Hi, everyone!
This Wednesday, June 15 , we’ll be hosting an AMA with Wyze VP of Product, Steve McIrvin, over on Reddit r/WyzeCam .
If you have any questions or comments to share, check back at 1:00 PM Pacific Time when the thread goes live (we’ll be answering questions from 1:30 - 3:00 PT). Be sure to upvote other comments you most want to be answered so that they rise to the top.
See you there!
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Yay! AMA’s (Ask Me Anything)! My favorite! It’s been a while. I look forward to whatever new info he’s prepared to share with us.
Anyone have any good ideas of questions we can ask him about?
Update on the Matter initiative?
When they launched the smart switches they indicated they would be working on a version that didn’t require neutral wiring. Is that still on the table?
It looks like the Wyze Robot Vacuum has a slot in the front that could house a camera lens to make it like other high end robots that use AI to navigate around smaller things on floor that it can’t vacuum up like pet waste, clothes, or other small objects the lidar can’t see. Plus other upgrades like a dock that auto-empties the dust-bin. What are the chances of Wyze adding a model with similar capabilities?
Any hints about other products coming out in the future?
Any hints about new AI or other services coming out?
Updates on support improvements?
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The official AMA thread with the VP of Product is up on Reddit! Go post your questions now. https://www.reddit.com/r/wyzecam/comments/vd3qy3/im_wyze_vp_of_product_steve_mcirvin_ama/
(Summary of his answers are in the following post)
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https://www.reddit.com/user/WyzeSteve/
[Note, in the following summary, font changes such as bold , or text in brackets (such as changing “it” to what “it” is meant to stand for) are my alterations to add clarity or to help TL;DR people who want to scan responses fast. Each quote has the source link in the question for those who wish to view it themselves. --please let me know if you notice anything I overlooked]
Wow, this is super deep! I would love to grab a scotch with you some time and talk about my 1.5 years at Wyze so far. But as a simple summary, my contribution has been to raise the bar on product quality and focus us back on core smart home and cameras . I’ve killed a lot of product ideas that were pushing us too far away from that cohesive strategy of cameras, comfort and control . My primary upcoming goals are all related to some AMAZING cameras we have slated in the next 6-9 months , all of which were kicked off right after I started (it’s been hugely helpful to see the entire innovation cycle of these products instead of coming in toward the end like I did for many others). I’ve also been the loudest voice of support our Matter expert, Frederik, who has made a compelling case for the shift away from cloud-only control paradigms.
[The above response alone automatically makes him one of my favorite Wyze employees now!]
Thanks for asking about RTSP. The reason we took [the RTSP image] down was because we had not been able to keep it fully in synch with the changes we had rolled out to the rest of our firmware images. We don’t have plans right now to re-post that image, but I would love to know more about your use case for having it and am very interested in learning more about how we could support those use cases in our mainline firmware. I know there’s a passionate community follow for it, and we do have specific products on the horizon that will address a lot of the value that RTSP can provide, so any more inputs you can let me know about would be great.
I can hint that we are very dependent on a certain wireless technology in the home, but we aren’t satisfied with price or quality of the existing solutions, so we made our own (in partnership with a VERY experienced designer) and will launch it a little bit ahead of Q4!
Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking! I can’t really say much more, but I think you’ll be impressed. The hesitancy is that we aren’t crazy about adding an SD card within reach (the doorbell is always at arm-level, vs. a floodlight or other camera you can make difficult to access).
Yes to #1 !
For #2 , we’re looking at how to stay connected at all times, which Wi-Fi isn’t suitable for while driving around in your car, so we’ll keep working on this problem.
Great question! Matter is super strategic for us. Our first product in the Matter ecosystem will be out in just a few months , but I can’t reveal specifics yet
The biggest obstacle for us, as you might have guessed, is that there’s really no definition yet for cameras in the Matter guidelines . It’s not one of the two dozen or so categories that they have defined yet. There is a working group that is just now being formed, so we intend to participate in that. Cameras are obviously our core strength, but we do feel that the other smart home products like locks, plugs and bulbs will benefit from supporting Matter in the future . It’s such an emerging space that it’s hard to comment on specifics, but we did join the CSA a year ago and will continue to invest in [Matter] .
Our shift in [the API/inter-connectivity] area will be toward Matter and figuring out the best local-control experience that integrates all the diverse parts of our ecosystem. A lot of the use cases that you would normally send over to IFTTT or Home Assistant, etc., will be covered by the new local ecosystem.
[Very excited that he is basically announcing a move toward local control/access here]
This will get me in trouble, but I want a smart home where my phone and app are never required . We track our user engagement by looking at the app usage metrics that Facebook popularized, like Daily/Weekly/Monthly Active Users. But for a lot of devices, I think that using an app means that your home isn’t as smart as it should be . Take a thermostat, for example–if you’re in the app, that means that the current temperature isn’t perfect and you’re trying to change it. If we can continue to refine our AI and rules engine, the goal is that the system learns how YOU define perfect comfort (or security, or access, or lighting, etc.) and you never have to pull up the Wyze app at all!
