Using Wyze for Animal Behavior

Hello,
I’m a researcher using Wyze cameras to study animal behavior. So far, another researcher and I plugged our V3 in to study behavior. Right now, we are getting “events” that seem to be caused by motion and the longest has lasted 3 minutes. How long can these cloud recordings last? Ideally, recording for at least ~30 minutes (no limit at all as long as the motion’s there is even better) would be awesome, but I’m trying to figure out if I need to put these cameras on Cam Plus to have a recording that long? Do the cameras need to be restarted for Cam+? Generally, these behaviors last hours. I’m most interested in the time it happens so I can drive over and set up some acoustics equipment. It does not have to be an exact time, just within the ~minute the behavior starts, but it would also be great to capture the entire behavior which can last multiple hours in the rainforest. We are in a lab setting so we are not restricted by Wifi issues. In a similar vein, can I just plug a 32 Gb SD card into the camera (does it need to be unplugged before?) and access these longer recordings by taking out the 32 Gb SD card to see how they line up with the motion events? I am the “shared” member, so I can’t do playbacks via my phone, but I can access the camera itself.

Second, we study our animals in the rainforest too (this is a fun guessing game…) and we will definitely not have easy (if any) internet access. Can we use the Wyze cam outdoor’s hub and remotely record that way? It’ll be a similar situation to the last one. We are interested in all motion captured, it may last hours, and we are mostly interested in when it happens (like approximately the time of day, not the exact seconds matter.)

Thanks for answering the many questions!!

For cloud recordings/events It will only allow up to 12 seconds once every 5 minutes without Cam Plus.

Cam Plus will record any time it senses enough motion (I recommend turning up the sensitivity setting so it captures even when there is fairly low amount of movement). If an event of movement lasts longer than 5 minutes, then cam plus will just end 1 event and start up a new one right where the other one ended. So it basically divides the events into 5-minute chapters, but it will keep recording as long as there is still motion occurring. I hope that makes sense.

An SD card can be set to do one of 2 things:

  1. Record continuously whether there is any motion detected or not.
  2. Record only when it senses motion.

The SD card has no recurring fees, so it’s a great option. Additionally you can use one of the cloud options (Cam Plus with unlimited motion recorded or no cam plus with just the 12 second cloud events once every 5 minutes max) at the SAME time you use the SD card too. I do this. I have the cloud record events, and have the SD card record continuously. Then if I want to see exactly what occurred just before or after an event I can go check it out on the SD card.

Yes, you can remove the SD card and access the recordings on it directly through a computer. A lot of people find it’s helpful to use VLC media player to review those recordings because on the SD card they’re all broken up into like 1 minute segments, but you can load an entire day or more into VLC and view them all together seamlessly instead of single 1 minute clips at a time.

I hope that helps. Good luck with your research! Let us know if you need any other clarifications (I’m just a community volunteer, not a Wyze Employee, but lots of us are happy to help answer questions).

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Cool - thank you for your help. Today, we picked up a 3 minute motion recording that we could access on our phone (we haven’t done anything with the SD card yet…). Is this part of the Cam Plus free trial then, or is this something else? Thanks!

You are correct, it is because you have 14 day free trial of cam plus on there since it’s a new activation. That trial will automatically end after 14 days and it won’t automatically renew or charge you or anything if you just let it expire, so there is nothing to worry about, you can freely enjoy the benefit of it while it’s free as there is no risk at all.

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