What is the best grow tent webcam? I’ve been through a few grow tent webcams (or IP cameras). They are a great way to keep an eye on the grow when you’re at work or away from home. They serve as an early warning detection system for nutrient burn (yellow leaves), plants running out of water (wilting) or even heat issues (scorched leaves) which can help mitigate fire risk.

As of 2020 my favorite Grow Tent Webcam is the Wyze 1080p camera. It is affordable, made by a Seattle based company and has a great timelapse feature. My recommendation is to avoid Chinese made IP cameras, such as Yi brand cameras. There are many known security issues with Chinese brand cameras, even if your grow is legal I would avoid putting these spy devices on your network.

If you want to record timelapses get the Wyze that comes with micro SD card ($35 vs $25 for the base model).

Setting up the Wyze camera is extremely easy compare to setting up my old D-Link cameras which needed to be hooked up to the router to get them on the WiFi.

Grow Tent Camera Installation

The WYZE camera makes installation easy. Just screw in the oversized washer. The camera has a magnetic base that snaps on and off. This is a handy mounting method because the camera is easy to remove in case you need to pull a timelapse from the microSD card.

Another option is to put a slotted steel angle in your grow space. Since there is a strong magnet that already comes with the Wyze base you can easily slide the camera up and down the flat.

If you are using a D-link or other brand camera you can use rubberized twist ties to attach or drill directly through the base.

I like to mount the camera in the top corner of the tent so that I can see everything. Mount lower down for a more intimate timelapse of the plants

What should interval length for timelapse be?

Setting up a timelapse with a Wyze camera is simple. The only limitation is that you can only do 30 days max. I usually set myself a Google reminder to start a new timplapse in 30 days if I am going to exceed that length.

Use the chart below to help determine the photo frequency in your timelapse. This chart calculates video length in seconds. For example if you are taking a 1 month timelapse and want a 58 second video you would select an interval of 25 minutes.

In my experience you should typically run the photo interval between 15 minutes – 2 hours for grow lapses. The longer your time lapse recording length the larger your interval should be.

Does Webcam Night Vision (infrared light) Impact Flowering Cannabis plants?

You may be temped to turn on the night sight feature at the top right of the Wyze interface, and my testing reveals this perfectly fine and there is no ill-effect on flowering plants.

Infrared light has lower energy than wavelengths in the visible spectrum. Although it does play a part in the flowering cycle I have found that keeping the infrared light on in my grow tent has no ill effect on my plants.

This was evident because with the IR light on at night for a full grow cycle (with multiple strains) I did not experience any re-vegging as one would expect with a light leak. The strains I exposed to infrared were sensitive strains I have had re-veg before so I have confidence in these findings.

Side note: If you have the night light on “auto” it will only kick on when it detects sound/motion or you have a scheduled timelapse photo, minimizing the risk even further.

Removing Night Scenes from Wyze Timelapse

Although the nightmode allows you to film 24/7 you will find the timelapses are a bit jarring when played back. The reason for this is the flicker caused by constant day/night shifts.

There is a simple solution for removing all night scenes for you timelapse. Simply install ffmpeg (a free command line based video editor. There are a number of YouTube videos showing how to install this software if you have any trouble. Once installed run the following code:

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf "blackframe=amount=0:threshold=92, metadata=select:key='lavfi.blackframe.pblack':value=45:function=less,setpts=N/FR/TB" -vsync 0  out.mp4

Where in.mp4 is the input timelapse and out.mp4 is the output timelapse. Make sure your terminal/cmd window is open to the same folder that the files are located in. I have played around with these parameters and this works for all of my videos but you can tighten or lower the tolerance by changing the “value=45” part of the function. Lowering the value will include less frames and increasing the value will include more frames.

Get the Wyze cam and I promise you won’t be disappointed!