I too have this problem in my house! Our struggle with this is that these quickly get too complex for the average user to do themselves . The 3-way switches can be part of a long chain that also includes “4 way” switches as well, like I have in a long hallway in my house that includes 4 separate locations to control the main hallway light. We’re working on the no-neutral switch first and will then hopefully be able to make the 3-way, 4-way and dimmer solutions that are both easy and affordable.
Thanks for the tough question! First, some data. We have metrics that show our overall connection rate , that is, how many activated cameras and other devices are currently able to connect to our cloud. We benchmark this against other similar companies and we’re objectively already ahead of the pack. However, we’re not satisfied with that and are consistently finding new root-cause issues that can drive this metric toward 100% .
As an example, we have a forthcoming product that, during testing, requires interaction with a ton of our existing products . This testing process has exposed many previously unknown edge-cases with existing products and has given us the telemetry we need to actually diagnose and solve the root cause. As this new product gets into the wild and our testing base increases, we’ll be able to cover even more scenarios that we previously didn’t know about, helping us improve even further.
Yes, so sorry that progress has been slow, but we have been making improvements , such as the forthcoming support for Firefox (final date TBD).
UPDATE: I didn’t know the answer to this, but I just asked our amazing service team and they are targeting by the fourth quarter of this year , so just in time for holiday travel.
You are completely right–this is overdue. We’re currently hiring a ton of folks and you’ll see that app designers/engineers are on this list. We’ll do the redesign when we get enough headcount to take on such a massive project.
https://jobs.lever.co/wyze
We are addressing most or possibly all of these concerns as part of an overarching UI makeover that you’ll see in the app by the end of the year . We realized that SD card events and cloud events were too separate and have a lot of feedback from users on how to make them seamless , so we’ve taken that into account and I’m impressed with the mockups I’ve seen so far!
For sharing the SD card events with other users, the roadblocks we’ve encountered have all been security related, so we haven’t made as much progress on that as I would have liked. We’ll keep brainstorming with the team on how to share securely!
Yes! We have been exploring different upgrades for the robot vacuum . We do have a mopping kit that we are currently testing, but it hasn’t gotten the good feedback that we want yet. So we are headed back to the drawing board on that one ! Obviously the camera and AI options are a lot trickier, so I can’t yet [say] whether we’ll let those out of the lab anytime soon . We have been pretty happy with being one of the lowest cost options for a fully intelligent LiDAR based navigation system, so we’re still trying to get the word out about the benefits of LiDAR and why it’s so much better than the bounce and bump options other folks have at this price point.
We do have an incoming order, so that’s great news! We actually did a pretty big stock up in anticipation of holiday sales, so I’m pretty confident that when that shipment goes online in a few weeks we won’t run out again for quite a while.
Yes, this is a key question for us. For me on the hardware side, I tend to talk about the “3 C’s” with my team: Cameras, Comfort, and Control . So you can see that things like our new air purifier fall into the Comfort category, and the new Lock Bolt falls into Control. Where I struggle are items like the updated Scale X we just released. This isn’t a connected product in the traditional Wi-Fi-always-on kind of way and doesn’t cleanly fall into one of the above categories, but it sells well and helps new users discover the rest of our products, so we’re committed to advancing this lineup . Products like the Watch, which end up being fashion accessories, have been too crowded and complex for us to make significant traction in, so you’ll see less investment in these “Lifestyle” product lines as we continue to refine our focus back on these three core areas.
Yes, depending on the model, many of our future cameras will support 2K or higher . The problem with 2K in a small sensor is that it leads to extra noise during dark conditions , so we’re prioritizing solutions that keep our iconic color night vision while also giving the extra detail affording by the additional pixels of a 2K sensor. We’ve also got a super innovative product coming that lets a standard 1080p sensor have a ton of more detail on the things you’re most interested in , so stay-tuned for that to be released in the fall!
Great idea! Please look here to see if anyone else has asked about this, and go ahead and post it if there’s no existing request.
https://forums.wyze.com/c/roadmap/37
We look at this with the team every week , and we’re trying to come up with a better way to showcase which items from this list we’ve made into features (the vote count is large on features that we haven’t done yet because the higher-voted issues went away as we completed them . . .)
Another great idea! Please look here to see if anyone else has asked about this, and go ahead and post it if there’s no existing request.
https://forums.wyze.com/c/roadmap/37
We look at this with the team every week , and we’re trying to come up with a better way to showcase which items from this list we’ve made into features (the vote count is large on features that we haven’t done yet because the higher-voted issues went away as we completed them . . .)
Thanks for noticing this great partnership we have with UW ! We primarily use these types of projects to give back to the local academic community and invest in future engineers. It’s also be a very successful pipeline of hiring talent into the Wyze technology organization, where we have a ton of open roles: https://jobs.lever.co/wyze
I do believe we have used the outputs of these projects to advance some of our internal project progress , but I can’t recall specific examples right now. It’s overall been a win-win for both the students and the volunteer mentors from Wyze.
