With the release of the motion & contact sensors it would be nice to be able to create multi-conditional actions/notifications. While this may be supported via IFTTT once the sensors are added it would be nice for this to be native.
Use case: when contact sensor is open > X min AND motion is clear send notification
Sense Logic Alert design- the ability to create a logic flow for alerting. I.e if Door 1 is open and Motion 1 triggers take video with cam 2 and Alert mobile app and Alexa but if Door 1 is open and its between 10pm and 11pm only alert Alexa but take video from Cam 3
I would think conditional settings which ifttt still cannot do. For example, I have motion sensor for the garage and a sensor on the door to detect if it’s open or not. I would like to have something that would allow Wyze to trigger the garage door opener only if the motion is clear AND the door sense is open. If I use only motion clear to trigger, the garage door could be opened instead of shut whenever someone goes into the garage and leaves, while the outside garage door is closed.
A software or programming option to have a set of this and this and, etc then that.
I would like feature to better let me use Wyze for home security. In particular, I want to be able to have wyze ONLY notify me when my motion sensors detect motions or door sensors detect doors being opened when I am away.
I am trying to use Wyze as a silent security alarm system. I want to use it to know if/when somebody comes into my house when I’m away and to record the entries so I can easily see who it was. In this, I’ve programmed various sensors to make recordings from one or another of my cameras when they get triggered. The problem is that Wyze’s methods for notifying me or for turning the system on or off are inadequate.
Right now, I have “I’m home” and “I’m away” actions that are setup to turn off all my cameras and mute or unmute all notifications. Additionally, the home/away stops the cameras from recording me when I’m home. I’ve also used IFTTT and Apilio to automate some of this so that the system arms when I’m away and disarms when I’m home.
What works here is that I get notifications when I’m away and somebody trips a sensor. Additionally, turning off the cameras prevents the sensors from activating them and and thus keeps the system from recording me when I’m home.
What doesn’t work is that the notifications are silent and so I usually miss them. I’m playing with the “bell” icon to see if that fixes the problem. However, that icon keeps resetting itself to silent and figuring that out has become an arduous process.
What also doesn’t work is that there’s no way to basically turn off the sensors. Whether home or away, each sensor detection gets logged. These logs are also where the camera clips get saved when the sensor triggers a camera recording. When I’m home and moving about, the motion sensors make detection events every 3-5 minutes. So this means that any motion-triggered recordings get buried behind hundreds of empty motion detected events, making them impossible to find once I’ve been home.
As a work-around to the silent notifications problem, I thought I would use IFTTT to send me one of its alerts whenever the system generated a notification. However, I found that I IFTTT gets the notifications whether or not I’ve “Muted” them in the Wyze app. As it’s hard to turn notifications for each sensor on or off, making it so that I only get the notifications when I’m away looks like it will be an uphill path.
So, in short, I think Wyze needs to do a whole bunch of work around notifications, logging, and providing ways to control sensor states. The system is so far short of enabling useful functionality that I can’t even recommend what I would do first. Perhaps it’s time for a serious design review.
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I know it is not what you are posting this about, however, I use a smartthings hub in conjunction with wyze/IFTTT/webcore (a smartthings addin) to do exactly this.
There is a lot of extra logic that would need to be developed for this to happen the way you would like it to.
Just my $0.02
It seems like SmartThings is useful but not a complete solution. Actually, I’m not even clear that it adds anything over IFTTT/Apilio. But just in case I’m missing something, here’s what I see missing:
The main thing missing is a way to intelligently get notified about sensor and video events when I’m away from the home but not get the notifications when I’m home.
Wyze does have ways to notify you that sensors have triggered. You can send the notifications through IFTTT. However, there’s no simple way to turn sensor notifications on or off. You have to dig down through the menu for each sensor. Now I guess I could use SmartThings or Apilio to filter the notifications but that seems super excessive. What is your solution?
Wyze+IFTTT does let you easily turn off the cameras. Turning the cameras off prevents them from capturing sensor-triggered recordings. However, Wyze doesn’t have a way of notifying you it’s generated sensor-triggered videos. So, for example, you can turn off the cameras and not get videos but unless you are getting notified about sensors, you have to look at the app to see if any videos have been generated. So that doesn’t work well for an alarm system.
