I installed two bulb cams, one on either side of my garage door. Both turn on both lights when a human is detected. I had no problem setting that up. However, when I add an automation, there is no option for delay and no option turn off. The only event is detecting motion - nothing for been on for x minutes. I guess I will try for a bit longer, but after 30 minutes the lights are still on. Seems like the software does not properly support the bulb-cam. Am I missing something? Edit: I have a theory - cameras have certain event types, and bulbs have other event types, such as “on for X minutes”. I think they have the bulb cam as a camera, and therefor it is missing all the bulb events. Of course, that might be my programmer brain talking.
Welcome to the Forum, @2cdneh!
What, specifically, are you trying to accomplish? In other words, how long are you trying to get the lights to turn on when a person is detected and are you trying to do this all in Automations? I’m trying to understand where you’re setting this up, because my inclination would be to navigate to Settings ➜ Bulb Settings ➜ Motion and set the Lights Off Timer on that screen, but that maxes out at 5 minutes, and I don’t know if that’s sufficient for your use case, because I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to do.
I can go into the details of each bulb, and have each bulb come on for X minutes. I can do that without any automations. That does work. However, I want to turn on both lights for both bulb-cams, so I am using an automatiion. However, the automation for the bulb cam is missing the “turn on for X minutes” option that a regular Wyze bulb has - all I can do turn it on. I cannot set any other automation, and cannot get it to turn off automatically. The automation ignores the 3 minute timeout. Seems like Wyze missed the “bulb” options for the bulb-cam. I tried to see if I could set another automation to turn it off, but again, all the “been on for X minutes” options are missing for the bulb-cam. This thing is a bulb and a cam, and needs the full functionality of each, which it does not seem to have!
I kind of get what you’re saying…I think. I also think that Wyze primarily sees this as a camera product and so treats it that way, because it doesn’t behave like (or have the same controls as) their lighting products. In fact, the Accessory Bulb—without a bound Bulb Cam—behaves just like a “dumb” LED. The FAQ section of Accessory Bulb’s product page even says this:
Without the Bulb Cam, your Accessory Bulbs will only function like normal (not-smart) light bulbs.
To my thinking, that indicates that Wyze sees even Bulb Cam as a camera product first and as a lighting product second.
Having said that, because of the way you’re trying to trigger your lights and because you’re using two separate Bulb Cams instead of a Bulb Cam plus a linked Accessory Bulb (which is what I have outside my garage), I think you could probably accomplish what I believe you’re trying to do if you used a secondary product that actually does support a “Has been on for” Trigger and/or “Turn on for” Action. Something like a spare Wyze Plug (or an outlet on a Plug Outdoor) or one of the regular Bulb products (I haven’t tried Bulb White but know that Bulb Color supports those) could be triggered on by motion and then used to turn off (also via Device & Service Trigger) the Bulb Cams’ lights after a user-determined time. You’d just need for this secondary device to be connected to power and Wi-Fi so that you could incorporate it into the relevant Automations that you’d create for the task.
Something else you could do is visit the following Wishlist topics:
In each of those, you could hit the Vote button above the initial post and then add your ideas and use cases in the comments to show your support for what you’d like to see (expanded Actions for Bulb Cam, for instance). If you want a more immediate solution, however, your best bet—again, if I understand your goal—is probably going to be using a secondary product as an intermediary for an Automations work-around.
I need the two cameras, since one monitors a side parking spot where I keep a vehicle and the other covers the main driveway, walk, and front door. Putting on my software designer hat, the oveall design is disappointing, All bulbs should have the same capabilities, and the combo device should be treated effectively as two devices, where the bulb has all the capabilities of a bulb, and the camera all the capabilities of a camera.
I’m not disagreeing with you. Absolutely there are some scenarios where two separate cameras would be better, especially with Bulb Cam’s wide field of view. Having one at each corner really gives you a lot of visibility.
I’d also like to see more parity with their regular Bulb features. The inability to assign a name to each Accessory Bulb is one of the things that disappoints me.