I’ve been using a person detection routine with Alexa and my v3’s/v4’s for years now with zero issues, As of Dec 9th, this seems to have stopped working entirely. I use a routine that triggers the Alexa’s in the house to announce “person detected at ____” during the overnight hours, so that if somebody walks onto the property, we are audibly alerted, In order for this to work properly, and not go off at all hours of the day and night, I had to turn the actual person detection toggle OFF in the Alexa app for these cameras, and then create a time based routine for this instead. I actually got this idea from the Wyze forums here, as the constant person detection notifications throughout The day we’re driving us insane
. It looks like the Alexa app may have had some kind of recent upgrade, as I’m seeing new camera features in some of my cameras (but not all for some reason), and the routine is just completely broken now, it just won’t trigger, there’s no activity history past dec 8th either, this is driving me NUTS and wanted to see if there is anybody else out there with this issue,
I’m sure there are very few people using a routine, and that most just have person detection enabled using the toggle in the Alexa app…but if there is somebody out there with a routine, please let me know if this is still working for you, Thanks
I have not heard of anyone experiencing this issue yet. You might try contacting our support team at 206-339-9646. As for your other question, frederick is no longer part of that team.
Hello there Coley. I have exactly the same issue. Started exactly the same date you indicated. Reading your post was exactly what I am seeing. Also have been using it for years without issue. I reported this to Wyze. Unlike other support tickets which they follow up and try to solve they told me that they will use my comments to improve the product but no specific follow up is expected. Real shame. I am hoping they will solve it. You mentioned the person detection toggle in the Alexa app. Even that is not working for me. In the Alexa app I can see all the cameras defined and even see live video from all. But no detection. Wyze support were telling me that this seems to be a unique issue with my system so please forgive me for saying that I am relieved to hear that it’s not only me. Hopefully they will solve it. For me this is a key feature. Thanks so much for posting.
I have multiple cameras configured with person detection alerts with Alexa. All are working. I also have some routines triggered by person detection but they only run at night so I need to see if they work later tonight. As a side note, I use CamPlus Lite.
So I looked a bit further into this, and it looks like the Alexa app has recently updated. I have a feeling this has to do with Alexa+. Looking at my cameras in the Alexa app, a lot of the menus and settings have been changed. For example, this entire page (see screenshot) is brand new. There’s also a camera events section, which has previously never been there. Everything is all out of whack though, and I have a feeling that Alexa has unofficially dropped Wyze support for this feature, because it specifically states that this is now only supported by Ring and Adobe cameras. Either this - or it’s just broken. I double checked my iPhones App Store, and the Alexa app just updated this past Monday. The timing adds up. Are you also using Cam Plus? I’m going to try turning person detection on in the Alexa app for those two cameras, but turn the announcements OFF (otherwise they will go off all day and night which is what we don’t want) and see if the routines will still trigger.
Interesting! It looks like it is no longer working for Cam Plus users. Do you have Alexa + by chance? My Alexa randomly updated to the new Alexa + a few weeks ago, and things were still working fine…BUT the actual Alexa app auto updated on Monday…and this is when the routines stopped working.
It seems some other folks are having this exact same issue, which started for all of us on the 8th. Any chance this can be escalated to the appropriate team?
I think I may have fixed this. Looks like the issue is in fact a result of the recent Alexa app update. These are the steps to get the routine working again.
Delete your existing routine and re-create it. You’ll notice the steps look a bit different.
Go into your device list and select the camera you want. Tap the gear icon in the top right corner.
DO NOT turn person detection on here. Instead, tap Camera Event Settings
Tap person detection, and select the cameras you want to enable.
Turn mobile notifications and announcements OFF
VIOLA, the routines are not functioning again. Let me know if this works for you!
Edit: I should note, it’s only showing my V4’s in this particular screen for some reason. So my backyard V3 is sending person detection alerts to Alexa anytime of day or night. Looks like I can’t find a way to change this currently
Coley, thank you so much. for that and for your email. I was just about to post that I also got it working so I haven’t tried your solution yet. What I found was that if I enabled person detection announcements in the Alexa app on one camera all routines started working again. I haven’t done enough testing to see if it matters which camera so my conclusions are not clear. The side effect of this was that I now get the Alexa announcements in addition to the announcements in my routine. To bypass that you can chooes which devices will get the Alexa announcements. So I disabled all Echo Dots and left only my Fire TV enabled. You mentioned that only V4 is showing. Well it happens that the camera that I enabled in the Alexa app is a V4 but routines are working on all cameras. Very interesting. Will play with it some more but at least now it’s working. Thanks again so much and hope you all get it solved.
Interesting that almost a year ago I reported some Wyze cams had been updated with these new screens, 2 v3Pro’s and my battery cam pros without disruption in the Alexa announcements. Those cams have now been reverted back to the original screen for person detection. I have not experienced any issues with the detection announcements not working on the assigned Echo dots or Echo show.
However, I did find while looking into this, Wyze had mysteriously removed 3 of my cams from from my cam unlimited subscription. This had never happened before and was easily resolved.
So I completely solved this issue by turning the “announcements” switch OFF…so now only the routine announces person detection during the times that I’ve specified, let me know if this works for you !
It looks like this never got passed on to anyone or that nothing was found/done and now this issue is spreading to other cameras this fall/winter. I hope someone will finally look into this issue now that it is spreading to more camera models. This indicates to me that someone is copy and pasting selections of code between cameras that is BREAKING the person detection reports to Alexa.
It’s been driving me crazy because I wanted to have Alexa toggle a virtual sensor button that goes to home assistant So that I could put Wyze person detection triggers in home assistant (when a person is detected on Wyze camera, press the virtual button that will tell Home Assistant a person was detected on that camera…then I can tell Home Assistant to keep lights on in certain locations until there is no person detected for X amount of time otherwise turn them off, etc), but person detection triggers are not working in Alexa at all anymore for some reason and now this issue is infecting other models. Can you follow up with the various teams this might be affecting?
One of my hypotheses is that it MIGHT have something to do with the new Alexa+ API changes. I got enrolled in Alexa+ early, which might explain why I noticed the issues before some others, but if that’s the case, then the other camera models triggers should’ve broke back then too. The fact that new ones are breaking now indicates it’s more likely on the Wyze side of things (firmware?).
Hope this context helps.
(Edit: The above listed fixes/workarounds in this thread do not resolve this issue for my V3Pros, but the Alexa person detection triggers are still working successfully on my Duo Cam Doorbell and other models).
I thought we were chasing this a month or so back. I may have masked the issue as I have a recent automation that detects a face on the v3pro and turns off notifications for 10 minutes. My notifications dropped dramatically and I was happy.
Reading this thread I looked critically at what was happening realizing that I had not heard Alexa announcing someone was at the Front Door, even when the automation triggers had not been met (she should have announced).
I do not see any activity for my routine looking at the Routine Activity log.
Like you I’m using Alexa+.
I also am getting Alexa announcements from other apps (yolink).
I do not have any other routines using a different camera model where Alexa is involved.
Time permitting I’m going to disable my V3pro face notification automation and see if that makes a difference. I may also try an Alexa announcement on my v2 doorbell.
Edit: I removed the face automation from my V3pro and retested with just the Alexa announcement routine. It made no difference. I have a camera event in the Wyze app but nothing from Alexa, nor was there an Alexa activity entry.
Tried the same routine on my doorbell v2. Alexa made the proper announcement, as expected.
So far in my environment just the v3pro is exhibiting the problem. I’ll try a couple more camera models in the next day or so.
