I spent about an hour trying to set mine up to connect via the car's hotspot today and gave up.
I could get it to connect to the app via the phone's hotspot, but trying to configure it was frustrating.
I suppose if I knew exactly what it is and it's supposed to do, I could maybe figure out if I'm doing something wrong?
I managed to connect, and programmed the car's hotspot.
I then tried to add the Cloud enabled camera in the app, and it wanted me to connect with the phone's hotspot. I turned that on, but I could not get the camera to connect until I shut off the car's hotspot.
Once I got the camera enabled on the cloud, while connected, I went ahead and deleted the car's Hotspot.
It appears that the only thing that can be done on the Cloud section of the app is view the GPS map and Liveview? Does this allow for retrieval of video from the camera, or only incident video that has been uploaded? [Only video that would be automatically sent is from a big impact with a minimum force of 3G (probably airbags deployed), then a Notification would be sent to any Phone logged into your Cloud account followed by a 20 second video. When connected to a Hotspot etc you can Live View, Live Track, Set Geofences and get notification in & out of that area and when parked you get notifications of an impact (not in your case due to vehicle hotspot going off)]
If so, then now that I have it set up, I can now add the car's hotspot back in and it will connect that way? [Certainly should]
2nd issue... I have a 1000, as does my wife. I don't see an option to change the name of the camera as it identifies itself to the cloud.
I'm getting the impression that the cloud service is extremely limited... though I guess it's a good idea since it will immediately (?) upload incident video, so if injured in an accident and unable to retrieve the card. [If you go to the Cloud symbol in the middle bottom of the screen so it shows the Map of where the vehicle is (or was) if you press the 'dots aka hamburger' at the top right of the map you can rename devices. Thinkware Cloud is a bit limited compared to some as they tried to keep it to useful information only, that way it keeps the Cloud Free of charge, i know some others are more comprehensive but they then tend to charge a monthly fee for it]
So... After connecting via a hotspot, to get the phone to connect via WiFi, I have to press and hold the WiFi button? I think I tried that, but the camera reconnected to the car's hotspot before I was able to connect using the phone [Yes this is correct or disable the built in Hotspot and then enable the Phones one, or as you say press the WiFi button (should stay in WiFi mode for 2 minutes) and connect in that time frame]
And before you ask... Yes, I want to connect via the car's hotspot and not the phone because we have an unlimited data plan on the cars, but our phones only have 4gb per month.
I know the car's hotspot will be worthless for parking alerts since it shuts down with the engine.