camera. Specs say 32GB is the max, but others here have used larger cards. Size of card determines how many days of video you can record. QUESTION: And it’s obvious, but I’m asking, if someone steals or destroys my camera, I have no record of what happened, right? So this is good, but not a full-proof solution for anyone who wants serious security. (side note - it would be nice to be able to continually copy the videos to your home pc, then sync them to your own personal cloud provider).
Item 1 leads us perfectly into a conversation about CamPlus. $15 per year, and some sort of video is now saved to “the cloud.” QUESTIONS: Only “events” are now saved to the cloud, right? And “events” are triggered by motion? I read that “event” recordings are unlimited, but I also read that they are limited to 5 or 6 minutes, so which is it? And how does that work, as long as there is motion, the “event” gets saved to the cloud? So if some dudes are in my driveway for 10 minutes stealing the rims off my car, is that 10 minutes of evidence saved to the “the cloud”? And lastly, same question as above, if someone steals or destroys my camera, I can still get the video off “the cloud,” right? And I think I read CamPlus stores 14 days of these events. That was pretty straight forward.
Again, please keep in mind my primary requirement; confidently and reliably having some evidence in case something bad happens. Right now, I am not 100% confident I would have that if I needed it with my Wyze v3 cameras. I’m trying to understand and compare the Wyze model against other camera vendors who simply have a base station with a 1TB hard drive, which you know darn-tootin’ everything (continuous recording) is being stored on that hard drive. Thanks all. Appreciate the input.
There are two totally separate recording systems on the Wyze cameras. The first is recording to the local uSD card. That can either be events only or continuous. The local recordings are accessed via the “View Playback” at the bottom of the live camera view screen. There will be a time slider that allows moving around in time. A Pinch In or Pinch Out will change the time scale. If you have local recording set to Events only, it will record any minute that has an event. Obviously if you have it set to continuous, it will always record. When the uSD card gets full, it will start deleting the oldest recordings. You do NOT need to format the card when it gets full. After a camera is powered up, it must be able to check in with the Wyze servers before it will start recording. After that, it will continue to record even if the camera looses internet connectivity. You can also remove the uSD card and plug it into a computer to read the video files. The files are organized by date, hour and minute.
Now for cloud based recordings. Cloud recordings obviously require internet connectivity. The camera will send events to the Wyze servers. Without WyzePlus there is a 12 second limit with a 5 minute cooldown between events. If you have CamPlus, those limitations do not apply. You can also have some filtering with Artificial Intelligence. In either case, cloud recordings are accessed via the Events selection at the bottom of the main page.
Thanks. Can you provide more details about CamPlus;
What triggers an event to be recorded to the cloud?
Since the 12-second limit does not apply, is it limitless? Again, back to my example of dudes stealing my rims for 10 minutes in my driveway; is the entire 10-minute event recorded to the cloud?
Can I retrieve CamPus event videos from the Cloud if my camera is stolen or destroyed?
Yes and yes as long as there’s movement it will record and all events go to the cloud,when useing a sd card we have all of our cameras set to continuously record that way you can use the playback option, if camera is stolen its all in the cloud it will store it for 14 days after that it’s gone,that’s why when you want to save a video you click on save to device,it’s so simple our customers,just love how easy it is to use we even have people in there 90’s that do it all