Thank you.
2 Likes
Cancel my subscription to this particular thread. Nothing is going to be done about it. In fact, Wyze has doubled down and we’re expected to give away our location just to set/reset a camera. The server that gives us our alerts run through Asia so that means the Chinese not only have a view into our homes, they know exactly where our homes are located. 
This is Google’s & Apple’s decision more than it is Wyze’s. As I’ve explained to others:
That is absolutely 100% incorrect and a common misunderstanding. Your video stream never routes to Asia, ever. If you view your camera while you’re on your home network, that video stream never even leaves your house/router. It streams directly from your camera to your Phone. It doesn’t even route the video through the internet, let alone the Wyze servers, let alone any Asian Server.
If you are away from home and live stream your camera through the app on your phone, the video stream is still a direct Peer to Peer connection with your Camera. The video stream is not routing through some other server…Wyze or otherwise.
Now if you’re using the browser Web Portal, that does use Amazon Kinesis to route the video stream through AWS, though it stays in the USA.
You may be thinking of either a ping or authentication through TUTK (Throughtek is a Taiwanese company), but they basically do the authentication and even that is supposed to stay with the US servers (I believe there is currently something like the WCO Base station that is using an Asia IP for either the ping or Authentication, though hopefully Wyze resolves that, but even so, they do NOT ever have any access to the video stream).
Our alerts/notiications also do not go through Asia. They go through AWS and Wyze servers located in the USA.
2 Likes
Only you can do this. Got to the bottom of the thread and switch your preference to Normal or Muted as shown in this screenshot. 
3 Likes
Previous cameras didn’t require location services to be on. Something I liked because I don’t want my phone’s location services on.
Yeah, I get that. They were able to work around that by using QR codes on some of the older cameras. I think one of the main reasons they switched to Bluetooth for provisioning/setup is because the IoT industry in general has decided that Bluetooth setup should be the new standard, and in some cases it may even be required to be compliant with Matter or other standards. Because of these general agreements, it will become more and more rare for us to see IoT devices, particularly smart cameras that don’t use BlueTooth for provisioning/setup, and because of that, they will require location permissions from the Phone OS.
Still, I believe you can leave the GPS location system toggled off and you can tell the phone to only approve an app to use location permission that one time during setup and then not allow the app to continue to use it. Still, I understand the privacy preferences. You may wish to look into non-cloud and privacy-oriented platforms like Home Assistant where all your data stays as your own. I love Home Assistant.
3 Likes
Except pathetic BCP design which needs location to get sunset/sunrise times for spotlight activation, which instead should be done based on actual light conditions like normal cameras do
When away from home, all communication is going through the house’s access point (ISP server) and either your telecom’s Internet server or the ISP at the current location. It is going through the Internet. When at home, there is a noticeable delay between making a sound for the camera to capture and that sound being heard on the app. If it was a direct peer-to-peer, it would not have that delay. That comes from the signal leaving the home going somewhere (Taiwan?) and coming back to the phone. If this peer-to-peer existed, would I be able to ping the camera(s) from a computer? Show me.
On the old CCTV system and there’s an IP that gets typed in to the manufacturer’s app to connect it to the DVR (peer-to-peer). Though to see it outside of the house, the DVR requires an access point (nearly peer-to-peer). Wyze app does all this for the user. Isn’t that their server taking care of all the routing and handshaking? A database of all users’ access points and camera addresses to make it all work, yes?
Thanks for asking for some clarification.
Again, the initial authentication is made to Wyze servers through the internet and once that passes, it permits a handshake between the cameras and the phone for the video. If both are on the same network, then the router SHOULD have them connect locally with the traffic never leaving the router or using the internet.
Some routers are not very good at managing this though. Also, it’s possible that you have turned on settings that won’t allow devices to connect locally. Maybe your router is using device isolation or some other thing that is forcing the video stream to leave the router first.
