Cam Plus Lite Deadline Extended to February 28th - 2/14/22

Wyze News
41

Answer this: How big is your customer base who only use cameras for (a) livestream only or (b) microSD playback --AND-- (c) don’t access video feed recordings via the web? How much are you really saving by forcing that small subset of your customer base into a new [BASIC] subscription?

Required Upgrade [GOOD]: We’re going to take your existing service and add human detection (which is something you wrote for an uplifted subscription tier and doesn’t cost any additional $$)
Required Upgrade [BAD]: We are also going to drop your uploaded video to stills, even though that’s not what you purchased initially.

I pay for some cameras to have the addon services, but there are some which don’t require those features for me. So, I lose functionality unless I opt in.

To add to it: Act now, to opt in for whatever you want to pay, but when you choose $0.00 because you already purchased this service, it tries to guilt you into at least paying something.

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42

We are not requiring that you pay for cloud recordings at all! You can opt into Cam Plus Lite at any price, including $0 to retain all of today’s cloud video features.

You also gain community-funded Person Detection when you opt in, which is a new feature, but there is no obligation to pay - we have a $0/mo option for those who aren’t in a place to contribute, and we’re asking you to pay what you think the Person Detection service is worth. :slight_smile:

The combination of this opt-in and the community fund are what have allowed us to make Person Detection available on a name-your-price basis. I want to stress this super hard though: You can opt in to continue to receive cloud storage and name basically any price, including $0. We hope that you can understand our data shows that Person Detection will tremendously improve the experience for those who use cloud video storage and want relevant notifications, and we hope that you consider contributing to help us make this happen, but paying is NOT a requirement.

I strongly recommend that anyone who is confused take a look at the full explanation and full context in our original announcement post. We tried to be a bit more concise with this explanation because we’ve been sending a lot of messaging out, and our apologies if we omitted context that you guys would have benefitted from.

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43

@hamrhed - To answer your question with a quote from our original announcement (I really really suggest that everyone read that post for the full context!)

The average Wyze Cam gets 250+ notifications with new video recordings each week. That’s a ton. But 70% of our users haven’t viewed recorded videos at all for 30 days or more.

While I don’t have A/B available separately, it’s clear from this data that our free tier is not giving folks the relevant recordings and notifications that they need at the moment. 250+ recordings per camera per week, some folks have 2, 4, 9, 15, 30 cameras… which is what prompted this change. Through studies and interviews we’ve found that getting, for example, 107+ notifications from 3 cameras every day, our users get desensitized and stop checking for videos of waving tree branches. Community-funded Person Detection is our plan to help. As with all good things, it comes at a cost to us, though, since this is being processed in the cloud. Together, anyone that pitches in is helping us make this feature available to as many people as we can, and anyone who acknowledges that they have no need for cloud storage is helping as well.

We think that it’s best for everyone that we spend our resources on things that will make your experience better, and we will always continue to strive to make great tech accessible to everyone. That has been our mission since day 1 with our original Wyze Cam, and this is hopefully going to be the start of us being able to move that mission into software too - not just hardware. As someone who grew up in a household that couldn’t afford the luxury of paid subscription services, this idea of a community fund is near and dear to my heart and I know that being able to detect a stranger outside of our home would have made a world of difference. :pray:

The addition of community-funded Person Detection is not us asking you to pay us for cloud storage. And even if we are hoping and asking our users to consider contributing to the community fund for Person Detection, it is not a requirement to pay. Your Wyze Cams will continue to work the same and will gain the community-funded Person Detection if you opt in at any price, even $0/mo.

We’ve gone opt-in for cloud storage and are asking for voluntary contributions so that we can sustain offering cloud-based Person Detection and offer a ‘cloud-lite’ solution to those that were asking for it. Person Detection is what we are using the community fund to pay for and what our suggested contribution is based off of. I really hope that you guys hear me and Wyze as a whole on this, and please let me know if there are any other questions on this that I can answer for you.

I hope we can all work together to make this feature available to everyone and create a landscape where Wyze can assess the finances of this and consider expanding Cam Plus Lite further.

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44

Every time I try to toggle it on for my Pan V1 it says loading for a second then toggles it back off. Does this not support all versions of Wyze Cams? Same goes for some of my Cam V2. Pan is firmware 4.10.8.860

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So does this mean that after whatever the heck change you’re talking about takes place, those cameras with Cam Plus Lite will be able to detect and be notified of 12-second Person videos, but no longer get them for Sound or plain motion - and be limited to Person? MORE CONFUSION AND OBFUSCATION INSTEAD OF STRAIGHT TALK. What was the point of all this anyway? And will we soon have to “upgrade” either our cameras or app again - or both? And what new glitch will result therefrom? It’s a whole career constantly fixing what goes wrong as a result. Oh, the humanity!

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Thanks @WyzeJimmy for explaining. Again I appreciate how Wyze continues to be innovative in helping bring more capability to Wyze devices and also raise awareness of capabilities that some may be missing out on. Well done. I recognize some may not agree but I think you have support of many perhaps most of us. :slightly_smiling_face:

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47

No that is not accurate, if you have Cam Plus Lite you will get 12-second videos for any motion or sound, you will also have the ability to have it tagged as a person if a person is what caused the trigger.

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48

Can I use Cam Plus on some cameras and Cam Plus Lite on others?

