I set up notifications in the Wyze app to alert me when a person is detected. That works well - a “person detected” notification shows up on my Android phone as expected.
What does NOT work: I also get notifications every time an automation triggers. I set up an automation for one camera to upload a 12s video to the cloud when another camera triggers motion. Any motion. I get alerted every time this automation triggers. I do not want to be alerted about automations.
How do I stop the “Smart Alert Detected” notifications? I have already:
checked to make sure I did not accidentally enable “smart alert” notifications,
tried muting the “smart alert” notification in Android settings, but they are lumped together into one category, so I can only choose to disable ALL notifications from Wyze.
I am using the latest Wyze App and all cameras’ firmware is up to date.
There may be other solutions, but I’ll tell you what I would do.
I would use a notification parser app like Buzzkill, Macrodroid, or Tasker. Then have it watch for any smart alert from the Wyze app, intercept it and automatically dismiss it before it comes through. From your experience it will seem like there is no notification anymore.
I’m trying to understand exactly what’s happening, because I don’t recall ever receiving any notifications from the Wyze app just from an Automation running. What would a screenshot of an unwanted notification show?
Ah, okay. Thanks for that! Since I’m not a subscriber, I haven’t ever used the “upload” Action. I appreciate the knowledge.
That does seem weird that a triggered Automation would generate a notification, though, and it seems even weirder to me that disabling this wouldn’t be an option (like disabling notifications on specific cameras). That’s not what I would expect as a user.
Mine doesn’t alert me to rules running so I suspect it is the motion triggering the automation that causes it - you’re forcing it to essentially do the “other motion” alert even though it is disabled. Probably also related to the fact that the motion is coming from a different camera.
“upload 12 second clip to the cloud” seems like basically an “event” and thus a notification.
It’s not related to a subscription. Actually, I used this CONSTANTLY before I ever had cam plus. I made everything upload 12 second cloud events. It helped me bypass the 5 minute cooldown limitation. This is especially true if you have any sensors. Just put a motion sensor in line with the camera and do a rule to upload a 12 second even every time the sensor senses motion, or clears (or in the case of a contact sensor, opens or closes), or when your camera detects motion, or any number of things and -POOF- you get free cloud events and no cooldown. You should try it out just to have the experience. It’s possible they made some changes since the days I was using it, but I’m pretty sure they still allow it to everyone, including non-subscribers like you. It helped me to be able to get 12 second cloud events as often as every 40 seconds or so instead of every 5 minutes. It helped make sure my cameras never missed someone coming to my front door during the 5 minute cooldown time. I’ve always thought it was pretty cool.
I appreciate the explanation, and that does seem pretty cool. My thinking is that if the Automation Action says “Upload a short video to the cloud” and I’m not a subscriber, then it doesn’t seem useful to me because I don’t have a way to access that recording (the plan comparison page says that I get “Thumbnails only”). That’s why it’s always seemed to me like an Automation feature aimed only at subscribers, so I haven’t even bothered trying to play with it.
I’m fairly confident you would get a 12-second cloud recording that you COULD view in the events page for free. This was always something totally separate.
Run a test. You don’t even have to create a new automation, you can just add it as a second action to an existing automation if you have any. Just tell it to upload a 12 second clip of any camera (doesn’t even have to be in view of the trigger device). Then go check your events. I’m pretty confident you will find a free 12 second cloud event video you can watch for free.
If I’m wrong, you can choose/create a new [within the guidelines] Profile Picture I have to use for the next 24 hours.
If I’m right, you learn something new and tell me I’m right.
So are you implying that if I set an automation for every camera for “when camera detects motion” “camera uploads a short video to the cloud” I essentially get cam plus without AI (and 12 second video clip limit) with no cooldown?
Not sure I actually want that but interesting workaround.
I believe so. I don’t recall if I ever really used it much for “motion” since camera motion was restricted to a 5 minute cooldown limitation and would upload an event anyway (at that time). However, I did do it a lot for things like sensors and other triggers. I have not heard that this has changed at all.
