The new wins campaign.
Version three is now weatherproof
and makes the perfect low cost home security camera.
Plus, you might just capture some nocturnal visitors to your home.
In this video, I review the camera, walk through the features and examine
the performance of the Wyze campaign. V3.
I've been using Wyze devices for a while now.
I love the original Wyze cam because it was impossible
to beat the cost versus the features performance.
The company followed up with numerous models and variations, one of
which was the Wyze campaign and Pan V2.
It was Wise's first camera in the lineup to not only include
a fully articulated camera, but using A.I..
It can automatically track subjects in the field of view.
The Wise Campaign V3 is the latest version now, not only does it look better,
but it's also weatherproof making it what I think is the ideal home security camera
on a budget for only $60 Canadian, it's hard to beat the features $4 performance.
The first thing you notice
when unboxing is the light and small form factor of the pan V3.
Also, in a change to the old design instead of the camera
remote is being housed all in the same body.
The pan V3 separates the two motorized portions
to give the camera its full articulation.
The pan V3 is powered by a motor in the base for horizontal movement
and a motor in the new arm designed to control the vertical plane movement
between the two.
It gives the camera total coverage of any area where you want to mount it.
The body is made from a hard polycarbonate plastic
that feels durable and measures a little bigger than a soft drink can.
Plus, it only weighs 11 ounces, which is about the same weight
as a full can of soft drink to.
Also included is a fairly lengthy six foot power
cable that ends in a micro USB connector to power the camera.
The camera
also comes with a five volt to power Burke.
Finally, Wyze includes a nifty little mounting bracket
and the necessary screws and anchors suitable
for mounting on most surfaces in and around your average house.
Once mounted and plugged in, it was a very straightforward job
to connect the camera to the wise app following the instructions.
With the camera powered on, you can add the camera
to the official wise app following the very straightforward instructions.
Once complete, you'll see the camera feed in your dashboard.
There's a quick toggle here to turn the camera on and off,
just like your other devices.
Tapping on the feed
takes you to the specific controls for the pan V3 to start with.
One trick is
that you can simply swipe on the camera, feed thumbnail to move the camera itself.
You can also pinch to zoom to to give you up to eight times digital zoom.
Beneath the other main controls.
One thing to note, which seems like a design bug for wires to fix,
is you have to swipe the control icon to access the additional features.
This includes the unique features for the pen V3, motion tracking and PEN scan.
However, the same user interface and a wise campaign v2 shows a more icon
which is more intuitive.
Making the V3 interface an interesting decision from wise.
Below those icons is an area where you can set up waypoints for a PEN scan.
I talk more about this feature later in this video.
The final section is a virtual joystick for moving the camera manually
so you can review the area around your camera in real time.
At the very bottom,
you can review any events captured by the camera, by swiping up.
You can also access the same clips in the dashboard.
But they all have all your different
camera clips, which you can filter out by using the menu at the top.
One side note regarding the app, there are three levels
of functionality depending on whether you're using an SD card
and subscribing to the additional services which I cover off in the next chapter.
Wise offers three different tiered cloud plans for its cameras.
With each tier enabling more features for the pan V3 an increase in cost.
Also, using an SD card, you can boost the onboard storage,
which in turn opens up some useful features to start.
If you're just using the wyze cams out of the box, you automatically able
to get the basic cloud functions, so you'll get notifications for events.
However, on the basic plan, you'll only get a snapshot update without any video.
Plus, there's a delay of 5 minutes between event notifications.
If your cameras spot an event,
it won't notify you again for another 5 minutes over.
The basic plan does include the ability to receive motion and sound triggered
events, including listening for smoke and carbon monoxide
alarms that sound within the vicinity of the camera.
In the event you're away from home
or unaware of those alarms, you'll be alerted by your Wyze app
to get more features than the basic plan.
Wyze offers what they call CAM plus lite.
Interestingly, you can name your own price for the service,
including $0
cam plus like gives you a slight upgrade.
And one more feature over the basic plan.
Now you'll be able to capture 12 second long clips to review and you'll
also benefit from artificial intelligence person detection.
With in-person detection, you can set your notifications only to include events
involving people within the camera's field of view rather than all motion.
Finally, Cam Plus unlocks all the available features for 199
a month or $24 a year.
These include additional AI detection and notification
for packages and deliveries, vehicles and pet detection.
You'll also have the ability to fast forward
through events, which seems like a minor feature,
but it's actually really useful for reviewing longer clips to save time.
Another interesting feature with Cam Plus is the ability to use Wyze Webview.
This is a desktop browser feature
where you can review all your camera feeds on your dashboard of your computer.
This adds a little bit more convenient for owners with multiple cameras
who'd like to check on their property remotely rather than just using the app.
Finally, if you have an SD card, you can record events
continuously up to the capacity, the size of the SD card.
Using the app, you can select the camera
and scrub through the timeline to review up to several days in the past,
depending on the capacity of the memory card.
For example, the 32 gigabyte SD card in my PAN V3 captures approximately
three days of footage before it overwrites the oldest data with a new data.
Now that the campaign V3 is weatherproof, I've already decided
it would take place of my long serving
wise can be three on the exterior of my house.
One note is you do need to keep in mind the distance from your router
or wi fi extenders when placing the camera,
so it's to keep it within functional range of your home network.
The pan V3 supports the standard 2.4 gigahertz band,
which is used by most similar devices.
