Hi, I apologize if this question has been asked, but I have researched and have yet to find a solid answer.
I currently have two nest cams, one of them is used as a baby monitor. I have an Amazon fire tablet that sits on my nightstand and streams live video and audio continuously of the nursery. There are no tricks or hoops I have to jump through, I open the app on the tablet press the camera I want to view and it streams until I shut it off the next morning after my daughter wakes up. Can the Wyze cam do that and do it well? I don’t want to have to wake up in the middle of the night and fumble around with turning a tablet screen back on because the app closes or the stream ends at a certain point.
Also, it seems like I can view video using the app on both a phone and tablet. With my nest, I am able to log into the website and also view on my laptop or desktop. Is that also possible with a Wyze cam?
I would just stick with the nest cams, but if I can save $72 per year by making an investment into the Wyze cams, I would much prefer to do that. They seem like great cameras that have many of the same features as the nest including two-way audio.
Thank you very much for any guidance, I figured I could get the best help right on the forum rather than all of the misinformation I’ve been seeing on the internet.
I do something similar, so yes.
I’ve had two android tablets mounted to walls in the kitchen and living room for years now and they display my door/driveway 24/7 365 days per year. First it was another brand camera, but for the last year and a half it’s been Wyze cameras. As long as they are streaming, they don’t go to sleep or drop off. It’s as simple as opening the app and clicking the camera I want and it’s done.
Correct, but the original poster can still use the app on her phone tablet or both to view from anywhere using internet, just not on a web browser, but app only. No need to log into a website like the Nest, just open the app as long as you have internet, either WiFi or cell
since you specifically mentioned that you have a fire tablet, which i also have, i will let you know of my experience. I have a Amazon Fire HD 8" and also a Fire HD 10"(not the new new model, the two years ago model). I mainly use the 8" for my 4 v2 camera split screens. No, it is not reliable in displaying 24/7 without the need to “fiddle” with it, in fact for me, a couple dozen or so times a day, the wyze app kicks out back to the home screen for seemingly no reason whatsoever which forces me to have to then click on the camera group again to display the split streams. it is beyond frustrating for me to do this. I’ve had these cameras almost 7 months now and i’ve lived with it until they FINALLY fix issues like this. it’s not just that, but the cameras also failing to connect a bunch, another super annoying thing because hitting the “refresh” icon that pops up many times is useless. you have to find the “back” button to go out of split screen back to the home screen then click the camera group again for the cameras to then “fix” the “can’t connect” issue. if all cameras disconnect, they literally sit there with an icon on the screen and an error message waiting for your human intervention to make them refresh and reload, there is not “automatic refresh” all the time. why does it just sit there showing an error and a refresh button instead of maybe…trying to auto connect… this also happens on my 10" fire HD tablet as well. and yes, there is somebody or multiple people who’ll tell me to go through allll the troubleshooting stuff. been there, done that. i have a linksys 1900ACS router and connect tablet on 5ghz, the cameras all connect to a netgear 2.4ghz access point in my living room between 10-20 feet away. the connections are all good, 80%95%95%92%. uninstall, reinstall apps, cache, latest versions, previous versions, previous firmwares, tablet OS reinstalls, wifi channels, changing wifi channel widths, wireless modes… please support people, spare me.
TLDR: Amazon fire HD tablets, no 24/7 streams without “fiddling” a bunch of times a day having to re-select your camera group, or click refresh on disconnected cams.
It’s not perfect, I doubt anything is, especially wireless, but my 24/7 stream viewing has been very solid with my cameras. Actually before I picked up a second Android tablet, a used Galaxy Tab A 8”, I had an old iPhone 6s mounted to the kitchen wall doing the same thing. My experience has been having to hit the refresh icon or close and reopen the app maybe once every 3 or 4 days if I’m not playing around with stuff. I may find The kitchen Samsung tablet dark and sleeping maybe once every 1 to 2 weeks but the HP in the living room doesn’t do that, different android version I guess. will I think that’s pretty solid for wireless cameras on wall mounted tablets that literally never get turned off or used for anything else but camera monitors. Wired cameras I wouldn’t expect to drop at all, but WiFi is bound to have a glitch here and there.
my 8" amazon fire is my main streamer, but occasionally I toy with my iphone 7+ to view and the stream is far superior to either of my tablets. the iphone shows all 4 cam streams with the time very close to actual ntp (time) too. i’ve talked to other people with fire HD tablets with similar issues as me. I believe part of it may be the “cheap tablet” answer coupled with the butchered to all hell amazon Fire OS that they put on it. and the butchered android they put on them are several years old (lollipop and nougat iirc). I have both of my tablets rooted and debloated of nearly all amazon stuff to save memory and cpu usage, but still, the streams run as i mentioned above.
