first things first, I noticed I didn’t answer one of your questions “Why do I need the WOC Base?”. My understanding is that the base station is required to help improve battery life, but I don’t have specifics for that.
As far as your detections problems, have you checked all the settings in the app? there should be a bell icon at the top (no ZZZ or line threw it), you will need to confirm the detection settings for the cam, and finally events won’t trigger when your accessing the camera.
check out the video on this thread for more details on these steps.
If you have confirmed all these things and are still having trouble, you might have a defective unit on your hands. If that is the case i would recommend contacting support, but remember to be patient with them, apparently, they have lots of tickets rite now.