At this point, the only way to view the event copies on the Base Station SD card is to remove the card and read it in a PC or laptop. Wyze does not have a UI for viewing those clips.
I think with this change, they may need to develop a UI for the app.
That is a really interesting point and an argument to keep regular motion alerts on if at all feasible - so as to let your own eyes be a backup to the AI in finding the human who caused the motion alert (especially if he or she is around after the 12 seconds).
True, with only 12 seconds of recording, there are times where motion is triggered and the person appears later in the video. I drove down their driveway and the Camera caught the car and started to record and stopped at the 12 seconds. The Continuous recording caught my wife and I getting out of the car.
It all boils down to preference. For the critical camera’s at my house, I have Cam Plus, for ones which are not as critical, but are in an area where the 12 seconds may not be an issue, I setup Cam Plus Lite - to test it out.
I have subscribed to the “Unlimited Cam Plus” as I have 14 Camera’s. Some are live and others I use to play and test with.
Of course I can’t get my SD cards to reliably record so…
Ok, so first time poster, so please be patient.
Just bought two v3 cams. Right now it appears they are on a “trial” of Cam Plus. WHAT FUNCTIONALITY will I lose from this full trial when I switch to Cam Plus Lite? Specifically. It is not crystal clear.
I plan to get SD cards. You’d think that it would allow unlimited alerts, but not use cloud storage with this method. Is that not true? Thanks!
Welcome to the community @mmmmark , that is a fair question to ask.
Cam Plus provides longer recording intervals, no cooldown and additional AI options like Pet, package, Vehicle, etc. You will be more Notifications as the event happens and based on what you would like to be alerted about.
Cam Plus Lite will provide 12 seconds recordings anda cool down of 5 minutes. SOme individuals, myself included, have added the SD Card to the mix. This will allow for Continuous recording or Event recording without the 12 second limitation. Event Notifications will still be subject to the 5 minute cool down.
It’s not true. Unlimited recording, yes. Unlimited alerts, no. With the Lite tier, you are still limited to one detection and alert evey 5 minutes - it’s in a so called “cool down” during that time and won’t send anything to cloud. However SD motion or continuous recording (no person detection) should continue during those times.
The cloud Events are separately treated from ongoing SD recording settings. The crossover is that an alert can point you to a recording timeline on SD card.
Edit: probably answered better by @spamoni
Actually, I think betweens yours and mine, we about covered it all. 
Thanks, guys. I’m gonna use an SD card I guess and examine 5 minutes of footage occasionally (eyeroll). I can still do focus zones with lite, correct?
Currently, it doesn’t seem that I can opt into Cam Plus Lite because I have Cam Plus trial by default since a new purchase. Will that renew? Will it die and THEN I can sign up? They don’t have a credit card so it can’t charge me if it renews. End goal is to get the Lite and I hope additional cameras I add later will be the same.
How different is a doorbell? It does not have an SD card. So it can ONLY do the 12 second every 5 min? And live monitoring?
Yes you can set Detection Zones as with the other camera’s.
You can enroll in Cam Plus Lite. Try this: Go to your services page from a computer Home Monitoring & Security Services - Wyze Services select Add a Subscription. On the next page, go to the bottom and select Cam Plus Lite, then follow the process from there. Select a Price or choose Custom and enter an Amount, 0 is acceptable. if you put 0 in you will be prompted to see if you can spare $1 per month, it is up to you. Answer Yes or No. The Subscription should be available then. Once your Trial License Expires, simply attach it to your Cam Plus Lite subscription.
The other option is to remove the Trial from the Camera and then try add Ca Plus Lite through your app.
Currently CPL does not support the Doorbell. Here is what the service will support. It may support the Pro version of the Doorbell, but I don’t have one, so I cannot answer.
I went to enable my cameras and the toggle automatically stays shades gray and switches off immediately after toggling to the on.
That would normally happen if you have not subscribed to CPL. Follow these steps to see if you are subscribed and if not to subscribe:
That was not too bright. You could of gone with Open ZFS partition type for free and it is very tolerant with power failures.
Why in the world would they choose a filesystem that 99% or more of their customers won’t be able to read in their own computers?
I don’t work for, represent or speak in Wyze’s behalf, but I can probably answer this for them fairly well nonetheless, despite it being just my personal insight/perspective:
The idea behind the choice (to use exFAT) is to make it as user-friendly as possible. Nearly all large capacity MicroSD cards come preformatted in exFAT, so users will be able to just plug them straight in and have them work as expected/intended, then take them out and plug them into the most common computers or phones and be able to read them as-is. Nearly any customer will be able to do this, even those who don’t understand technology very well. That’s the main reason for doing it this way.
ZFS is superior in some ways, but the rich feature set makes it complicated to use and manage, especially for those who aren’t familiar with it. Another issue is that ZFS checksum algorithms require processing power and have been known to affect performance, plus it uses gobs of memory (like 2-4x as much RAM as any other filesystem) just for the filesystem alone; all of which could be a major issue for Wyze cams in their current form since they’re intended to be used in cameras which have particularly severely limited processing power and limited available RAM to the extent that several other highly requested features have not been possible to implement due to these limitations.
ZFS is a GREAT filesystem, it is just not optimized for Wyze’s current line of cams or for ease of use to their customer base’s intended use…exFAT has it’s own flaws too, but it is currently the industry standard for microSD card use. It would be nice if things can switch to a more free and improved option in the future though.
Mine record well enough (90% solid - a gut guess - using SD Event recording versus Continuous.)
Accessing card content, performance drops to at worst 75% (gut guess) and seems attributable to possible simultaneous-job-workload the processor may be under, and/or network timing issues (timeout?), and/or hell if I know.
Tangentially, omission of SD access from tinyCam Pro’s feature set suggests something, maybe…
/edit
In addition, I get the impression there may be some truth to this:
/edit
(…gut guess, seems, possible, may be, hell-if-i-know, suggests, maybe, impression, may be, some… qualify much? )
A deep pull there, peep, and you may be on to something.
This is awesome news…I didn’t know that!
More smoke and mirrors. We all have free Cam Plus Lite including Cam Plus subscribers. All it is saving them is 2 minutes to sign up and the guilt trip.