So yes, in that sense, I BELIEVE that anyone who wanted free cloud events could still get them. However if too many people do this too much, they may consider limiting the feature to just sensors (“Senor Video Upload” feature, and remove it from the automations section) or removing the feature entirely if it begins to cost them too much.
But unless they changed something recently, then yes, you are correct that a person could very well setup an automation to do a 12 second cloud upload everytime their camera detect motion and they would be back to having 12 second cloud uploads on every single event just like the older cameras provided a long time ago, though it would not include person detection, just motion.
Please verify that it still works the same way. I haven’t used any of these in years since I’ve had Cam Unlimited for so long now, and you never know if they changed something.
Gave it a try, pressing the play button just asks me to subscribe like it usually does. Not sure if there is some other way to access the supposedly uploaded cloud clip. I suspect they fixed it. Unless maybe it requires one device as the trigger and the other as the recorder. I’ll test having one cam as the trigger and a different as the upload (though that’s of basically no use for me).
OK so using one cam as the trigger to tell another cam to record does work. So I guess if you wanted to do this you’d need motion sensors near every cam.
One other thing I’m going to try to see if I can get the same cam to be both the sensor and trigger…
You’re not wrong. I created two Automations and called them “Carver Test 1” and “Carver Test 2”. Maybe that’s what did it.
Now I totally see what you mean about the things that show up tagged as “Automation” in the Events timeline, and I can tap those and play 12-second videos, but the initiating events (motion detected on camera) still show me static image previews (which is what I expect, and I can view the actual videos from my continuous microSD recording).
I didn’t receive notifications for the “Automation” events, but I also don’t have notifications enabled on the two cameras I was testing. That’s something else for me to play with, I guess.
This was an interesting and enlightening test. Thank you for the encouragement! No Bieberfruit for you!
That’s still my experience when I tap on one of the “Motion” tagged items on the Events tab and press , but if I tap one of the events tagged “Automation”, then the playback UI is different, and playback begins immediately.
Same here but only when using one device as trigger and different device as action. I attempted to disable event recording and use the same device as trigger and action thinking that might let the “automation” recording show up, but no such luck.
Still an interesting one to have in the arsenal, I guess if you got a motion sensor to put near every camera you could end up with cam plus lite for any cam.
Given the cost of the sense hub and motion sensors, would be cheaper to use some OGs or even V4s at this point as dedicated motion sensors
In reality the cloud recording isn’t a big deal, but I have a couple pairings I could potentially set this up on so that if someone rips off one of my cameras I might have a useful clip. But will have to see how the notifications etc work with it.
Yeah, that is really interesting. I wonder if this was intentional or something carrying over from back when they developed it. Because back when they launched this rule action, there was no point in having the same camera upload a second 12-second event after motion because it was already going to do that anyway and would’ve still been limited to 5 minute cooldown, so it would’ve been totally pointless. Now they won’t fix it because they wanted to get rid of cam plus lite type of functionality anyway.
Yeah, I see what you mean. I’m using two Cam Pan v3s in the same room.
During my first round of tests, I had two Automations: Motion detection on one camera would trigger uploads from both cameras, so I got playable video uploads from that. I had notifications for both cameras disabled.
During my second round of tests, I enabled notifications on both cameras, but only the camera that detected motion was instructed to upload a video. I received the typical “Motion Detected” notifications but no “Automation” tags appeared in the events, nor did I see any “Automation” notifications (so I had no playable videos, only the still event thumbnails I’m accustomed to seeing).
During my third test round, I added the second camera back to each Automation for uploads, and that time I got playable videos (from the camera not detecting the motion), entries tagged with “Automation” on the Events tab, and both “Motion Detected” and “Smart Alert Detected” notifications in the drawer.
Now I have a better understanding of @FrauSchlau’s original problem, and I see how this could be annoying.
