I am at a loss of the use of the MicroSD Card in the Wyze Cam Outdoor. As I see it, standard detection captures 12 s of motion. If you want anything longer than that, the only choice is to use Scheduled Recording. If one is using the camera for security purposes, one would have to record for many hours (say overnight), but in such case a fully charged battery lasts at most around 8 1/2 hrs.
It appears to me that there is no mechanism for extending the time of standard detection, say for 1 minute and storing this in the MicroSD Card. Thus, I don’t see what the usefulness of a MicroSD is. Can anyone enlighten me?
What is the micro SD card slot on the camera for?
The micro SD card slot on the camera is meant for the time lapse and scheduled recording features.
This is meant to save videos that you intend to shoot with the camera such as a specific task continuously recorded over a couple of hours or monitoring a remote area without WiFi.
This is not meant for constant continuous recording like with Wyze Cam v2.
What is the micro SD card slot on the base station for?
The micro SD card slot on the base station is meant for a backup of the 12-second Event Videos.
This is a good feature to use if you are concerned about the camera becoming lost, stolen, or damaged where it is mounted.
Continuously recording to a micro SD card like Wyze Cam v2 will make the battery life extremely short.
Because of this, we did not build this feature and Wyze Cam v2 is still the best option for this use case.
However, we did build a “Scheduled Recording” feature where you can schedule specific times for the camera to continuously record to its local micro SD card
or record when PIR is triggered though this will reduce battery life.
We’re not asking for continuous recording, We’re asking for complete motion capture SD card recording. Since motion is trigger by PIR, the probability of false triggers and battery consumption are drastically reduced.
So if I use the camera for security purposes and I want a 30 s or 1 min motion capture what do I do? For me the 12 s is next to useless and I am not sure that it can be used for any legal purposes. If this motion can happen any time during the day because I am not home, I cannot use time lapse or “Scheduled recording” with or without WiFi.
So, we are only asking for the flexibility of motion capturing for a little bit longer than the 12 s and this being backed up to the micro SD card on the camera and on the base station.
Hi @sicones & @paolucci The reason Wyze used passive infrared detection in the WOC was to reduce power consumption. With PIR the camera and processor are sleeping, no motion capturem total zZ.zzz.
I agree about the length of recording, it could be maybe 15 seconds or some adjustable length. I think the design was to have 3~5 events /day. Doubling recording time would half number events/day.
The special network between base and camera eliminates the need to power consuming “keep alive” communications. Its all about the battery.
The WOC is best for nature photo vs security. The v2 w/an outdoor case is probably a better option for you. Sugges using a USB power pack if it needs to be portable.
There are specific uses for the micro SD cards, as stated. However, it is very clear that recording complete motion to either card was left out to force customers to enroll in a monthly service. I understand that these cameras are cheap and likely don’t return enough profit to fund their growing company. But I also feel as though Wyze is missing the main attraction of their products… Cheap and don’t require a subscription. I have personally recommended Wyze to several people looking at Ring cams simply because of this. “Hey, Wyze is only $20, doesn’t require a subscription, and records continuously to a memory card.” I personally would gladly forfeit the useless 12 second cloud recordings for easier to navigate continuous recording to the micro SD card.
This change is further solidified with their doorbell, which should have been designed to take a card. Or at least make it able to record to the outdoor cam base station. The free 12 second clips are so useless that they’re not even worth whatever it’s costing Wyze. They probably should have built their whole platform around local storage, with the option to pay for cloud storage for those that care, to reduce their base operating costs. Cloud storage and cloud computing are very expensive, reoccurring costs. And they joke about it in their announcement, “we finally hired an accountant.” While I don’t believe it was that simple, that is a very nonchalant way to joke about a very serious problem with their business model. “Oh yeah, it turns out we didn’t research the stuff we’ve been promising you. Lulz, our bad y’all. But hey, trust us to be your security company!” …Uh-huh. Right.
Indeed, all we are asking is to be able to adjust the length while we recognize that the longer the length the power consumption goes up. But at least the customer has some control over this.