This OG camera is going back to Home Depot this morning. Unfortunately I don’t currently have time for extended troubleshooting.
So now I’m looking for a replacement, and I’m considering the Wireless Outdoor Camera V2, the one that comes with separate cameras and base station.
Three questions…
Reviews on the Home Depot website aren’t exactly universally favorable (gets 3 stars out of 5). For those of you who have this camera, how well has it been working out?
I see the camera is battery powered and needs to be recharged every couple of months like the doorbell camera. How has that worked out for you?
I see that the camera is NOT compatible with Wyze Web View (seriously???). Does that mean it’s also not useable in Groups? That would be a show stopper.
First off , good morning @epnh . Hope you’re doing well
I have had the WCO V2 since October of last year, it’s been very reliable and I have enjoyed the device. I installed it inside of my shed that currently doesn’t have any power , so a battery camera helps keep an eye inside of my shed of all of my valuables. The only issues I’ve run into have been that on the second day of installation , the base station went offline and so did the camera. I had to add it again and get it back up. Now currently my base station is only able to connect to my WiFi via Ethernet.
It can connect wirelessly to your WiFi or via Ethernet cable , mine was able to connect to the WiFi wirelessly but it acted up and then now it’s been connected to my router via an Ethernet cable and it’s been ok ever since. No problem with the base station.
Apart from that , the only issue I see with using a battery camera will be the notification speed. I have a mesh WiFi system , my base station is in my house upstairs and the camera is 25 ft away from the base station. The camera has 2 bars of signal strength and I receive the notifications about 15-20 seconds delay. Compare that to my wired v3’s and pan cam v2 , I receive those notifications within 7 seconds.
It’ll all depends on the distance between the camera and the base station. The closer they are the quicker you will receive them, but you can still use the camera and the base station with quite a bit of distance in between them.
With my currents settings , I’m able to get about 3-4 months in between charges.
It all depends on where you’re placing your camera and what it’ll be getting triggered by . So since my camera is in my shed, it doesn’t really get a lot of traffic . It just gets triggered by person and pet events (my cat)
If it’s going to be somewhere with high traffic like people and vehicles , then it’ll reduce the battery. But you can control the pir sensor and the event recordings to have cooldowns and not get triggered so much to help preserve the battery.
You can adjust the camera detection sensitivity, you can set a cooldown so it won’t get triggered so much , and set maximum video lengths so it won’t use up too much battery when recording an event.
A cool feature of the battery cameras is that you can use a solar panel and use the sun to charge the camera so you don’t have to take it down and bring it inside your house to charge.
It’s not compatible with the web view because it would drain the battery really quickly if you’re viewing the live feed on the web view. So I believe that’s why.
You can add the battery cameras to a device group though.
Thanks, @Rulwiz, for your extensive and detailed reply.
Regarding groups, if the camera would run down the battery quickly if viewed with Web View, wouldn’t it also run down quickly when continuously monitoring the camera as part of a group?
Incidentally, not all of the battery cameras can be used in groups. The Doorbell Pro is one that can not, perhaps for the same reason.
I suppose I should re-think this issue of wired vs wireless. So far the OG may be out because it appears to be unreliable (at least, this one was), and the WOC V2 perhaps may have battery issues if continuously monitored. So what are the alternatives? Maybe the Wyze Cam V3?
I don’t have on, but my opinion is that the battery powered cameras are so restrictive in capabilities in order to save battery life that they are almost useless. You could not give me one…
That was a very good explanation of the WCO @Rulwiz
Adding on, I agree that if you have access to power you should definitely use a wired cam. The battery cams are lacking a lot of features to allow for the battery to last.
What issues did you have with the OG cam? If that cam was unreliable then it could be a network issues instead. The OG is significantly faster than any other cam.
It freezes up and requires cycling power to get it back. Then it will run OK for a short time and then freeze up again.
I tried putting it right next to my wireless router and verified that it gets maximum bars. Internet connection here is more than 25 MBps down and 10 MBps up. No joy… it runs for a short time and then freezes up.
It gets stuck on loading until I cycle power. Unfortunately I can’t give you the exact indication. Normally I would be happy, even eager, to spend some time troubleshooting this thing but in this instance I had to return it to the store and exchange for the indoor-outdoor cam V3 which I’m testing now.
That’s an interesting issue. Let us know how the v3 works for you. The OG could have been faulty or just not playing well with your specific setup, so hopefully the v3 works for you.
I’d say the former is more likely than the latter; my setup is pretty plain-vanilla and my two Cam-Floodights and my Doorbell Pro (and now my V3) seem happy.
Great thing about Home Depot… they’re like 2 miles from me, have a good stock of this stuff, and they take returns with no questions asked other than “Is it defective?” in which case they’ll put a Return To Vendor sticker on it so it doesn’t end up back on the sales floor. Picked up an Indoor-Outdoor V3 and so far it’s been solid after about 20 hours, we’ll see if that happy situation continues.
