I have a Wyze base station and a couple of outdoor cams. I would like to connect the Wyze base station to my NetGear LB1120 cell modem (on Verizon). The cell modem has a single Ethernet port, no WiFi. The base station has an Ethernet port, but to be able to configure the Wyze outdoor network via my iPhone it requires that I have a WiFi network that both are connected to. So I bought a NetGear N600 WiFi router just so I could configure the base station. The cell modem is connected to the WiFi router and a LAN port of the router is connected to the Wyze base Station. This all works fine and I configured everything on my iPhone app and it works great. The problem I have is, why do I need this router? I am not using WiFi anymore. I’ve tried bypassing the router and plugging the cell modem directly into the base station but then I lose connection to the base station through the app (both cams seem to still be connected to the base station) .
I have all of this mounted inside a NEMA enclosure along with a 12V, 7Ah battery, solar charging circuit, 12V-5V DC converter for CAM charging. The router, base station and cell modem are all 12 VDC devices. Currently I am using a 10W solar panel, but will probably need a larger solar panel and possibly a larger battery. I would like to eliminate the WiFi router as it is an additional battery drain. I don’t understand why the WiFi router is required at this point.
Is it possible to use the base station without a wireless network now that I already have if configured and working? If so, what will I need to do to configure the base station and the cell modem to bypass the router?
I couldn’t find this question posted here and this is my first time posting to the community. Let me know if this isn’t the best place to post my questions. Looking for help from someone whose done this before.
Hmm, I just looked at the manual for the LB1120. It looks like it has two modes: router and bridge. Did you by chance flip it to bridge mode? While in router mode I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to plug your WCO base into it and have everything working.
Take a look at the PDF manual linked below. The bottom of page 16 talks about plugging in a switch and using the device with multiple computers/devices. The NetGear must be in router mode in order for that to function. Then on page 23 the manual walks you through how to change the device from router to bridge or visa versa.
I won’t be able to work on it more until the weekend. Too busy during the week. If the cell modem is already set as a router I have a couple of other things to try.
I did order a larger solar panel (100 W) my 10 W is too small. Probably need a larger battery too. I found that when the 12V 7Ah battery runs down to low for the equipment to stay online it will take about 10 hours of daylight to charge up enough for it all to come back online (around 4:30pm). Then it runs for an hour or two until the battery drains too much and it drops off line. Getting rid of the router would help, but not enough to keep it alive 24/7. Thanks for your support and interest. I’ll post again when I have more to report.
Finally had time to get back to this project and was able to solve it. The Netgear cell modem was configured in router mode, not bridge mode. So that wasn’t the issue. I changed the cell modem IP address to be the same as Netgear WiFi router and set the range of DHCP addresses to include the current IP address of the base station. I was then able to plug the cat5 cable directly from the cell modem to the base station and remove the router completely. Rebooted everything and it all came back on line working perfectly.
I also replaced 10W solar panel with a 100W solar panel and replaced the 12V 7Ah battery with a 12V 35Ah battery along with a programable charging controller.
So far (4-days) it has been running non-stop with 4 outdoor cams. Now I want to see about getting some small solar panels to keep the cameras running nonstop. Maybe make some “bird houses” to hide the cameras (WYZE how about making camo-cam versions? White is not very discrete).
I am pretty impressed on the base station’s range, probably over 100 yards.