Is Eye-Fi card data 3G/4G data?

[atlsport]

I've got a 1gb montly plan from Verizon for my Xoom, and I usually don't go near the 1gb use for the month. (my plan starts the first of each month)

Yesterday, Sunday (Oct. 16th), I was doing a 2-hour road trip in the car, and got an email from Verizon that I had reached 50% of my monthly usage. I thought that was strange, because 8 days of this month, my Xoom was away from me getting the 4G/LTE upgrade, so no data was used at all for those 8 days. So I should be way behind my normal usage.

By the time my 2-hour drive was over, I got another email from Verizon saying I was at 75% of my monthly usage. I looked at my Xoom and realized it was uploading pictures and vidoes from the Eye-Fi card in my camera, pics/videos I had taken over the weekend. It seemed to be stuck in a loop, uploading the same pics/vids over and over (which I have noticed it do before but hadn't taken the time to trouble-shoot). But as I understand it, that's just wifi data, straight from the Eye-Fi card to my Xoom, right? Doesn't involve any 3G/4G data, does it?

I checked my usage at myverizon.com and can see the big chunks of data were time stamped while I was in the car and the pic/vids were uploading, so I'm certain that's the data.

So am I right in thinking my Xoom or Verizon or Eye-Fi or someone is wrong in reporting this as 3G/4G data?

 

[LMO]

You are right. Something sounds fishy. The only way I could see it using your data plan is if the camera is tethering off the Xoom to upload stuff to the internet. ?

 

[slwerner]

Problem is that, based on your user preferences, once the pics are transferred (via WiFi) to your Xoom, the Eye-Fi program begins to start uploading them to the Eye-Fi website (which, if your connected by WiFi, means it's going to use the wireless service. {this probably is also dependent on the settings regarding where you would like to subsequently upload your pictures to from your Xoom - mine was set to upload to Eye-Fi by default when I first observed the behavior].

On the Xoom start the Eye-Fi app, use that fourth lower-left icon (does it have a name?) to bring up the apps options, then select "Settings". Select "Upload preferences", and make sure to check the "Wi_Fi only" option for uploads.

 

[bmhanson]

Yep. There are 2 parts of the equation as indicated. Eye-fi to xoom and xoom to the destination of the data. It is that second piece that is getting you.

 

[atlsport]

Oh wow, I didn't even realize it's uploading all my pics/vids to my eye-fi account web site, but just logged in and sure enough, there they are. I though that "Wifi only" option under upload preferences meant it would only upload from camera to Xoom when it was on the same wifi network (like at home). Didn't realize that it was uploading to the web at all. Yeah, that's why all that data was used yesterday (although I've had the card for awhile and that's the first time it's been such a large chunk --- maybe I've just been close to wifi enough before this that I didn't notice big 3/4G data amounts).

Thanks for the education!