Wyze does have image recognition tools to detect movement visually. However, these algorithms have a lot of problems with false alarms. Shadows are a big problem that generate a lot of alarms. It’s great for creating a record but poor for using as an alarm. With the high false alarm rate, you would be poorly served to use the image recognition as an “alarm.” (The sensors, conversely, have a very low false alarm rate.)
It seems like there’s a bunch more, but this is a start. What is your solution, technically?
I just looked and it used to be convoluted as I stated above, but now, I have a simple IFTTT applet that says:
IF smartthings “ME” is home [presence detection (life360 account to smartthings)]
Then Disable WyzeCam app push notifications
Likewise for not home, enable push notifications, this can be done for each user/family member
If you want to get real sexy… you can then setup a virtual switch that would turn on when you left your house via presence and then smartthings would notify you that it indeed did perform that function and notifications have been restored.
I currently use sense motion sensors in my rooms to monitor lights and other peripheral equipment.
This takes a smartthings hub with the WebCORE addin, IFTTT for the wyze motion sensors and some reading.
If the lights/peripherals(connected to smartthings) are on AND no motion is detected for 15 minutes, wait… turn off, UNLESS motion starts again, then reset.
That is the setup I use and have helped a few people with (Life360, SmartThings, IFTTT) and it seems to be the version with the least steps and is fairly reliable
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Home automation should be exactly that… Automated.
I shouldn’t need to pull my phone from my pocket, touch a switch, talk to a non-sentient being etc.
Sure speaking for automation can be useful at times, which is why I still have HALexa enabled 
.
Things like… got those raw chicken hands and need the lights on? 
.
I dont think I touch very many switches at home… they are icky now… LOL
I digress… the thing that I can’t utilize much is the open/close sensors… those need to be immediate for automation to work. So I buy more expensive sensors that attach locally to smartthings as this makes them work even if the interWEB is down.
I have relegated Wyze open/close sensors to remedial tasks that I do not really need and have to be creative just to use, ie:
Non-smart washer is done… LOL
Snail Mail is here… LOL
Someone opened the cookie jar?.. LOL
Work in progress… have 3 left.
I have only found a use for one, I have it on my garage door as I do not need an immediate response, just something to remind me I forgot to close it, havent been inventive enough to come up with other uses
I am basically doing that but my notifications aren’t being turned off. It may be something I’m doing. I created two pairs of webhooks applets in IFTTT. The first pair turns the camera on or off, the second is supposed to turn the Wyze notifications on and off. The second pair seems to do nothing. When I edit (with gear icon) the first pair in IFTTT, I see the “Receive a web request” as well as the “Turn off device” blocks. When I edit the second pair, I only see the “Receive a web request” block. There’s no block for the Wyze. These two pairs looked pretty identical when I created them. I wonder whether somebody introduced a bug in the block between the times you and I created them. Here’s screen shot. How does it look on your end?
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I don’t understand how to apply what you’re saying.
Are you saying that you don’t want any automation in your house to notify you when something happens and that you don’t want to be able to control any of your automation via the web (e.g., your smart phone)? You can’t really get notified or provide remote control without integrating the switches and technologies with the web. It makes sense not wanting any web-enabled automation. That’s not what this request is about.
Conversely, maybe you’re saying web automation is fine and just saying some things should be controlled as directly as possible. For example, door (switch) and motion sensors should talk directly to the cameras to trigger recordings. But that’s how Wyze sensors seem to work. Using general purpose switches connected to SmartThings for functions like that adds distance (technologies) between the switch and the device and requires a web service IFTTT). It makes sense to integrate switches through SmartThings. That’s not what this request is about.
Could you clarify?
Agreed, and I answered your question, I use IFTTT from smartthings to wyze to accomplish what you are trying to do as it would need to know you are home in order to automate it SO you Do NOT have to open your phone and run an applet… it happens automagically.
As for the rest… I was commenting on your statement that you didn’t know what smartthings would add, so I gave you examples.