Unless your router is blocking a local connection for some reason I can say with absolute 100% certainty that most video streams on the same router don’t go out to Asia. I know this for sure because, I, myself, have personally started a camera stream locally on my home network then after authentication through the internet, I have disconnected the internet (totally unplugged the cord to the modem and turned off the modem so there is no internet connection even possible to the local router). And the Wyze camera keeps streaming to my phone and my computer. This would be absolutely impossible if the camera stream were going to Asia and back because the router had internet access at all. This has been confirmed by many other people over the years in various ways. There is no doubt that the camera streams are local if your devices are on the same router and ALLOWED by the router to talk to each other, unless your router sucks at establishing local connections. Also, when I do stream locally, I have network stats that show how much traffic is local vs internet for a particular device. The video stream is 100% local traffic (not the initial authentication which requires the internet). My guess would be that you either have a router that is using device isolation or blocks communication between bands (some routers won’t allow devices on the 2.GHz SSID to talk to devices on the 5GHz SSID, so if they want to communicate, it will push the connection out through the internet first, which means it has to talk to your ISP before they can talk to each other). If that is the case in your situation, that would be your network’s (router’s) fault though, not Wyze’s.
Sound delays can occur due to MANY factors including network latency (with lots of potential causes for this depending on your personal environmental factors) and the initial authentication process (and processor and RAM considerations), not because it’s being routed to a central server in Asia. In fact, it’s not uncommon for people to report having the audio/video not matching on SD card recordings sometimes despite that not going to China and back first. I get sound delays and sometimes video delays occasionally too, even on a fairly advanced network and even knowing the connection is 100% local. But it cold also be possible that your router is not allowing a direct connection due to device or network (Band/SSID) isolation, etc.
Regarding Pings, P2P connections are established for video streaming, not for general network communication like pinging. The p2p setup is specifically designed for efficient video transmission, reducing the need for expensive bandwidth and server costs. P2P connections are primarily for data transfer not network discovery. But even if you were confident it should be doing so, perhaps the router is blocking a P2P connection for you due to some of the previously mentioned reasons.
As for the old CCTV system, Wyze uses a more user-friendly approach by handling the initial connection and authentication through their servers, but the video stream remains P2P. This balances ease of use with efficient data transmission. It does not mean the video is going through their servers, just the AUTHENTICATION, which then approves the P2P connection once it’s clear it is an approved and secure request. Many people have demonstrated being able to disable the internet once authentication is completed if they are local.
The obvious logical point that allows anyone to make this conclusion without having to have a technical background though is that if Wyze or their partner were handling the continuous video stream, it would be prohibitively expensive for Wyze given the large number of cameras they have in use. Many millions of them. They’d absolutely go broke in bandwidth costs alone if they allowed people to livestream to their phones for free for millions of customers. They’d start charging for that feature like Ring does or they’d go broke fast. That is the easiest way to know it’s not happening…it would be completely financially devastating if they were routing the video stream through themselves or a partner. They would just not allow it at all or require a subscription to even liveview the camera.
1 Like
This is absolutely incorrect. Almost all streaming protocols introduce some buffering delay. That is intentionally done so that momentary delays in the stream can be dealt with so you the viewer or listener does not notice the brief interruption. That buffering is often many seconds (often 30 - 45 seconds). Don’t believe me, dial up your local FM radio station on a real radio and also via their streaming app. At least for the FM station I regularly listen to, the iHeart app stream is over 2 minutes delayed. Note that not all of that delay is in the buffering, but a lot of it is. For years, I have streamed the receive audio from a scanner listening to local fire department radio traffic. it’s almost 45 seconds from the the audio being received on a radio and the streaming when on the same LAN.
As Carver said, many people have tested a local connection - I am one of those people. Once established, it is local - unless your access points and/or router are preventing a local connection.
As far as pinging your cameras, absolutely possible. If you bring up settings for your camera and select Device Info, one of the things listed is the IP address. You can ping that from your computer to that address - again unless your access point is blocking that. I have a script in my router that pings all of my IoT devices (except Amazon Echos that do not respond to a ping) every hour. If a device fails to respond to the ping, I am sent an E-Mail notifying me of the failure.
One more note on device to device connection (including ping). As mentioned by both Carver and me is that many access points can be set to not allow direct device to device connections. For some applications, this is highly desirable. For example public WiFi (think your local Starbucks). You don’t want to have one person watching traffic from another person using the public WiFi. For use at your home, this security feature is generally not needed - and in fact can cause more problems than is solves.
1 Like
This is by a few seconds, not 30-45 seconds. It’s not like the buffering on radio streaming apps.
When I get a chance, I’ll disconnect the router from the Internet to see if the phone app connects to the cameras locally, as you say. The only way I see it happening is if the cameras have a Wi-Fi hotspot of their own.
