I have tried for a week to get the cameras to detect motion in my front and back yard to register events. I can see it following cars in the street, but it does not register an event. Now that I signed up for a month of free subscription with Cam Plus, it has registered events. I thought I did not have to pay for this service if I used an SD card. What am I doing wrong or do I need the subscription to use these cameras?
You don’t have to pay. It is possible your event settings weren’t set up right and they changed when the subscription got added. The removal/shortening of the cool down period could make it seem like there are more events too (when it reality it is just more notifications, as it will always record events to the SD card). Keep in mind the battery cams have some extra power saving features that sometimes cause them to be less sensitive to event detection.
I’ve never had a subscription and all my cams do fine with events off the SD card.
Yesterday I got two events on my backyard camera after I signed up for the Cam Plus. I thought that was the solution, bit apparently not. Today I went out in the same area and got no registered events. My wife shoveled the driveway and the front camera registered no events. I watched the green box follow her around, but it did not register an event. I bought these cameras to mount outside, but since it is bitter cold here, I set them up inside looking out a window. How does the green box follow motion and not respond? What am I doing wrong or is it a problem looking through the window even though the green box would seem to show it is working?
Welcome to the Forum, @baginwarren! 
You didn’t say this explicitly, but I imagine you saw this because you were watching the Cam’s live view at the time. You have Motion Tagging enabled, which is how the Cam signals that it’s detecting pixel changes, so you were seeing the green box indicating these changes as you watched the live stream. Is that correct?
Yes, the window is the problem. If you look at the Quick Start Guide, #4 on the diagram indicates that Solar Cam Pan has a PIR sensor, and you’re rendering it ineffective by putting it behind glass. I believe the Cam primarily uses this for detection so that it doesn’t have to power the image sensor all the time in the way wired (AC-powered) Cams detection motion.
You haven’t described any settings you’re using, but since you say that you currently have these indoors and mentioned microSD cards, then you could enable Settings ➜ MicroSD Card ➜ Record Continuously if you’re powering these with an appropriate 5V ⎓ 2A power source. I would consider trying that and/or moving these cameras outdoors where they’re intended to be used so that you’re not crippling the detection hardware. A subscription isn’t going to fix this for you, but I’m curious about whether continuous recording would mark events and send you notifications if you have that configured properly.
If you want to try that and then share more information about your settings—especially if you continue to experience problems—then that can be helpful. Screenshots are especially useful for troubleshooting.
That’s kind of a tricky problem you’ve presented, and it makes me wonder how many other users have experienced this disappointment because they’ve set up Solar Cam Pan indoors and looking out a window. I’m going to ping someone at Wyze to see if they’ll add a note or another article in the Help Center for Solar Cam Pan as a caution to others who might try using these behind windows.
I have Motion Tagging turned on. I am not hardwired since that is not my long term plan. I noticed that turning the lights off in the room my backyard camera is in causes a bleep with no recording. I annotated some of these pictures. One thing that I don’t understand is on the power manager screen it shows 29 detected events and 22 recorded events, but the event screen shows no events. I set this camera up first so there might be some false triggers due to handling while it was active and I was mounting it. The front camera shows one of each with no recordings. Is there any other info or screenshots I should provide? I could only make one download, so this is a composite picture.
That’s because you’re still a new Forum user. As a “New User (TL0)”, you’re limited to one image per post, but you can get to TL1 and be able to include more images by visiting/reading a few more topics and posts and spending a few more minutes in the community, and poking around like that might also answer some questions for you.
Thank you for the work you put into creating this single image! 
I don’t know what you’re seeing on the Events tab, because that’s not included in your composite, so I can’t really comment on that. I think the Power Manager feature may still be a work in progress, because I’m not sure how accurate some of that data is.
I still think positioning these behind windows is your primary problem, especially when you’re using them as battery-powered Cams. As I said before, I believe these use PIR as their primary means of detecting motion (heat) and that’s not going to work well when the camera is looking through glass. Unless you power them continuously with AC in a way that has the camera “awake” all the time so that its image sensor is on and you set the Cam so that it’s recording continuously to microSD, I believe the camera will try to preserve its battery by leaving that sensor off and relying on PIR to “wake” it before it starts recording something.
You could test this by powering the Cam as described/linked above and changing your MicroSD Card settings accordingly. If the Solar Cam Pan is powered in this way and continuously recording, then I would expect it to do the normal pixel-differentiation type of triggering for motion events (like the wired Cams do), but I don’t know for sure if that would be the case. If you decide to test this, then I hope you’ll report your results.
The Events tab may or may not show something useful. It’s hard to say at this point, because I really think the glass/PIR is the main issue while you’re powering these with batteries.
Another note about the glass: I see that you have IR Lights toggled on for your front Cam and off for your back Cam. For any camera behind glass that you expect to enter Night Vision Mode (I see that it’s set to Auto for both), you’ll want to turn the IR lights off (or set Night Vision Mode to Off), otherwise when the camera’s image sensor is turned on, it’s going to to see the IR reflected off the window when it’s dark outside, and you won’t get usable images from that.
Thanks for your help! I will turn off the IR light and not have it set for auto. I am leaving town for a bit, so I will need to watch what happens through the cameras from a distance. I will follow up if something happens good or bad.
1 Like
You’re welcome! Please be aware of how Night Vision Mode works:
- Auto = the Cam will adjust its mode based on ambient light
- On = the Cam will always use typical night vision and give greyscale images
- Off = the Cam will try to use “Color Night Vision” regardless of available light
If you set it to Off, then the IR Lights toggle should disappear from the settings (and IR lights should always remain off).
Have a safe trip!
As @crease has mentioned and just to reiterate, PIR won’t work through a window to wake up the cam so that is a major part of your problem. However when you see the green box (meaning the cam is awake) it should be able to log events so I’m wondering if you’re using “Smart Detections” and it isn’t recognizing the objects as people, cars, etc (which can also be caused by the window, reflections, etc). Try turning on “all events” and see if you start seeing events logged (when the cam is awake, it won’t help when the cam is asleep due to the PIR through window issue).
One camera was set up for all events and one was set for Smart Detection, I changed that camera. I left my home 4 days ago and no events have triggered, but I’m not sure there was anything to see. We usually have deer coming up to our birdfeeder which is pretty close. There will be someone at my house in a couple days. I will see if they are detected. Thanks for all your advice! Gary
1 Like