Afer over 6 years of frustration leaving Wyze-

Watercooler
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I thought things would have gotten better, instead they have gotten worse.

Recently bought a Cam 4 to augment my 3’s.

Soon found out this thing is more locked down than ft knox.

My needs are simple, I don’t want to be locked into any brands private eco system.

At first Wyze seemed ideal, switches worked with google, cameras were somewhat open.

All this apparently has changed.

I’ve spent 2 weeks trying to get the 3 & 4 to work via rstp, to no avail

Yes i tried the bridge (but I shouldnt have to).

Not to mention, asked to be a beta tester in 2019 for google tv integration with cameras (still waiting)

Enough waiting and enough is enough!!!

Don’t mourn me, the $100 i spent on cams and the untold amount spent on other wyze gear can easilly be replaced, 6 year old tech is quite dated anyway. Mourn the fact that wyze now seems hell bent on forcing their eco-system on everyone.

no worries, i’ve got tapo’s coming via amazon tomorrow, tp-link gear to replace my wyze stuff.

As far as the scale and vacuum (which most of the time never could get back to the base to charge), out with the old!

I will tell you what else I will do: be a quite loud advocate against wyze for anyone who will listen!

Why have untold users be frustrated like i have been - there are alternatives!

FYI if interested I will give you a great deal on all this wyze gear (all slightly used since I could never get most of it to work how I wanted!)

ok rant over…..

[Mod Note]: Post moved to correct category and tags modified appropriately.

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You’re obviously just here to rant, since this is a user to user forum and the loss of your business doesn’t affect other users.

But one question - what features that the cams advertised did not work? They do not advertise RTSP support (though it is in the works). The fact that 3rd party software like Wyze Bridge, Tiny Cam, etc is available is a good thing - a less popular platform would not have that.

As far as the vacuum and scale, well honestly I’m not sure why anyone buys those. You say you don’t want to be in an “ecosystem” so what reason is there to have those? Many better options out there.

It sounds like you had expectations that you came up with in your head, those weren’t met, and now you’re upset?

There are a lot of things I’d like my cams to do, however since they were never advertised to do those things, I never expected them to, and for the price I’ve paid for all the cams, I’ve been quite satisfied. I did my research and bought what had the features I needed at the price point I wanted.

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You are satisfied? I’m happy for you.

Me? I want to be able to watch a video stream from a camera without having to pay monthly to do so, afterall isn’t that the intended use of the product?

If I wanted still pictures, I’d buy a polaroid.

It’s that simple. Something I could do with earlier versions.

You mentioned Tinycam and wyze-bridge. Once again, I have to go to an outside company, with some janky interfaces in order to get half assed functionality that should be standard.

You must think having to install docker, and then wyze-bridge, and then fiddle with the default configs because wyze keeps changing the cameras software is in the wheelhouse of your typical camera buyer?

Me it took about 1/2 hour and some googling, NBD. but wyze-bridge is flaky still and drops out now and then.

Or do the cameras drop out?

“Less popular” platforms (like TP-Link Tapo’s) don’t need any third party hacks, their stuff just works out of the box.

As far as the scale and vacuum? I thought I was buying products from a leading edge tech company.

Turns out for 6 years I’ve been buying CRAP that only sometimes works and then only works within the wyze eco-system and then only really works if you agree to pay them a monthly fee to get the functionality you thought you were getting.

It would be like ordering an ice cream maker to find out oh you want to actually make ice cream - send us $3.00 a month so you can do so.

Rant? you are correct. In hopes that some newbie reads this and doesn’t waste 6 years down a rabbit hole like I have done.

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I haven’t tried any of the third-party solutions for getting RTSP to work with Wyze Cams, but I’ve played with it a little on Cam Pan v3 since Wyze has made the public beta firmware and app for that available.[1][2] That’s currently available for Cam v3, and my understanding is that it should also be available for Cam v4 at some point.

I’ve used a couple of those as well as Kasa switches (which I bought because Wyze hadn’t even released their own smart switch at the time) and have been pleased with those. I’ve commented elsewhere in the Forum that the Tapo C120 has some native features (RTSP; built-in person, pet, and other “smart” detections; etc.) that make it a strong competitor to Wyze Cams. (I was specifically comparing it to Cam v4 at the time.) I don’t know which Tapo cameras you’re planning to use or whether you’ve used microSD cards in your Wyze Cams, but one knock I have against the Tapos I have is that I can’t view microSD playback directly from the camera unless my phone and the camera are on the same Wi-Fi network at the time. That might be something to watch out for if you want to view microSD recordings remotely.

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You can watch the stream 24x7 from wyze cams with no 3rd party software and no subscription.

You can record video 24x7 with no 3rd party software and no subscription.

If you want to record all cams to a single central location, that is not a feature offered by Wyze currently. So your choices are to buy a different product that has that support built in, or use a 3rd party tool to do it. If you purchased something with the assumption that it had a feature that it never stated it had, that’s on you.

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You absolutely can watch a live stream from any of the wired cameras (battery ones are more limited but I don’t have any so no info). If you are trying to watch older video, put a µSD card and you can watch that from any camera. No subscription needed.

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I thought that you can still view it? It’s just you can’t download directly from the microSD card, but the workaround is to manually record the footage if you are not on the same network which is no different from Wyze currently. You just lose the ability to cut / clip and download the footage instantly from the microSD card.

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Yes, I think you’re correct. I was going from memory, and that’s often more prone to fault than I’d like. It’s been a while since I’ve attempted off-LAN access of one of my Tapo cameras, and I should’ve confirmed before writing. Thank you for setting me straight! :+1:

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Hey Dave, is this possible to do this from my laptop?

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If you don’t want to pay for Cam Plus (which gives access to web view) then you’d need to look at a 3rd party solution like Tiny Cam. But note, they are testing out RTSP support for several cams and when that is finalized, there will be more options (even VLC media player can stream RTSP).

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