It’s definitely not a router issue since it’s streaming CCTV and over-the-air television broadcasts - no Internet required. No reason for it to block Wyze streaming.
I don’t know why Wyze would design it to work just locally since it would take away their ability to make money (justifiably) with the security subscription thing. They definitely can’t make money just selling inexpensive cameras. They’ve already pushed their sensors to be subscription only. And that fake AI monitoring definitely needs the web to connect to the people who actually to the monitoring as part of that service.
I wish I it would all be locally controlled but the whole app store business model is about keeping people hooked.
I’m sure an actual Wyze employee could answer these questions, but I know they wouldn’t if they want to stay employed.
Without getting too far into it, realistically, this statement can never be true. Routers are so complex, and there are so many variables, there’s never a “definitely.” You can have 1 device work perfectly fine on a router and another not, and it doesn’t mean the device is the one at fault. That same device likely works fine on multiple other routers that have different protocols in them and this router alone may be the only one with some conflict because it’s doing something different than every other router because there is a lot that isn’t standardized in routers. Brands all program tons of things differently. It is so bad that no IoT company can realistically account for every single router’s quirks and nuances that aren’t in 99% of every other router. The situation is a lot more complicated than most people realize…but that doesn’t mean a router isn’t the one at fault just because another device works okay on it. This is a common misassumption.
This is incorrect. Half my family members use the Wyze sensors with no subscription just fine. They have motion sensors, contact sensors, leak sensors, Climate sensors. All of them are working and notifying them and working with rules/automations, etc all without any subscription. The sensors all work pretty well without a subscription. In fact, one of my family members just sets up a shortcut to turn on all notifications for his sensors when he goes to bed (or on a schedule) And another shortcut that turns off all the notifications when he wakes up (or on a schedule), so he basically has self Monitoring security too. Then he has phone apps and automations that can trigger sirens during these times if a sensor is opened when he sets it to “armed” while he’s sleeping. All this with Wyze sensors with no subscription.
You can do it 99.9% locally controlled if you really want. Lots of people do. Even the sensors can be local-only. I converted 80% of my Wyze sensors to be local-only and not even run on Wyze’s cloud anymore. Lots of people will turn their cameras to be local only. Basically, they’ll set up something like Docker Wyze Bridge and initiate authentication, then once that is approved and streaming, they will have their router block the camera from having internet access and just keep using the camera stream through RTSP, 100% local, no internet even possible.
Plenty actually have answered many of these questions over the years in AMA’s and old forum posts and such. If you want to ask them yourself, pay attention around the next time they launch a new camera. They will usually say they’re going to do an AMA event on Reddit where you can ask them anything. Ask your questions there. If enough other people agree that your question is one of the best, your question will get priority. I usually ask more than 2 dozen questions and all my top questions get answered for sure, and they still sometimes answer other questions that nobody else upvoted if they have time to get to the less popular questions. I get a ton of answers all the time in AMAs even when the questions are really controversial.
1 Like
I never said that it had to be 30 to 45 seconds, only that many streaming protocols do buffer that long. For this application, that long of a buffer would make it at least partially useless - so Wyze designed their streaming protocol to have a much smaller buffering delay.
1 Like
Wishing a response from someone with less sales pitch and anecdotes and more technical information. Remembering when one could get helpful information on forums. Those were the days.
Maybe you will get more replies if you don’t post in this Wishlist.
Hopefully you called support.
This is a volunteer board and we don’t make any commission off of sales. It is currently 2:44am EDT.
1 Like
I have about 6 out 15 cameras that I need to move to a different SSID and it’s not something I’d like to do one by one. Isn’t anything Wyze could do in their app to change it? Seriously, it’s 2024 already. @WyzeTeam
Why can’t router manufacturers/ISPs make it easy to change ssids and passwords of their routers? Why print the info under the devices so the information is available to any one who’s nearby?
Seriously, it’s 2024 already.
Why can’t your bank make it easier for me to change your password?
Seriously, it’s 2024 already.
Seriously, changing an ssid can be as secure as you can make it. Printing the router credentials under the router is secure?
Changing the router’s ssid is several orders of magnitude easier. You know this if you have software dev background.
Changing the camera’s info is more complicated. It’s because in the process of changing anything, you’re cutting off the network pathway to the camera.