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Absolutely. But if you assign a cam to Cam Plus, then the app will automatically switch the Cam Plus Lite license off for that camera. No biggie – if you ever stop using Cam Plus you can switch it back to Lite on under Account tab > Cam Plus Lite (PD Legacy).

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I’ve had no issues at all w my Wyze. I got the yearly package for $13.99 for cloud storage which can’t be beat! I can keep an eye on my car, and let’s me know if anyone is lurking around my house. Thanks for the camera, it’s honestly one of the easiest to hook up, and take care of getting settings just right.

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If it costs 0$ just put it in place. Not overly happy with the random alerts / activity with the cams as of late anyways.

I’ve had someone talk through one camera at 3 am awakening my daughter.

Shrugs, weren’t expensive so they are being replaced here soon anyways.

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I think the developers of these cameras has forgotten one key aspect. Sometimes simpler is better! I’m sure there is a market out there to be able to identify all the different leaves, butterflies, cats, dogs and sometimes humans that are triggering recording events. But really I don’t care. I want the camera’s that I already have keep doing what they have been doing since I purchased them. Something triggers the camera, it records a 12 second video. I can/will quickly scan through all the events and see which ones I care about (if any). If there is an event that I want to see more detail, Wyze added the cool feature a while ago to let me go to that exact location/timestamp on the locally stored SD card so I can watch more of that event. Simple easy and cheap! All they need to do is figure out how to store those 12 second videos on the local SD card, then they don’t even have to pay for storage of them. One of the key reasons I purchased and have stayed with Wyze for so long is they are cheap easy, simple and most importantly they work. I suggest they re-evaluate where they are going and don’t forget to keep it simple for the majority of us that don’t need all this fancy new AI (not really AI) stuff.

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Amen. but welcome to what tech companies CAN and will do now. Fish for you, get you, then change prices and offerings. It’s a classic move that many do and will do…forever. SUCKS. But your only choice is pay or leave. If Wyze wants to REALLY be compliant and agreeable - offer to buy back at a reduced price at least the equipment that we all purchased under the previous service offered…that now they want to change and charge for. But hey…it is their company. They can do whatever they want. and we can stay or leave. Still sucks though…

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Wyze has forever sent emails wanting us to buy stuff when when it’s impossible because we aren’t located in USA or Canada. How many years before people outside of USA etc. will be able to purchase.

Most annoyingly is you know where we live but you keep bombarding us with emails to purchase stuff when we can’t. I’ve raised this before and nothing has changed.

The other huge issue is Wyze cams etc. are a world unto themselves. The don’t interop with things like Home Assistant etc.

Because of these issues my plan is to move away from Wyze altogether, which is a pity.

Oh notifications typically come a minute or more after the event, which makes them almost useless.

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Yep! And now I’m looking at the competition again too. I should have known, though, after numerous, numerous delays in their product development – promise a product and then keep putting it off, putting it off – that they would run a scam like this.

Way to alienate your user base Wyze! Keep it up, you’re doing great!

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Wow I bought in to this platform because of many incentives you all offered with your products. I have even told everyone I could about your products and bought most of them as they came out and still use today. If I add up those initial costs and also a continued use of products and now the additional costs you impose to continue these services I could have bought in the name brands that are more expensive but not changing their services! I think and feel this was a scam to spread your products and then hit the ones that put you on the map as a contender to bigger name brands now are falling in the backs of the people that made your business successful! Why would you do that to loyal customers and just grandfather these people in and out those costs in new users buying in to your product and markets! The lure of your products all went together when I bought in and that has changed dramatically now! This is borderline misrepresentation and I believe you will loose loyal customers and that might not mean much these days but heck it seems that all corporate entities seem to not care anymore for loyal customers that brought great wealth to them in the first place. It is a shame that you are no better than those most of us oppose to this strong arming tactics! This is one of the biggest asset you all had and you are crapping on that principle and now lost the trust in your base platform people that put you all in top competition to the bigger names. If you were business savvy you may have taken a different path or should I stay on the original path and not take the easy path by stomping on the ones who propelled your company but make better business decisions to both pay for the cloud through realigning business decisions and or maybe just providing better options to say keep some of customers most valued cameras and say limit the amount of cameras to be free on cloud and anymore than that automatically puts them to be put on cost plan for those additional cameras but instead you all took the low road but could have still had a win win for both!!! The all mighty dollar has broken your possible ambitions to be the best! You think to short term and not long as I once thought you knew. You built business on sound business practice but as every greedy company you grew too fast and now have to backtrack to hold a float. As I have described in previous few sentences this decision may in fact break you in the long term! For that i am sorry because I really thought you all were different and claimed you all were! You eyes became blind to wealth as most do!

Good luck and I believe I will be looking elsewhere to whom I can find that loyalty to and then to help promote them for the right reasons as I had done for you all. It was fun while it lasted…

Sincerely, once a loyal customer and an advocate of a great product at a great value with people who once thought had sound business ambitions and practices.

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If you add an emoji shedding a tear maybe they’ll put everything free again.

Or reply with a violin emoji.

Because nothing is free in life.

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Right, I guess we missed the times they gave all those Wyze cameras out for free! All my vehicles are paid for as well… Toyota better not start changing the software on those because they want more money either, leave that to the Telsa snobs.

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The cameras still work. The cars still run.

(Cars are the worst example for comparison.)

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The cameras work although not exactly the same. If Toyota made the sunroof open, but only with a subscription… I don’t think explaining anything is going to get through to you.