This is the exact example I use in an upcoming podcast episode I was interviewed for a few weeks ago (they work quite far ahead and it will go live in early July). The scenario was watching to see if my kids leave the washer door closed when they are done, and it’s a perfect example of a niche case that would be custom to me and just a few other folks. So that’s why we’ve been working on Wyze Smart Vision! It’s a CamPlus feature, currently in beta that will allow users to train their Wyze cam to recognize anything, even a super specific state like a door that’s closed when it shouldn’t be. Look for the podcast to be available here in a few weeks!
https://productmasterynow.com/
The above mentioned Podcast may be listened to here:Product Mastery Now for Product Managers, Innovators, and Leaders - # 391: PRODUCT VP OF WYZE USES COMMUNITY FOR PRODUCT INNOVATION AND YOU CAN TOO – WITH STEVE MCIRVIN
We did debate this when we released the Lock Bolt, but to hit the super low price point for a fingerprint lock we listened to the customers who said that they could live without a backup key if they had a way to power the lock if the battery failed. So, ours can be powered from a USB power bank (or even a phone that has power sharing). Does that help? What’s the use case for a key in addition to the fingerprint, keypad, and app?
This makes me laugh because our leadership team, myself included, were all at the forefront of drones , starting with retailing and ending up as early employees of Autel Robotics, which is based here in Seattle. Our research in this area of autonomous security cameras has all been centered around ground-based solutions here at Wyze, though, which is why you saw us launch the Wyze Car. We may decide to extend that further after our current plate gets a little less full!
As a cloud-based company, we do need an internet connection to let the cameras initialize correctly. However, if you can connect the cameras to your phone’s hotspot and then start local recording to the SD card, you’ll be able to shut down the hotspot and have continuous recording. What you’ll miss is the alerting and events that come from the cloud, but for later playback from the SD card you should be good to go!
I can answer this one! We’re working on roadmap changes now , though I’m not sure as to the timeline or details at the moment. We are on the same page as you, and we’ll let you know when we have updates to share!
-Steve McIrvin, Wyze VP of Product
https://www.reddit.com/user/WyzeSteve/
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Thanks as always for your extra effort on these, @carverofchoice .
The exec was surprisingly forthcoming and detailed, which is nice.
So it seems RTSP is dead and buried, a 2K V4 is coming later this year, Matter is a priority but currently a waste of time, and there are some other goodies coming (multifocal lens for a crappy 1080 sensor?). Also his answer about running without Internet was sadly incomplete. If the customer’s cameras need rebooting or lose power, as we know, they will not function anymore.
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You’re welcome.
Customer:
RTSP is dead and buried
Sounds like a reasonable interpretation…at least in it’s current form. He said there was something coming that would be similar or fill some of that need somehow. We just don’t have enough info yet. Could be a solution similar to how TinyCam can give pseudo-RTSP.
I wouldn’t go that far, it’s just not available for Cameras YET because nobody has developed it for Cameras yet. He did say their first Matter enabled device will launch this year in a few months, so definitely not a waste of time. I look forward to it.
Customer:
multifocal lens
That could be the case. I can understand some of the struggles with 2K or 4K at night. I wonder though if they could address some of this by limiting the color nightvision to something like 1080P so there aren’t as many dark artifacts? Then we could still have 2K/4K during the daytime. IDK. But you’re probably right about something like multifocal lens or optical zooming. It’s just hard because the camera doesn’t know what you want to zoom in on later.
I look forward to learning more. I am just happy that he is pushing away from everything being cloud-reliant. I like having things be cloud ENABLED and capable, but it sucks when there is no local control at all. I am extremely happy they’re working on something for this even if we don’t know all the details yet. I don’t think he is talking about not having any cloud connection, just that they’ll no longer be reliant on cloud anymore. THAT is exciting. I’ve been advocating for this change since I got my first camera.
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As a cloud-based company, we do need an internet connection to let the cameras initialize correctly. However, if you can connect the cameras to your phone’s hotspot and then start local recording to the SD card, you’ll be able to shut down the hotspot and have continuous recording. What you’ll miss is the alerting and events that come from the cloud, but for later playback from the SD card you should be good to go!
I was referring to this response. It’s mostly wrong and doing a disservice to that customer. “Good to go” until the next power fluctuation.
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Yeoman’s work yet again, carver.
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Thanks to @R.Good for finding and telling me where to find the Podcast Steve McIrvin was interviewed for (as mentioned in the AMA here). I’ve updated the post above, but I’ll include it in this post as well.
The Podcast mentioned above may be listened to here:Product Mastery Now for Product Managers, Innovators, and Leaders - # 391: PRODUCT VP OF WYZE USES COMMUNITY FOR PRODUCT INNOVATION AND YOU CAN TOO – WITH STEVE MCIRVIN
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In other words, what they already provide as a base for the Wyze Cams Outdoor.
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