That makes sense. My wife has a new 8” fire tablet and I haven’t tried Wyze on it. Our IPhones are much better at viewing the live stream then the android tablets. I don’t have more than one to one and a half seconds lag on the tablets, but the very old HP tablet is running an old Wyze app that still has hardware acceleration in order to not have lag. Virtually Zero lag on the iPhone and never skips a second here and there like the tablets do.
if you get a chance, try wyze on that fire tablet. i’m not sure what app store amazon has or if it’s on there because I went through the hoops to put the google play store on my tablets, which is a bunch of “hacking” to do that.
I don’t have a lag on my Android tablet or phone, before or after Wyze app removed its hardware acceleration. What I’ve seen here is that the Android tablets that exhibit lag, are usually at the low-end. It’s a bit unfair to compare cheap, low-end Androids with the more expensive iPhones.
Oh absolutely, There’s a big difference between tablets and there are many low end ones out there. But it’s good for people to realize that just because the app will install and run on some bad tablets, it doesn’t mean it will run well.
I’ll give it a try. I already have the Google Play store on it. That was the first thing I did when I got it for her.
Alphabets, I would give Wyze a try and see if it fit’s your needs. It can always be returned if it doesn’t do what you need and worse case scenario, it’s only $19.95 and you have another camera for somewhere else.
That’s a good point. I really like the idea of Wyze and it seems to have great reviews. I just need ti it to a couple of these specific things and it would be perfect for me. I’ll probably just have to test it out as you suggested.
oh wow, big update this afternoon, although still testing. i was reading this thread from a few months back about when they removed hardware acceleration from the app, and decided to re-download an old APK to check it on my fire HD 8. Restore hardware acceleration on android - #48 by gemniii
in the thread i saw a link to the Release notes & firmware and mention of a previous version’s download being restored. https://support.wyzecam.com/hc/en-us/articles/360024852172
click that, scroll down and you’ll see v2.4.82 where you can click that and download that version. you can download it directly onto your tablet via a browser. Uninstall whatever “new” playstore version you have before installing the v2.4.82 . after install and logging back in, goto Account, then App Settings, Camera, enable hardware decoder.
As soon as i did that and clicked on my 4 cam split screen group, WOW. all four of my camera’s timers are damn near in sync with each other. if one lags for a moment it quickly catches back up. i can’t believe all four times are nearly in sync. not only that but they are nearly all within 1-3 seconds of NTP(time). wow.
and secondly, probably because i’m on the latest BAD firmware release that got pulled yesterday, when the cameras disconnect they AUTOMATICALLY RECONNECT WITHIN A COUPLE SECONDS! INCREDIBLE!!! it pops up saying a cam disconnected but very very quickly auto reconnects! authentication 1/3 2/3 3/3 BOOM! shows the stream again. why on earth has the auto reconnect been removed from the app!??? that is a big part of my recent rants/complaints about having to keep going back out to home page and reload the group so much to get them to authenticate again.
so try out your amazon fire tablet on the new version from playstore, then try the old v2.4.82 APK with hardware decoding on.
Yeah, I run v2.4.82 on my 9 year old HP Touchpad and it works fine. When I do try the Wyze app on my wifes Fire tablet, I’ll try the current app first and if that doesn’t work I could always use v2.4.82. I’d only be doing it as a test anyway, she wouldn’t actually use the app on that tablet.
oh boy, you just reminded me that I also have an old old old HP touchpad that i completely forgot about until this moment. I need to pull it out of my closet somewhere. I remember way back 2009-2010 getting it for like $30 or something, and putting CyanogenMod on it. going to dig that out tonight and see if it’ll turn on after charging. look like the XDA devs have android 9 on it too a year ago.
That’s basically what I did, though it was on the $99 dollar sale direct from HP when the released it and cancelled it right after. I also did the CyanogenMod right after buying it.
Right now it’s running a Dirty Unicorns Android 8 version from XDA developers. I haven’t tried the current Wyze app on it which supposedly improved the lag after the Hardware acceleration removal, but it’s working fine and has been mounted to my living room wall for years displaying a camera feed. Been using it for that since before Wyze cameras existed and I had other cameras
You don’t need the WYZE app to view your cameras.
There is an Android app that allows you to see all your cameras at once. It works for 100’s of cameras including WYZE.
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