Apparently, having Detection Zone enabled now requires the camera to remain stationary. Therefore it is no longer allowing Motion Tracking to be enabled at the same time. I had mine set up this way for years but this change must have happened some months ago. I’m seeing many posts here about it too. But, i am only just now getting around to looking into this. The online manual still implies that Detection Zone and Motion Tracking work together and I don’t see anything at all in any of the release notes regarding a change to this.
I have attempted contacting support but they have adopted AI to handle submissions whether in support chat or emailing a help ticket. The AI has both confirmed that Tracking and Detection Zone ‘should’ and also ‘should not’ work together. So, as expected, the AI is useless but appears to be my only option to get support. (I have also noticed that many people in the forums are confusing “Pan Scan” with “Motion Tracking” or “Pan” and “Track”. This inquiry has nothing at all whatsoever to do with “Pan Scan”)
How can we truly reach WYZE and make them aware of this issue that is most likely a mistake? Here are some screenshots from the online manual and from my phone.
Detection zone never worked with motion tracking. Because so many people were confused by that and wondering why DZ wasn’t working, calling support, etc they added a limitation to the app to prevent them from being enabled at the same time. This happened a couple months ago. You can downgrade to an older app but it won’t actually do anything, since enabling motion tracking always disabled the DZ, it just didn’t look like it.
The main “feature” that was lost was the ability to use DZ to force the camera to return to a specific position after moving it manually, which is something I liked having but I realized that I never actually forgot to tap the “home” waypoint after moving it, so turns out it hasn’t actually been an issue for me.
Technically it did return to the home position and reinstate the detection zone, but because DZ does not affect motion tracking, it would track motion outside the DZ, thus disabling the DZ and logging an event, so it was basically useless.
DZ was quite literally working with tracking. I’ve had this camera for two years with tracking and DZ both enabled and working splendidly together up until around spring this year.
The Detection Zone on my front porch was only a sliver so as to only react to anything happening near my front door only; and not everything else happening in the yard or street. The camera would follow anything that entered that sliver of a DZ. Usually delivery people or neighbors that approached my front door.
Yes stationary, I’ve included a screenshot from the WYZE app that’s literally using that word.
I’m aware of manually panning. But, as stated in my post, i’m not talking about the pan feature.
Motion Tracking + Detection Zone
These used to work when they’re both enabled. Now they’re not.
I never used detection zones on my cam pan V3s. It doesn’t make sense to me. If all you need the detection zone for is for the camera to return to a set point after tracking, leave it at that point; the camera returns to where it was before it started tracking.
I usually leave the camera at one of its waypoints, usually waypoint #1.
And yes, it still tracks, without a set detection zone. All it requires is for some movement in its field of view.
The DZ never affected motion tracking, if anything anywhere in the field of view moved, it would track it and thus disable the DZ since it was no longer in its “home” position. In your setup, maybe it seemed like it was having an impact, but I did a lot of trial and error trying to get it to not track stuff outside of the DZ before realizing, DZ and tracking have nothing to do with each other.
I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe it didn’t work for you. But it was most certainly working for me. “Splendidly” as I said. There’s animals running around, kids playing and cars passing by and it only motion tracked what crossed into the DZ.
Don’t know either, I even went as far as greying out all but one block right near the cam and it still tracked cars going by 50 feet away, and triggered an event. Many others here with the same experience/complaint.
What exactly do you need the DZ for? To track objects? I do that with my cameras since the day these cameras were first released, without the need for DZ.
The DZ is to prevent alerts for stuff you don’t care about. The hope was that it also prevented the camera from tracking objects outside of the zone, but my and many others’ experience is that DZ does not have any impact on motion tracking.
You used to be able to have DZ enabled along with “track motion”. They now block that. I believe that’s what the complaint is. For me it made no difference other than making sure to remember to tap my “home” waypoint after moving the camera, but I pretty much always remembered to do that anyway.
Too bad that Wyze decided that disabling a useful feature was the best way to ignore a problem and move on to announcing newer (and often useless) “features.” Of course, that decision shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been a Wyze customer very long.
This seems to be the Wyze approach… there isn’t time to fix anything because they are too busy creating new things that don’t quite work either.
Motion Tracking and Detection Zone ought to work together exactly as described in the manual that @EonNova quoted. There is no good reason why that should be confusing to either Wyze customers or Wyze software engineers. Only motion within the detection zone should trigger motion tracking, when triggered the camera should track the motion until the motion stops or moves beyond the area the camera covers; once motion stops or moves out of coverage, the camera returns to its original position. It’s not complicated.
I guess this post proves I was wrong in assuming that there is nothing about Detection Zone or Motion Tracking that ought to confuse Wyze customers. Here we have proof that some customers are incapable to comprehending what a Detection Zone is.
If you look back to the history of DZ (Wyze didn’t have DZ before), it was meant originally to limit movement detection to a zone; it was well before the release of the V3 and pan V3. It wasn’t even remotely related to motion tracking.
It still isn’t – or shouldn’t be – that’s the problem. Wyze has blocked the combination, apparently due to confusion among incompetent customers who can’t understand what each function does and why they should not be mutually exclusive.
It is an improvement that is needed (I’d like to see them add a motion tracking zone to limit how far it goes and also have DZ affect whether it starts tracking or not) but I’m guessing at this point, it may be something we see on a Panv4 or something like that. Actually I wonder if it has improved any on the new Duo Pan.
It is an improvement that is needed (I’d like to see them add a motion tracking zone to limit how far it goes and also have DZ affect whether it starts tracking or not) but I’m guessing at this point, it may be something we see on a Panv4 or something like that. Actually I wonder if it has improved any on the new Duo Pan.
If we ever see it, I expect it only if they figure out some new subscription to charge extra for it.
