Christine,
In the past, I’ve done a number of off-grid recordings with my Wyzecam, notably a long (3+ hour) capture while sailing the fjords of Norway. Never had any problems.
That got me curious about your in-car recording bug (shutting off after 1.5 hours) so I’ve done some experiments with my V2 camera (w/firmware 4.9.3.64). I was able to reproduce the bug. It’s the loss of WiFi that causes the recording to stop, NOT loss of internet connectivity to Wyze HQ.
TL;DR,
I set up a new WiFi access point, and then reconfigured the cam as a new device using that network. Set it for no event recording nor push notifications. I didn’t want it talking to the cloud. I configured it for continuous recording to a 32GB SDcard.
10:50am - Started continuous recording.
11:00am - I pulled the power on the AP, killing the WiFi.
1:05pm - I turned the AP back on, thus restoring WiFi to the camera.
2:20pm - disconnected the WAN cable on the AP. So no internet connectivity to the cloud.
4:15pm - reconnected WAN cable. Camera back ‘on-line’.
Findings:
I tapped VIEW PLAYBACK to see what got recorded. As expected, it started recording at 10:50am. According to the timeline, it stopped at 11:02, round about the time the WiFi vanished. However, it turns out the timeline is misleading. The camera continued recording past 11:02 even though the timeline shows white space! The timeline went back to green at 12:00, and stayed green until 12:34pm. Recording ceased at 12:34. That’s about 1.5 hours after it lost WiFi, consistent with your experience.
The timeline went green again starting at 1:05pm, when the WiFi was restored. The camera started recording at 1:05 and continued unabated, even when it lost internet at 2:20pm. Then kept on recording during the internet outage, and kept going without a hiccup when internet was restored at 4:15pm. It’s still recording as I type this at 4:45pm.
UPDATE - as I’m typing this, I popped out of PLAYBACK mode to LIVE VIEW, and then back to PLAYBACK. The erroneous timeline display has magically fixed itself. It had been white from 11-12am even though it actually was recording. Now it shows a solid green from 10:50am when I started the experiment through to 12:34pm when recording spontaneously stopped. There’s another bug for Wyze to wrestle with.
Bottom line: the bug you’ve reported is reproducible. I assume that you’ve already reported it to Wyze Support, so I won’t do so again. If/when you get a reply from them, you might link to this post so they know that you’re not alone.
A fix/workaround for your automotive application is to spin up a tiny AP in the car, either your old Linksys router or a mini-travel router like the GL-iNET unit. NB: if you contemplate the former, I’d be leery of having the Linky connected to your car’s power while the engine is running. I doubt that the router’s power circuitry will be happy with the voltage variation and noise spikes prevalent on an automotive power grid.
FYI - I’ve not run into the 1.5hour limit on my off-net recordings because I power the camera from my HooToo travel router + USB battery gadget. I configure the HooToo with its WiFi turned on. The camera associates with the HooToo, and I then use my iPhone (connected to the AP), to check the camera, be sure it’s aimed where I want, etc. Then I walk away, leaving it recording, but still connected to the HooToo WiFi. Hence, I’ve never encountered your 1.5 hour surprise:-)
I suppose I should run another experiment to see if the cam terminates time-lapse recordings in the absence of WiFi. My long-duration recordings have mostly been time-lapses.