I was thinking, can i hook up the cams and plugs to turn on flood lights?
Scenario…A camera is set over the garage door.
…IF camera sees car…THEN sends signal to plug. Plug turns on (floodlights) and shuts off after preset time interval. Bonus points if i can do this between interval periods (at night)
With 8 cameras outside and 14 plug inventory, i can set up all kinds of scenarios. If i can’t, not a big deal because i can buy $30 Home Depot floodlights that work pretty well.
As an example, I have 2 Wyze floodlights covering a long walkway. If the outer floodlight sees a person, I turn on the inner floodlight (a V1) for 3 minutes. Unfortunately, the other floodlights (V2 and pro) don’t have that automation action. Wyze deems it better to spend time working on SafeView or whatever it’s called now, than work on old fix-it requests.
What you’re describing should be possible with Wyze Automations, including having your Trigger function within a defined schedule (e.g., at night). The questions that come to mind for me are these:
How are you currently powering your floodlights? In other words, how are they wired?
How do you plan to protect the Wyze Plugs from the elements? I’m wondering if Plug Outdoors might be a better solution, but I don’t know the circumstances of your use case and how/where you plan to locate things.
It’s a new build so I have to “pre-think” everything I want to do. It’s going to get Cat 6 everywhere but wiring is expensive so I have to figure out how I’m going to use the “systems”.
For sure the garage, front door, side garage door and back doors will get wired. Also for sure they are getting some type of detection system. So it will either be the run of the mill floodlights that go for $30 at Home Depot OR the more sophisticated system.
Also for sure I’m putting in two security camera systems. The Wyze and a high end hard wired HikVision. The Hik is vastly superior but very expensive on electricity that is why I’m installing the Wyze AND backing it with the Hik when we are out.
Now I have to figure how to marry the Wyze system as a detection and flood light system. Or go the dumb route.
The dumb system can work either from it’s motion sensor or I rewire it to work from the smart plug. OR BOTH. I did that when I had a commercial building and turned the lights on from the smart plugs at a preset time,
EDIT…just remembered ,what I did with the dumb system is let one of the floodlights run on it’s motion sensor with a large light and the second floodlight on the smart plug. That way I had a lot of illumination on the area AND got alerted by any intrusion. The extra light got picked up by the cams and send alert. Of course it didn’t help when it picked up rabbits and racoons.
What I’m imagining now is that you’ll be running Cat 6 for the Hikvision system (I’d guess for PoE), and that this is going to be your self-hosted system for on-site surveillance and then you might have a handful of Wyze Cams sprinkled around that you’ll possibly want to trigger dumb floodlights. That seems like it should work, especially if this is a new build and you’re comfortable rewiring the lights anyway. Doing something like that, I’d imagine you could run your own electrical cables for the floodlights and have them all terminate at a bank of indoor Wyze Plugs that you’re using essentially as switches, and then you could use Automations to trigger those based on camera detections. If you’re comfortable basing all the triggering on generic motion detections (in contrast with Person, Vehicle, etc.), then you could do all of that even without a subscription, and I think the effect would be similar to what you might achieve just using the floodlights’ motion sensors.
I guess the potential benefit here would be having Wyze Cams present to capture motion to video, assuming you’re recording to microSD (which I would, using the Continuous setting and high-capacity SanDisk High Endurance or Samsung PRO Endurance cards), but at the end of the day it might be easier just to mount Cam Floodlights (pick your version) instead. I guess it depends on what you already have on hand and are determined to use versus what you want to spend on new equipment and your own time with labor.
YES to most of what you assume. My background is engineering and I have no problem re-wiring to the point that I have to sit there and wonder what the heck I did 6 months later.
We’re getting a bit off the original intent of the thread…has anyone actually done this with the Wyze system. I didn’t want to spend hours on it and find out I wasted my time…
I haven’t done this exact thing, because I don’t have any floodlights at my home, but I have used Plugs in camera-triggered Automations, so what you originally asked about is possible within the Wyze ecosystem, as @WildBill indicated. Whether or not it’s the ideal solution for you is another question entirely.
Since you have Cams and Plugs already, why not set up your own tests? Have a Cam trigger a Plug to turn on a lamp or something just to prove to yourself that it can be done, eh?
I use HomeAssistant along with Wyze, YoLink, TP-Link and Z-wave devices. I have YoLink outdoor motion sensors around the house which will trigger voice notifications of movement and turn on outside floodlights that are controlled by z-wave light switches. I use Wyze cameras with Alexa to announce if a person is detected. I also have Amcrest POE cameras at various locations including the garage and shop, along side Wyze cameras.
