Also see: GitHub - gtxaspec/wz_mini_hacks: wz camera mods… make your camera better. and GitHub - ksarfodev/wyze-ftp: Solution for downloading media from Wyze cameras via FTP
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I’ll give it a look.
Thanks,
Gerry
I guess it’s good to keep the thread alive. Wyze needs to understand why they will lose business. Soon, we will sell an inherited house and the two cameras in it will never be used again. Then, later this summer we will sell the house that we live in and find a new home. The three cameras and other Wyze devices will never be used again. We will buy a new property and install a completely new security system without Wyze products.
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I can’t believe this is not a feature! WYZE?! are you listening?! I need footage from one of my cameras, and now I’ve got to get my 24’ ladder to get it! UNBELIEVABLE!!!
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I think it’s important to understand that although we bought the camera, we do not have access to the camera feed or the SD card. Wyze has access and uses our bandwidth to send all the videos that are recorded to their servers. Even when you view live view, you are not connecting to the camera. You connect to the Wyze server and they relay the feed.
If the Wyze server goes down, our cameras are paper weights. We are told we can not have direct access to the camera for security reasons? That is pure hogwash! As the recent poll indicated, the majority of cameras are not in locations that are a privacy concern and if someone has access to your wireless network you have bigger problems than them looking at your backyard.
When you buy a Wyze camera, you buy access for Wyze to your wireless network and camera feeds and SD storage card, so they can sell you the output of “your” camera.
The camera is pretty much useless without buying a Cam Plus subscription, and you can not even monitor it on your computer because they block that out to help sell you on the subscription.
The suggestion to climb a ladder and remove the card if you need direct access to “your” SD card is just insulting! Do they really think that is a viable option? No they don’t but neither do they care, giving us access to our camera and storage card is not going to happen because they are holding them hostage, and we pay the ransom to get dribbles of access they decide to sell us.
I am insulted and feel like a fool for buying these cameras and not investigating enough to know ahead of time what I was buying into. It will not happen again.
Live and learn I guess.
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Last time you’ll need to climb a ladder to access the SD card: GitHub - gtxaspec/wz_mini_hacks: wz camera mods... make your camera better.
Hi Dave,
Can you give me a quick installation guide? I see it requires a 256 MB card, I would need to get one as mine are 128MB.
Thanks, Gerry
Sorry, I don’t need an installation guide, I just needed to do more reading 
Is the 256 MB a hard requirement?
as a fellow oldster, I’ll just say, any integer GB will fine. I’m sure you have plenty in your junk drawer.
Thanks, I’ll give it a go.
You can use an SD card without a cam subscription to view footage from notifications. PoE cameras give you local control so you may want to try that. I got the Reolink Video Doorbell which is made by a PoE camera company, it gives you local control so even if the internet is down it will still work and you can even connect to it via cellular without an account.
Just to clarify for anyone else who also misunderstands this, this is not the case, and not how it works. When you view the live stream or SD card video playback, you do a direct p2p connection between your phone and the camera with nothing relaying the video. The video stream does not go through the Wyze servers. If it did, they’d likely be bankrupt by now or have to do like Ring and change a subscription for anyone to even view their own Livestream (which is ridiculous IMO).
The most that goes through the Wyze servers as related to the live stream is an authentication handshake for security purposes. Your phone first needs to prove to the Wyze servers that it is authorized to view the video. If it proves it is authorized, then the Wyze server tells the camera is okay to stream to you DIRECTLY. At that point, everything is 100% direct P2P. If your camera is on the same network as the camera, then the camera feed never even touches the Internet. If the Internet or Wyze servers go down while you’re in the middle of live streaming the video, you’ll continue to live stream just fine because none of it is using the Wyze servers anymore. People have demonstrated this in the past, repeatedly that their Livestream continued even during outages or even when they disconnected their internet, as long as the initial authentication was previously approved (there are exceptions for Google/Alexa sometimes since even though they are local with WebRTC, they require Internet for themselves or they will purposely disconnect everything; and the WebView option also apparently relays video through AWS… But streaming through the app/phone is 100% direct/local after authentication).
