Greetings, all!
I’m having trouble tracking down hard facts concerning the Wyze Cam Outdoor Solar Panel. I am setting up a simple two-camera system and won’t be using much battery from either camera. It is for only occasional monitoring of events. No notifications or alert functions will be turned on; only live stream access is needed, and rolling history access available.That said, the batteries on both cams should last quite some time, right? Well, in my situation, I want to keep charging out of the picture, aside from solar.
The question: if I place a solar panel on each camera, both getting optimum amounts of sunlight, will I be able to leave them alone for, say, a year or two? Three? Will the panels keep their cameras charged enough for me to never have to charge them?
I’ve seen many a post about this type of subject, but I have yet to see a user plainly say that they haven’t had to charge their camera since unboxing for a considerable amount of time (a year? two?).
The reason I write this post is because I’m trying to convince a client that solar charging is sufficient for their needs. The Wyze setup is awesome in most respects for him, but he’s stuck on hardwired power. Help me convince him otherWYZE, please. He wants proof that these panels will let him be lazy with these cams for multiple years.
Thanks Wyze friends!
I have 4 outdoor cams each with a solar panel, and they all sit at 99-100% constantly. The solar panel hasn’t been out for multiple years, but I have had it since it came out and have never had to charge a cam. I use it with cam plus lite, so a 12 second event every 1 minute is max.
Regarding “rolling history access”, do you mean continuous recording? That feature isn’t available on the outdoor cams, as they go into a sleep state when they don’t detect motion to conserve battery. They do however have cloud events, and with cam plus you can get unlimited event recording.
That’s awesome! In your setup, do you have it record the events to the cloud when motion is detected? If so, that’s perfect for me.
I’ve been a Wyze nerd for quite some time now, but somehow didn’t realize that their outdoor cam doesn’t do the continuous recording. Silly me…
Yea, when motion is detected it uploads to cloud.
If you only capture the occasional motion event, the solar panel will likely keep you charged forever.
If however, you do much live streaming (which you mentioned), then know doing over an hour or two of that a day will slowly discharge your battery. The solar panel will not be able to keep up, especially if there are a lot of back-to-back cloudy days.
So if it is a set-and-forget motion detector, no problem. But if you want to live stream the video all day, it would need to be wire powered. If you need to power it, there are appropriate plugs made for that by Wasserstein that will protect the water seal. 
Yes, this was understood. I only need the occasional access to it, say, once every week or two, and for no longer than just a minute each time. This is a security cam setup that won’t be used often at all.