Using a phones hotspot for remote monitoring

Is it possible to use an old phone’s hot spot as the network to remotely monitor a camera in your account? It seems simple enough but when I try to connect the phone to the hotspot the camera will not connect. From what I see the camera should support connecting to a hotspot.
Reason :
I want to monitor my mother-in-law’s room at a memory care facility where we have had some issues. I would like to log into the facility’s guest network with an old phone that I keep in her room and then connect my V3 camera to the phone’s hotspot, I could then monitor her room from my app.

Yes, no problem at all. I currently use a hotspot in my pickup to let the two cameras in the truck connect. In my case, I have the hotspot configured to match the WiFi SSID and PW of my 2GHz IoT WiFi at home.
Check to make sure that your phone is operating on 2.4 GHz when operating as a hotspot. I ran into that with my &^%$#@ iPhone. I don’t remember if it was 2.4 of 5GHz, but it would only operate as a hotspot on one of the bands (non-configurable).
Also make sure the phone you are going to use for setup is connected to the hotspot phone on 2.4 GHz.

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Hang on… I think there’s a little misconception going on here…

  1. Wyze Cams connect to WiFi networks. They must be on the 2.4ghz band (not the 5ghz).

  2. Mobile Hotspots take a CELLULAR network data and re-broadcast it locally as a WiFi network. They require an active mobile cellular plan and use mobile data. They’re usually limited to around 10g (sometimes significantly less) of data per month. These are never “free”, so when you say “old phone”, I’m picturing a retired personal phone that is no longer on a monthly cellular plan. Since that doesn’t get cellular data anymore (only WiFi) there’s no cellular data for it to receive and then convert/re-brodcast as a WiFi hotspot.

  3. Why take a phone and receive the memory care WiFi and then try rebroadcast it as a new WiFi network (which you can’t do anyway)? Even if that worked, it would add a whole additional layer of complexity (turning WiFi into Wifi) for nothing?

Instead, just connect the Wyze cam to their exising 2.4ghz WiFi network and you’re done! No reason to insert another device in the chain here!

Hope this helps,
John

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Yea, I missed that he was trying to use the “old phone” on the facility WiFi. I was assuming using the “old phone” via cellular. John is correct.

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Thanks for the quick replies. You are right I was asking about a retired phone without a cellular plan. I guess I didn’t think this one completely through because it only makes sense that hot spots require a phones data plan. Hot spots are for when you don’t have access to a local network.
My real problem is that the wifi network where I want to install the camera requires a browser log in for each device connected to it. I think I have found an inexpensive solution though. I bought a portable router that I can connect to the facilities wifi using a browser on my phone. The portable router creates a private network that I can then connect my camera to. Since the camera is on my wyze account I should be able to monitor it on my phone. The router is being delivered tomorrow so hopefully I will be able get it all up and running soon.

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More info on that is documented here:

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That’s a great idea hope it works !

Actually if you live with somebody and are on their wifi network, then they can control the juice to your camera. I like to control what, when and where I use my camera