The only time you need the Wyze servers is when you need to authenticate that the device you want to use to view the Livestream with is authorized to do so. If you’re not already streaming, and there is an outage, then of course it can’t authenticate with something that isn’t working at the moment, but that doesn’t mean it’s relaying the stream, it’s not. The stream is direct P2P and not going through Wyze at all.
The same process takes place with viewing the SD card playback. Wyze never accesses that. Your phone authenticates that it’s secure and allowed to access it, and once you prove that you are you, you connect directly to the SD card through the camera. It’s not being relayed by anyone. If you are on the same network, the connection remains 100% local and doesn’t use the internet.
You can choose to pay to upload cloud video events to Wyze’s AI to analyze and store it for you, but that it the only kind of video that can be relayed from Wyze servers to your phone. Though to be more accurate, those cloud videos are stored on AWS (Amazon) and being relayed from Amazon to your phone… Though, through a secure stream.
So, in summary: To clarify, Wyze does not access or relay your live stream to your phone nor SD card playback to your phone through their servers or AWS. That is direct P2P and stays 100% local if you’re on the same network. If you intentionally pay to store Cam Plus cloud events, then those are stored and relayed through Wyze servers.
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Thanks for the clarification. When I said live view, I should have said web view. It will not function without a live internet connection. When my internet goes down, web view quits functioning.
I think in the end the result is the same if the Wyze servers are down we can not access our cameras.
If you are already logged in, your feed will continue until you refresh and need to log in again, and then we will have no access.
My problem as you already know is I want to mount the SD card as a network drive, so I have the ability to download the videos for archive. The only way to do that with the official Wyze app is to climb a ladder and remove the card, which is of course not a solution.
These cameras are the only thing on my network I do not have access to. I can SSH into my router or my NAS, and any other device is accessible in some way.
It is my camera connected to my network, I should not need to climb a tree or a ladder to access the SD card.
Again, thanks for your clarification on the live view.
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I agree that it is frustrating that we can’t access the SD card through the network as a harddrive. I have been advocating for this for a long time too and will continue to do so. 
You can see one of my recent posts in here about how sad I was when I learned that this actually used to be possible, and then everyone complained about it, so Wyze “fixed” it to remove the capability.
I wish they would purposely make this available again. As far as I am concerned, as long as it is on my secure network, it should be fine. I don’t give network access to just any random. It would be nice if it was at least made an option we could turn on or off, so that those who want it can have it, and those who don’t, aren’t forced to have it.
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“As far as I am concerned, as long as it is on my secure network, it should be fine.”
I think it would be easy to allow this with a disclaimer required indicating we accept the security risk to access it. It seems to me to be an excuse to limit our access to our security videos. I think we should also have access to the video feeds without Wyze verification required. If it is on my network, it is my responsibility to secure it. I think the cloud as in Wyze is a much more high value hacking target than I am, and I see every day another hack of some cloud infrastructure allowing access to thousands of people’s personal data.
It seems Wyze is determined to ignore this, though. Too bad, other than that one issue I am pretty happy.
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I’m absolutely stunned that something so obvious has not already been resolved.
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I’m sure it would take no time at all since they already pull in videos from the timeline playback. They only need to put code there to stream the data to a device file instead and a button to download it. Maybe a tiny bit more like OS permissions or a download all button, etc. Should be done in a minutes to a few hours depending.
But, stunned no. Wyze has an issue of generating enough income from low cost devices. Its a bit of a chicken and egg problem for money and what they spend money on. People seem to want them to spend money on everything but they need to spend money on increasing sub counts because of the low product cost that isn’t enough to work on things this way. They have to continuously pay people.
Why not implement a single protocol that handles both live streaming AND stored file playback. The “BitTorrent Streaming” open protocol was created specifically for this purpose.
Here’s the protocol overview: Need: A new BitTorrent protocol... - Anthony Charles Olsen
This is a great idea! If I were wyze, I would paywall this feature. I think the cameras are sold loss leader style.
Charge $20 to unlock root, or similar. After that $20 is spent. Add a disclaimer /agreement that Wyze is not responsible for access to the camera with that method.
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I don’t care if this feature costs extra per month or is included in home protect or cam plus but it needs to be included. This is ridiculous.
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