I am a programmer, and even I am totally confused with the UI for the camera settings because the same thing seems to be in THREE different places within the app and it’s not clear how they interact with each other (which is totally NOT intuitive) and I do not know how the internal code was written, because if I did, then I would easily know how to set this up the way I want.
I want to be able to ONLY detect Smoke and Co alarms, so I enabled them in “Alarm Settings”.
But then there are a BUNCH of other settings that seem to be related:
Section “Notifications” … “Detects Sound” - do I need to enable this to receive the Smoke and Co alerts?
Section “Event Recording” … “Detects Sound” - do I need to enable this to receive the Smoke and Co alerts?
Then in the “Detection Settings”, does that “Sound Detection Sensitivity” value effect the Smoke/Co alarm listening sensitivity or not?
And since this camera is located in a living room, there will be people sounds/TV sounds nearby, but I do NOT want to be notified of any sounds other than the Smoke and Co alarms. I would be hard pressed to believe that in order for me to receive Smoke/Co alerts, Wyze decided that I must also receive alerts for ANY sounds from that camera because then whats the point of having separate settings for just Smoke/Co sounds!
I would greatly appreciate any help in figuring this out, but only if you are 100% sure of how to adjust the settings to achieve what I am looking for because I already tried a bunch of different configurations and could not get it to work, so I would rather not just keep guessing.
Sorry for being blunt, but I am just so frustrated with how Wyze’s devlopers do things (like this) and then don’t do other things (like not adding a notification snooze button that has been a popular request since 2018! - Pause (snooze) notifications for user-chosen period)
Yes you need sound on or you will never get the alarms that you wantyour the first person in 2 + years who have asked that question,the audio senativaty i would try it at 10
Like I already mentioned I turned on the “Smoke Alarm Sound” and “CO Alarm Sound” settings, so what other “Sound on” setting are you specifically referring to?
…and are you saying that you know for a fact that the sound sensitivity effects the Smoke/Co2 sensitivity?
You ask some great questions, and at the moment I cannot conclusively answer them, and in your situation I personally would want the answer from someone who has personally tried the following steps…here is what I would do to figure out the answer:
Turn on the Alarm Settings
Turn off the other settings
“Test” the alarm by pressing the button on a smoke detector
See if you get the Alarm notification If so, you have your answer and all is good. If not, continue on:
Alternate one other setting at a time (one of the ones you mentioned (Sound notifications, Event recording-Detects Sound, and sound detection sensitivity), and repeat step 3 on.
Then alternate testing 2 of them at a time, and then all 3.
Using the above flow chart (well, it could be a flow chart if I was motivated enough to draw it out anyway), you will definitely have the answer. If I had a smoke detector conveniently accessible right now I would test it for you. If you or others haven’t tested it soon, then I will try to remember to bring one to my desk and take the time to run the tests and let you know.
As you indicated, I too could definitely see any of those combinations being the way it was programmed, and I do not know the primary answer, but I am fairly confident you don’t have to have notifications-detects sound enabled, because I believe I got an alarm notification once on a camera that didn’t have sound notifications selected. So I am fairly sure it isn’t dependent on that toggle. I am GUESSING that it only needs the alarm settings toggled, though I would probably also set the sound detection sensitivity to 100% just to be sure the microphone picks up the alarms as clearly as possible. But again, this can be tested by testing an alarm once with it at full sensitivity and once at the lowest sensitivity. Let me know if you figure it out before I get around to testing it.
And I am thinking that the software is probably written to only trigger these smoke/co alarms depending on the frequency of the sound (smoke and co alarms use different industry agreed upon tones) and it needs a few seconds to get a good sample of the audio to analyze it’s frequency to see if it matches up with one of those standard tones.
Hey MrEngineer. I just want to give a big shout out to the super helpful guys on this forum. Aren’t they great? Wow. Wonderful support. Users helping users.
What ever you do, please don’t ask Wyze to “fix” it. They’ll just break it. Just learn how to use it as is. With Wyze, you do your own testing and experimentation.
I feel your pain. I have been designing interfaces and writing programs for 45 years and I have given up on trying to figure out how all of the Wyze functions interact. I have mostly given up on their products.
There are requests for what should be simple Time Lapse changes that have been languishing for years.
I think the problem you and I, as well as others, have a problem with the interface is because we think like programmers and how we would do the interface. Our brains are basically pushing back against what exists and it is confusing and frustrating.
I have often thought that the best thing Wyze could do is publish a large matrix showing function, location, and interaction with other settings; for all of the functions.
The other thing they could do is provide a comprehensive web-based control panel for the devices which lists “what I want to do” items, instead of a series of disjointed pages showing inter-related settings.
I agree that the Wyze interface is pretty confusing, to say it politely.
I have been trying for a long time to get my V3 cams to sound alarms when they detect motion in various modes, only to have the sirens go off immediately when I program the cameras. Believe me, I have tried everything, and have gotten a lot of suggestions from other users. I have just turned off sirens and notifications altogether, and let my Eufy cameras notify me. I use my Wyze cameras to see the full video that my Eufy cameras don’t record.
