Bulb Cam override with light switch

I need to be able to turn the light on and off with the light switch, full brightness, and then have it return to app control with a certain time period, say 10 minutes.

Are you talking about using Wyze Switch or some other kind of switch? (I don’t use Wyze Switch, so I’m probably not going to be very helpful with that piece.) My first inclination would be to look into Automations, but more detail about what you’re using and what you’re trying to accomplish would be helpful to other community members wanting to provide assistance.

Forget about controlling the bulb cam with the standard light switch that controls the fixture. That needs to remain on all the time to provide constant power to the cam. If you shut it off both the cam and bulb go offline.

Something similar was asked in another thread a while back, you’ll need to look at some sort of smart switch that can control an action or automation in the bulb cam.

Perhaps flipping the regular switch twice-in-a-row, quickly, like is done for wyze smart bulb setup, would signal the device to just turn on the bulb with full brightness, and then return to normal operation, with the app settings, after a certain amt of time (ideally that amt set in the app, ahead of time).
Hmmm, or is that twice-in-row thing the setup routine for the bulb cam, in which case that would already be used and would not work for what I want. But since this has a camera, hopefully the setup is like with other cameras, with a setup switch on the underside of the camera.
I want to turn on the light with the switch without having to have my phone in hand.

If I understand you correctly, then what you’re describing (which I think is turning a regular “dumb” switch off and back on) would just kill the power to the circuit and cause the camera in the socket to reboot. That would be like unplugging a typical wired Wyze Cam from the wall and plugging it back in.

The light in Bulb Cam (and any bound Accessory Bulbs) is controlled via the app by several methods: different schedules for Ambient Light, motion-activated light, Automations, manual control on the Live Stream screen. If you were using a Wyze Switch, then it would probably be possible to take advantage of that particular Switch’s extended features (Double Press, Press and hold, etc.) with Automations to control the lights in the manner you want, but it’s not going to work that way with a regular single-pole mechanical light switch.

Then you need to look into what @crease mentioned with either a wyze smart switch or a switch that works with something like IFTTT or Alexa maybe. If you have amazon or google home devices you may be able to set up a routine for like “alexa, turn on the outside light”, but not positive if the bulb cam supports that (would seem like it should).

Smart things generally do not work well with dumb switches. I known plain old smart bulbs sometimes can work with a dumb switch but there is generally a delay, sometimes it goes into flashing setup mode, etc. Plus this one has a camera in it so definitely not meant to work that way, it needs constant power, the dumb switch should only be used to occasionally hard reboot it if necessary (which can also be done by just unscrewing the bulb cam).

It doesn’t. Wyze exposes the device as a Cam and not a Bulb, so a third-party ecosystem like Amazon Alexa or Google Home doesn’t have direct access to the lights. This would be one of those situations where a Wyze Plug could be used as a bridge or logical switch to trigger an Automation that would turn Bulb Cam’s lights on or off, so essentially the same kind of behavior you could get from a Wyze Switch, I think. That’s what I’m seeing, anyway.

That’s the key that I think maybe @tharn is missing.

Giving this a little more thought, it might be possible to use a dumb switch to actuate Bulb Cam’s lights if the dumb switch is turning on a Wyze Bulb.

That’s something @tharn could try. It would still involve an Automation, and there would probably be a delay if it even worked at all, because the Wyze Bulb would have to come online and be detected by their rules engine as turning on in order to initiate the Trigger. Even then, the Wyze Bulb and Wyze Bulb Cam would have to be on separate circuits, and the Bulb Cam’s dumb switch would still have to be on all the time to maintain power to the camera. It’s probably not even worth attempting aside from just satisfying curiosity.

That’s not really how smart bulbs are designed to work, anyway, so even setting something like that up—where you’d be manually controlling power to a smart bulb instead of leaving it powered all the time for its intended use—would be giving up what actually makes a smart bulb useful in most cases.

Appreciate the replies, but I do not want to have to use “automation” because of the complication and the delays and unreliability, not to mention additional expense of extra device(s).
If I have a need to turn on the light NOW, instantly, I do not want to have to find my phone and bring up the app.

When I plug in the camera’s power cord, for one of my wyze cams, the camera usually reconnects and is ready for action in under 30 seconds. This, of course, means a cam that was setup previously, it will remember it’s connection upon a re-power-up. No reason the camera in the bulb cam would work differently.

If I lose say 20-30 seconds of “footage” during the re-power-up, big deal. If I can’t turn on the light with the regular light switch, then the bulb cam is of no use to me.

Just watched a bulb cam setup video on youtube. It does have a setup button on the cam, so it does not setup like a wyze smart bulb, with two quick flicks on the regular light switch.

And so, perhaps I need to request what I want to the wyze “wish list”?

I used to have a dumb floodlight, controlled by a dumb switch that did something similar. If I wanted the light to remain on, I turned the switch on/off 2 times in quick succession. A floodlight pro replaced it, and now I have to hunt for a phone and peck at the small screen to do the same thing. :rofl:

Don’t bother, wyze cannot defy the laws of electricity. When the cam is not receiving power, it will be offline, and will take time to boot up. The light will most likely stay off. Cycling the switch twice will just reboot the cam twice and probably end up frying it.

A smart switch (or an automation triggered by a wyze plug from a smart home device as @crease mentioned) is your solution. If you require a “dumb switch” to power the light on and off, then you are correct, the bulb cam is not right for you.

You can tie the wires behind the switch together so the socket always gets power, then install a smart switch in its place to control the light.

I think wyze probably needs to add info to the product page to reflect that the bulb cam REQUIRES constant power and any switches must remain in the on position, and any motion or light sensors in the fixture must be removed or disabled.

To put it another way, the bulb is a feature of the cam (similar to the spotlight on many of their other cams). The cam is not a feature of the bulb. This is not a smart bulb, it is a camera with a light.

I think that’s the answer. Even when the Bulb Cam is configured (so that once power is restored the camera will boot up and connect to Wi-Fi, just like other Wyze Cams), its default state when power is restored is for the light to be off. Contrary to that, the Accessory Bulbs that pair with Bulb Cam default to light on when they have power but no BLE connection back to the bound Bulb Cam. (That frustrates me every once in awhile.)

Based on what you’re describing as a goal, I think this is not the product you want.

I’m not sure I fully understand the request, so I wouldn’t even begin to know what to search for within existing Wishlist topics, but in your position I’d probably do a search to start.

I had a similar thing at my previous home. Toggling the circuit’s switch like that was how the user changed the floodlight’s modes from “always on” to “motion sensing” (IIRC).

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