In the world of home surveillance systems, Wyze cameras are quite the disruptive piece of technology. Sure, you can spend a lot of money on installing a traditional security system at your home, but going with a more technologically advanced and more affordable solution is entirely possible in this day and age.
Enter the Wyze Cam. This home surveillance camera brings live footage of your home right to your smartphone or tablet. And if you’ve bought one recently, you might be looking at the back and seeing an extra USB port. What’s it for?
How It Works
The Wyze Cam is a small camera device, capable of delivering 1080p footage to your phone or tablet. As long as you have an internet connection on your main smartphone/tablet device, you’ll be able to gain access to the live feed from the camera, wherever you are in the world. Additionally, you can even use the two-way communication option that comes with the camera, to talk to your visitor(s), even if you’re nowhere near your home.
The Wyze Cam is primed to setup mode by plugging the device into the wall socket, using the provided cable and plug. From there, you use the Wyze phone app that helps the Wyze Cam device connect to your Wi-Fi. In addition, you can connect all the Wyze Cams that you own to your main smartphone device, as well as add “guests” who’ll also be able to gain access to your cameras’ live feeds.
The main downside of the Wyze Cam is the fact that it isn’t wireless. Unless it’s connected to the power source, it simply won’t work. Sure, you could buy a power bank and use it to power up the device, which is certainly a viable option, but it isn’t the only one.
The USB Port
So, you’re looking at the back of the camera and you see a power cable port and another, clearly USB, port. You’ve already connected the Wyze camera to the power source and set it all up. You look at your phone and the device is performing impeccably. So, what’s the USB port for? No, it isn’t for connecting a power bank to the device.
Is it for adding more memory options to your Wyze Cam? Every Wyze Cam device comes with microSD support, which you can use to record the footage onto. The microSD option gives you the ability to record motion sensor-triggered movement for as long as there is movement. Alternatively, you can choose to enable continual recording, which will simply record everything until the SD card is full and then overwrite it with new footage.
Therefore, does the USB port give you additional storage/recording options? No. It’s not at all what it’s for.
Daisy-Chaining
The USB port on your Wyze Cam is made for one simple, yet neat purpose – daisy-chaining. But what is daisy-chaining? It pertains to the capability of certain devices to connect to one another, sharing the same power source.
Although Wyze still hasn’t released a completely wireless model, this is as close as they’ve got to it. In essence, all you need to do in order to make use of the USB port is connect one of your Wyze Cams to the power source directly and then connect the next Wyze Cam to the first one, using the mentioned USB port.
But what does this feature bring to the table? Well, in addition to the convenience of not having to use multiple wall sockets for each of the Wyze Cam devices, creating a cable mess, it allows you to put a Wyze Cam in a spot where you simply don’t have enough (or any) outlets. If there’s only one outlet in the vicinity, plug in the first Wyze Cam into it and daisy-chain the others. If there are no outlets nearby, connect the first cam to the nearest outlet and use a longer USB-to-USB cable to connect the others.
Another cool benefit of daisy-chaining is a greater field of view. If you stack one camera facing a certain direction and another one facing the other way, you’ll see how much the field of view will improve. Sure, Wyze Pan can track motion robotically, so this might be an alternative, but the best part is that you can daisy-chain the Wyze Cam device to the Wyze Pan, too.
Using the USB Port
Wyze may come up with an additional use for the USB port on Wyze Cam devices, but so far, it does a fantastic job and gets you as close to going wireless as possible. Use the daisy-chaining option cleverly and creatively to top your Wyze home surveillance game.
How do you use the daisy-chain feature? What do you think Wyze could use the USB port for, in the future? If you have any questions, thoughts, ideas, or tips, visit the comments below section.
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