Smartthings controls everything in my home. Garage door, door locks, lights, theater equipment, fans, leak sensors, thermostat, curtains, shades, shut off valves, outdoor lighting, cam system. Everything is based on rules, they may be based on presence, temp outside, temp inside, Lux reading(bightness), time of day, which mode my security is in or a combination of any/all of these, none of which require an interaction from me… That is by definition automation.
Automation should not make you do anything. If you have to pull out your phone, log into a website or tell HALexa to do it, you may as well walk to the switch, camera whatever it might be and operate it normally… Same goes with turning off cam notifications or any others when you are home… should just do it when it knows you are home.
As for my IFTTT recipe:
I recreated that today to show you. I deleted it awhile back as I have a dog and want to know what he is doing these days and what he is getting into.
So I’m using the same sort of widgets. Mine gets activated from Webapps, yours from SmartThings. Both appear to be built on the Wyze widget that’s supposed to tell Wyze to turn off push notifications. Mine activates when I’m gone and it appears that yours does too.
Unfortunately, the push notifications that get disabled aren’t the notifications that I need to have disabled. The push notifications seem to only control notifications from the camera part of the app. These are the notifications Wyze had before it added the sensor feature. I don’t need to disable those notifications because, as I’ve said previously, I don’t have my cameras setup to send notifications.
The push notifications I need to have Wyze disable are the notifications that come from the sensor events. In particular, the notifications sent when the Wyze door switch or the Wyze motion sensors trigger. The interface you’re talking about doesn’t seem to have any impact at all on that. I still get those notifications whether or not I disable the push notifications from IFTTT or disable the push notifications in the Wyze app.
Does that make sense? Have you found it to behave otherwise? Are you using Wyze sensors or are you guessing about that?
Thanks
It does make sense, as I stated above, I do not use wyze sensors for anything that really matters as they connect through IFTTT.
So, I guess you are correct, mine works with the cams as that is all i use em for.
I get notified, open the app from work and scroll back to see. Break in… call the cops if they are not already on the way from the alarms, give em the locally stored footage… see them on Cops.
Dog… audio on… get outta there!.. NO cops involved.
Again… nothing important!
IFTTT and any other cloud based integration is unreliable because if the internet goes out… no automation.
All of my automation runs locally (unplug the modem and it still works) with the exception of HALexa, IFTTT (to test only), and certain more complex rules.
Wyze motion sensors are setup to test the lag versus the smartthings connected motion sensors.
Smartthings has a way more robust way of dealing with notifications as well.
Apples to monkeys… not even fruit to fruit.
This is why so many people are asking for integration into real smart home hubs, everything would be way more robust immediately as the hub does the processing, with all those rules and features baked in.
Meaning if the smart hub can see the sensors natively any actions would be controllable via a plethora of rules.
I understand your need/want for this as you do not want to purchase anything else and like your IFTTT/apilio integration and would like wyze to build more into it.
I hope you get the votes, or a developer says, hey that’s easy, I’ll just roll that out in the next update.
P.S. I did vote for it, your up to 5 now.
How about a software modification to the automation’s section of rules that would allow the “or’ing” or “and’ing” of multiple sensors.
For example I have a storage shed that has 3 doors. I would like to be able to turn on a “chime” (see other wish list item) or possibly a light in the house if any one of the contact switches on the doors are opened, or a motion detector senses motion as an inexpensive alerting system.
rvl
These ideas about making the controller more sophisticated are relevant to Wyze, though maybe not this discussion about the IFTTT interface. This discussion started as Wyze was growing into a sensor integration hub. Now that Wyze has introduced smart lightbulbs and plugs, they have really made the device a central point of control.
Sadly, the Wyze app is still mainly a smart camera interface with some crudely hacked in motion and contact sensor functions. Perhaps somebody should start a new discussion thread on what features a smart controller needs to have in order make those new sensors and controls useful.
I dont think we should need to use 3rd party to get this to work. Hopefully the app evolves more and gets more home security focused. This would be a great feature. Especially and night. I always silent my phone at night so any notifications the cameras or sensors give me, i won’t see until the morning. Obviously, this renders the entire system useless at night.