Any one actually like the outdoor camera?

Once travel mode is invoked, you are no longer tethered to the base station. It is at that point at which I wondered if one could connect the (disconnected WCO) to a hotspot wifi generated by my iPhone

What I dream of is a 3rd party hack maybe from GitHub makers that will make the Wzye cameras and sensors actually be consistently reliable and enable the camera’s true capabilities… The hardware is there already

No. The camera relies solely on the base station for internet connectivity. There is no way to have the camera connect to the internet without the base station.

Is that because of a ‘firmware lockdown’ or is it a hardware issue?

Not sure. I just know that the information provided by Wyze (and others in this forum) indicates that you must use the base station (connected via ethernet to your router) in order to connect the outdoor cam to the internet, which is why the early access orders included the base station and you could not buy the camera by itself. Now that early access for additional outdoor cameras is open, it indicates you must have the base station to use them.

I see nowhere in the app to connect to wifi otherwise.

The story as I understand is that the base and WOC are hard coded to their own SSID even though they use normal if low power WiFi. Theoretically that could be hacked but it’s not gonna work with the app and it wouldn’t be pretty.

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I’m definitely not hacking anything. I’ll just wait for Wyze to (hopefully) enable motion triggered event recording while in travel mode. I’m hoping enough people vote for it.

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Yes even with mine. Not sending notifications same time event is detected and also not updating same time on app.

Da Fang hack is one. I use it and works well. More reliable than Wyze’s and private but moreover you have greater control because the good samaritan who cracked it, offered it up as open source. I’m using Wyze’s app only because it does make it easier to share without port forwarding from limited cams.

I can’t use Wyze’s offerings for anything “serious” due to closed system and unreliability. I am a control freak who needs the control, customization and the feature rich that comes from something more agnostic like Zwave/zigbee/wifi/RTSP. Now thinking about it. I just came to realization that Wyze’s entire product if stuffed into a single room with no neighbors would work … well. Just not house wide.

IMHO Wyze’s business model should have been a subscription and not the low cost Walmart hw model. Think Ring Doorbells. Wyze founders came from Amazon, but it seems they didn’t learn how Amazon became to be a behemoth; low cost hw for customer acquisition to create a long tail customer value proposition.

Wyze got the acquisition portion so far (at least starting with the V2) but not the long tail customer value proposition.

Do you feel Wyze’s engineering quality, features and roadmap makes you salivate for more? Or did the promise land of a product WCO or WOC (whatever they call it ) along with the poor app quality and feature lacking leave you wondering why are you still using Wyze?

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Not so far! Been trying to get firmware updated for 3 weeks and I can’t get support to respond. Keep getting the same list of 5 items to try every time I reply back.

Really Ekko ?
Only got mine to work for 30 feet. You must have got one of the good ones. Think may need to purchase 10 camers to get the advertised 300’.
Wyze said they would send an RMA and prepaid return label in 24 to 72 hours cuz they’re really busy. That was over a week ago. . .

I am looking for 3rd party hacks that have updated the firmware to enable more features that the WCO is capable of.

Crud, it’s not so pretty now either

Thanks for your reply, I just got so frustrated, I all ready packed them back up and returned them…Had such high expectations…The indoor camera I mounted outside is working fine after 2 years now…

No problem, story of my life… Rowing my boat to the train station to catch a flight :wink: :grimacing:

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slider_alt,

After a few weeks or so I’ve come to the conclusion that the WCO does three things very well. The precursor for those three things must include not using the IR lamps, not using continuous recording (scheduled), or prolonged “live views”, and lastly making sure the camera’s physical position puts the detection zone where you need it. If those conditions are met, you can expect very good quality 12 second clips, excellent battery life between charges, and excellent person detection. Albeit a tad short of what was initially promised (Don’t even get me started on the audio!.), the WCO is a usable device. I’m still holding out for the next iteration before purchasing another.

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That is a good summary of my experience, too. Might add the Base to Camera radio propagation behavior was comparable to that of a blue tooth device, {Disclaimer: My unit may have been defective}

Outdoor camera was a HUGE letdown, I was so excited to get it and try it out and I would rather spend the money replacing corded WYZE camera’s and try to weather proof them myself then to buy anymore of the outdoor cams.

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I’m one of the Rare one’s as mine works flawlessly but most are having several issues. You would think they would have known the issues with Alfa Testing & Beta Testing

There are ACTUAL security cam companies that have essentially the same written for their Terms. This is a liability issue, not a “security camera” issue. Maybe look through what TKH or VDG say about their hundred-thousand dollar security solutions and enterprise level servers. Bottom line, wyze isnt a security company in my eyes for two reasons… No instant alerts, and a lack of RTSV/NVR support/software. Sure, you can get your wyze cams viewable via RTSV, but it’s not a true native solution. This is by choice though.