I bought a couple of ABS Project boxes 5x5x3 on Amazon that have a clear cover. I mounted, then painted them the color of my exterior garage. I measured where the best view with a V4 would serve a 60ish degree angle using a 3D printed V3 mount. I drilled a hole from the inside of the garage through the header into the box. And mounted the box with 95% of the clear cover painted to match. Now, with a pair of Amazon Echo 8’s 1st Gen’s and 8 Routines cycling every 11X in each routine, at 14 minutes intervals to refresh the screen, I can keep an eye on the alley coming and going as the cameras almost overlap. 2 ABS Project boxes, 2 V4’s, 2 Echo Show 8 1st gen. runs from 06:00-12:00 am
I would have used a couple of peephole cameras and made this even less noticeable. Once in a while someone asks, what are those boxes, I don’t see them on other garages. I just say, hmm, part of the TV cable, I guess.
Very nice. They really blend in with the background. The cams seem to be well protected from the environment. Did you need to vent the box to reduce condensation moisture?
Do you monitor these cams more frequently than your other cams? Dual live displays are very nice. I need to check into getting an echo monitor for the front door view.
I do like your design. Especially better than having the cam in a birdhouse housing.
Thank you. Pleased to answer all/any questions.
See the pic that has the cable going though the inside of the garage? I mounted the back half of the box, then drilled through the header into the box. The hole is plenty to vent so, I’ve never seen condensation when viewing a camera scene.
I have learned the hard way that only Echo Show 8 and 5 2st generation versions work 100% of the time with Wyze cameras. Don’t know about other cameras, - well, Tapo works fine too. Don’t know about 3rd gen Show, but 2nd gen Shows fail. 2nd Gen displays the camera view for 10 minutes then minimizes the size to 1/5 of the screen. Pain. So, watched for and sold my 2nd Gen on eBay and bought 1st gen Show 8’s. Now, I have 5 each Show 8 and 2 each Show 5.
They line up across the my back corner of my desk. You saw two in a pic.
I use Alexa routines to cycle and refresh from each camera every 14 minutes. Let me define that a little better. I have 12-14 Wyze cameras that cycle up on the Echo Shows. 3 Shows get their same cameras, the other 4 Shows rotate across the the remaining 10-11 cameras to a screen… By trial and error, I discovered a Wyze camera tends to stall and stops (changing the time stamp) about every 15-17 minutes. So, I use a routine to send the Alexa, Show Cam 1 command again. Now, having said that,
I have a routine that runs for 3 hours. During that 3 hours, 7 cameras are told to show their view/image on the Shows. But all 7 commands are not stacked together. There’s a two minute wait between each camera so after a total of 14 minutes it starts over again. This cycle happens 11 times in each routine. Its the maximum number of cycles Alexa lets me have in a routine (150 lines) Each command has a two minute interval. so, show, cam 1, on show 1 wait 2 minute show cam 2 on show 2, wait 2 minutes. show cam 3 on show 3. and so on. I have found this to work more successful than any other. And I during loading up all these command, an Alexa message popped up and informed me. “Add a Wait command at the very last command to hold the screen.” So, I did. And it helps.
I can only stack 150 lines/commands in one routine. I can only have 200 Alexa routines. So, along with all my other home automation stuff, that uses 180+ routines, I have enough routines, that the first starts at 6 am, regardless if I am watching. And the last one starts for 3 hours a 9 pm.
And person detection causes an unexpected view to pop up for me interrupting the normal routine, but its also triggered by a routine. Once in a while that unexpected interruption causes that show to not return to a camera for 30+ minutes. No biggie, I have a Flic button, I can press to re-energize that camera to start sending again.
And all these cameras shutdown at 3:00 am and start back up by 3:10 am. So, they get a fresh WiFi connection.
And I used this Wyze mount with a 60 degree angle from Thingiverse
Thanks. I see 100+ people walk by these two camera daily, (may be at least 100) I can keep an eye on a bunch of houses’ garages, and trucks or vans that might not need to be around.
This setup has been this way about 3 years now. Two people have asked what those boxes are. I simply shrugged and said, I think they are part of the cable system. And that satisfied them. Even shining a smartphone flashlight does not reflect back that there’s a camera lens in there. And are high enough they can’t get their face in front of it.
I will have to write that down somewhere. It looks like a nice use of the monitors. Currently I only have a Google/Android environment. Maybe time to go hybrid.
Impressive. I was thinking you had each one of the garage cams going to a specific monitor. It would make sense to pull in other cam views. (Unless you have a pallet of gold in the garage.) Nice routines. I don’t know anything about routines but I can see they would be useful.
Great idea. I need to fo that with my v3 and v4 cams. The v2s I shut off at sunset and back on again at sunrise.
That makes perfect sense. I was wondering how the cams were mounted behind the glass. So I guess you can flip the hood mount 180° for the other side?
I could use a hood for my front door cam, and another location, and now another location. Great idea. I only see reflections in the evening when the sun sets and then the room light is on. The hood would solve that problem.
Yes, the Wyze cam mount that was 3D printed, flips either way to give you a left angle or right angle. I used black paint to change the V4’s face outer bezel black and painted part of the black face to reduce the shine of the face.
Here’s a sample of my routines.
Set Volume to 0
Alexa, Show Cam1 on Echo 81
Wait 2 minutes
Alexa, Show Cam2 on Echo 82
Wait 2 minutes
Alexa, Show Cam3 on Echo 83
Wait 2 minutes
Alexa, Show Cam4 on Echo 84
Wait 2 minutes
Alexa, Show Cam5 on Echo 85
Wait 2 minutes
Alexa, Show Cam6 on Echo 51
Wait 2 minutes
Alexa, Show Cam7 on Echo 51
Wait 3 minutes
This series of 7 with 2 minute wait, occurs 11 times in 1 routine. So, it last 3 hours and then another starts at the top of the hour.
(Last Line) Wait 3 minutes (num of minutes is not important., just that a Wait is there, per Alexa team.
You create the command using the Custom choice in the routine.
These commands cause Alexa to send a beep/chime when executed too.
And when for any reason she can’t she say something, - that I don’t want to hear anyway. So, even with the volume set to 0, you still hear a chime. What I did, was add a Echo Dot 2nd gen I had to my network, and put it in a sock and a box, and placed it in a closet where there’s an electrical outlet. I called it Echo Dot Mute and use it as the “Hear Alexa from” choice at the bottom of the routine. Now, no sound at all.
Hey @Sam_Bam and @ssummerlin, just curious, why would you want a concealed camera? Isn’t the whole purpose of having a camera in a plain sight to deter trouble? To me, the only time I would want a hidden camera would be to catch someone in action.
I don’t typically “hide” my cameras, but I do like them to not stand out and draw attention. It’s why I like all black over black on white. People will psychologically dismiss black from their attention similar to a shadow. And why I always disable the status light. I don’t want people’s attention on the cameras even though we all know they are everywhere at my house except the bedrooms and bathrooms.