For my setup, I already have
a Wasserstein floodlight, which I've been using for my Wyze cam v3.
It comes with a quarter inch bracket and a weatherproof USB
port to power the camera.
However, the wise can be three bracket meant for that
camera was oriented for that device and not for the B three.
After a quick experiment to see whether I could simply use
the standard quarter inch bracket as is, I discovered it wouldn't work.
I managed to find a tripod bullhead in my drawer of drone to angle the camera
properly 90 degrees from the quarter inch bracket.
The PAN V3
excels in locations where static camera won't give you the same coverage.
In my example, there's a long, narrow alleyway beside
a house that leads from the drive to the side entrance.
In the past, I've just had to position my ways.
Can be three what I thought was the best angle to capture the most movement.
Now with the Pan V3, I'm able to get full coverage of that area.
The Pan V3 has a broad field of view 120 degrees,
which is important for motion tracking. The camera.
I will need a target start tracking and the camera will lock onto anything
it detects within that 120 degree view.
The fast motors in the camera and the articulated movement means that
the V3 has no problem keeping up with all but the most rapid movement.
The resolution is ten MP, which is more than enough for home
security devices, in my opinion.
The images captured are clear with lots of detail.
The resolution is also high enough that enables it to achieve a digital zoom
without compromising the fidelity of the image.
The night vision feature, including full color mode, is excellent
for the price point.
When you have the night vision mode turned off, the camera will use
the relatively large CMOS sensor to capture as much light as possible.
The processing then uses the captured data
to reproduce the scene in color to an impressive degree.
It's not perfect, but considering the price point
and the hardware, it's a very cool feature.
For regular
night vision, the camera uses four infrared LEDs using the longer range
850 nanometer wavelength to illuminate the area in front of the camera.
This wavelength has the advantage of illuminating a greater distance
and volume than the alternative 949 a meter wavelength used in other devices.
As a side note, though,
if you're using the Pan V3 to try and spot wildlife at night,
you're better switching to color night vision mode as the 850 nanometer
wavelength is visible to animals, which may scare them off.
It's worth mentioning the frame rate for the daytime video is 20 frames per second
and the nighttime is slightly reduced at 15 frames per second.
To my eye, this doesn't really compromise the video to any great degree,
and it's fit for purpose for security monitoring.
There is a two way speaker
microphone integrated into the camera, which you can use in tandem with the app.
The audio is just okay and you won't be holding long
conversations on the device, but it's fine in a pinch.
Unlike previous versions of the camera, the Pan V3 now includes noise
cancellation to improve the audio pickup, which is a nice addition.
As mentioned earlier in the app, you can create an automation called PAN Scan.
This feature enables you to manually set waypoints for the camera to move between.
The camera will move and pause between each waypoint set for 10 seconds
before moving to the next phone position.
This is a great feature for those owners who are keen to surveil specific parts
of their property, for instance, depending on the placement of the camera.
You can have the camera swing back and forth
between the entrance to your backyard and your back door at any points in between.
The Pan V3 has four default
positions if you simply want to turn it on with no extra work.
But the ability to define the waypoints
is probably going to be more useful for most owners.
When pen scan and motion tracking are both turned on, the camera will deviate
from the Pentagon waypoints to follow the motion detected.
They will continue to follow the motion as long as the motion is detected
in the field of view.
Once motion is no longer detected, it will revert to the PAN scan mode.
Another feature available in the app is to set an area within the field of view
that the camera will ignore.
This is great for omitting a nearby busy road.
If you happen to have a lot of
local traffic so you don't get inundated with clips and notifications.
If you have set up a detection zone,
it will be disabled when PAN scan is turned on.
The final feature, which could prove useful for some owners, is privacy mode.
Here you can simply have the camera switch off
and assume a neutral position for privacy reasons.
I can see privacy mode being more useful for owners who have Pan V3 set up
inside their home and would like times when their every action isn't recorded.
Once cameras have long supported Google Assistant and Amazon
Alexa devices with screens, the Wyze campaign V3 is no exception.
After collecting your Wyze account, you'll be able to stream
the Pan V3 to any compatible smart device with a screen.
One thing I did know while trying this with my older wyze can V3
and the older campaign v2
is that the latency when viewing the stream
has been greatly reduced for this generation?
Whether that's due to software optimizations or hardware improvements
requires some further investigation.
Overall, I'm very
much enjoying the WYZE campaign V3 and would recommend it
to anyone looking to upgrade or buy their first home security camera.
Key selling points for me are around the eye tracking
and motorized arm, plus the new IP65 weatherproof rating,
which makes this the ideal external home security camera, in my opinion.
The price point is undeniable, too.
The $34 US or $60 Canadian decision to go with the Wyze camp
and V3 is negligible compared to the competition.
That's not to say there can't be improvements,
but luckily they are all software based, in my opinion.
The main area for improvement
for me is the AI tracking and identification for non-human movement.
For instance, insects and rain will trick the camera to record events.
This fills your timeline with known events,
which is a bit irritating when reviewing your feeds.
Also, while technically correct in its implementation,
the AI tracking will constantly list parked vehicles as part of new events.
Ideally, the AI would only track moving vehicles for events,
especially when you've mounted the camera in a driveway
and don't need to be alerted about your own parked vehicles.
Thanks for watching.
And as always, please like this video and subscribe to my channel
for more videos on the Connected Home and personal technology.