Wyze Cam 2 as standalone cam in a public market

I’m helping my partner get ready to sell at a holiday market booth that’s pretty busy and crowded. Last year, we put a Wyze cam 2 up high pointing down at the table as a kind of visual sentinel…it wasn’t hooked up to the local wireless network so didn’t record anything useful. Seemed to do the job as there was no theft.
Anyhoos, I’m unclear on how this device can work as a standalone cam.
I’m using the cam now on my home network. If I now transport it to this new arena, does it need to join the local wireless network to be useful? Would it record to the SD card if I don’t join the network and let me download the content this later?
Any tips here appreciated. Practically speaking I would want to record video for 8-10 hours as long as there is any motion in the view which is going to be almost all the time.

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Welcome to the Wyze User Community Forum @tlxreed!

Wyze cams must connect to the internet on startup to get all their operational settings, like SD recording, from the owner account on the server.

Once they are logged in, get their settings, and start running, they will continue to record to the SD card so long as power is maintained. Unplug them and they are just dumb again until they log back in and get the instructions again. They do not need continuous WiFi to keep recording to the SD Card.

Yes, so long as it doesn’t get powered off after it’s initial WiFi startup.

When it is operating off network and recording you will have no app access to the cam until it goes back onto it’s network.

If you are looking to just record to an SD Card, a 32GB card would give you plenty of space for your 8 to 10 hours as it will hold up to 3 days of continuous video in HD.

Some users have used their phone as a wireless hotspot (using a different device for the install) and installed the cam to the hotspot network, unplugged it, transported it, turned on the hotspot, plugged it in and waited for it to start recording, then turned the hotspot off so it can continue to record to the SD.

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Okay, I think I’m understanding this.

It seems like I could initialize the camera on site, do a setup, after joining the local wireless network successfully on my cell. Having done so, I could set up the camera with local wifi credentials after which it would be good to go to join that network and start recording. If it powers off, it would rejoin the local wifi and be good to go again.

Alternatively, I could do a local hotspot on my cell, initialize the camera to the hotspot, transport it to the market, turn it on with the hotspot enabled so it would join and do its setup, then I could let it record for 8 hours or up to 24 as long as the power remained on. If the power is turned off, I have to open the hotspot so it could join the network and get its settings.

Yes. If you have WiFi at the site and you have the password, that would be the best option: run the setup using the site provided WiFi. That way it will always log back into that network when you plug it in there. The advantage here is you can access the cam from the app at any time.

One drawback is that if you are not leaving the cam there, you cannot access the SD footage while the cam is away from the site. It has to be on the WiFi it was setup on. Otherwise, you have to do a new setup every time you move it to a new network. Don’t delete it from the app, just do a new setup each time it moves back and forth. If you are leaving it there, this is a moot point.

Exactly. One major drawback though: you cannot use the same phone to be both the hotspot and the setup device with the app. The setup app device and the cam must be logged into the same 2.4GHz network. Because a device cannot be logged into the hotspot it is also producing, you would need 1 device to produce the hotspot and another to log into that hotspot to do the app setup w\ the cam.

But, once the initial setup is done, all you need is the hotspot device and the cam as it will automatically log into that same hotspot on startup if it is available. This is useful if you want to do all the setup at home first and then just turn the two on once you get there. Also helpful if you want to take it home to look at the footage.