@dave27 is correct in assuming that you can run Wyze Bridge on a Mac, but not natively. You can run it in a Docker.
âŚand now for my dumb question⌠Whatâs a Docker?
I have worked in IT most of my adult life. I have had up to 10 cameras, my thermostat, almost every light in my house all but the cameras singing in harmony⌠the cameras donât wanna play nice in the sandbox with the other devices. I can say, âSiri, watch NCISâ she turns on the Apple TV, tunes to Paramount Plus, dims lights from multiple manufacturers, sets the temperature to one we selected as comfortable to sit and watch our evening TV. If we get up in the middle of the night, the motion sensor in my Thermostat sees us walk out of the bedroom and turns on the living room light to a preset brightness. When we go out, I tell Siri âWe are heading outâ and she turns on the selected lights for our security setup, adjusts the temperature so we donât waste power. And when we come home, âSiri, weâre homeâ sets everything back to our at home settings. Same when we go to bed, âSiri, good nightâ, when we wake up, âSiri, good morningâ and this is only if we do not go to bed or wake up at our regularly scheduled times, cus if we do it all happens automatically. The nite lights turn on at Sunset, and back off at Sunrise.
So, I am not ignorant as to how to make the most of a smart home.
But, all these terms in reference to making these cameras compatible with everything else I have working in my house are like a foreign language to me (and likely many others in here).
So, please help me and any others who are otherwise technically functional, understand these BRIDGES and DOCKERS that we have to play McGuiver to configure a system that will allow the cameras to do the very things that every thing else in our house can do without any special rigging?
Or, for crying out loud, simply make the cameras work with our Apple Home Kit?!?!? PLEASE?
We are not a niche group out here, there are MILLIONS of us, and we would likely buy and use more of your products if they worked like the other devices do. I could buy a bunch of Logitech Circle View cameras, which are seamless, but they are expensive, and I have already made some hearty investments in WYZE cameras, and I like them A LOT.
Rant over⌠please start thinking bout this for us, PLEASE?
Simply said it is a software that allows you to run different containers that are isolated from the main OS. Here is the official URL
For the rest of your runt, unfortunately Wyze doesnât officially support Appleâs Home Kit (wish it did, Apple user since 1987) but then the Wyze devices would be as expensive as Logitech Circle View cameras. Apple has some hefty licensing fees and I think that is the main reason Wyze is not supporting Home Kit.
Hence Wyze Bridge and Docker and the McGuiver style of integrating Wyze in the smart home arena.
But, there is a big but here. Wyze has done some amazing things with their own smart home ecosystem. Unfortunately it doesnât play well with other ecosystems.
In the end, you get what you pay for. As for learning how to do the other stuff and McGyver Wyze cameras with the rest of your stuff, Google and Chat GPT (or equivalent) are your friends. They helped me develop and deploy a site to site VPN between my home and cottage without a single line of coding or additional hardware/software expense.
Hope this helps and hope it doesnât discourage you from trying.
Thanks for the great response!
Thereâs a lot of helpful info in there, and I appreciate it.
One of the things I find incredibly valuable, is the integration with the Apple TV. I do have one Logitech Circle View, itâs my doorbell. (I also have the WYZE Doorbell Camera, and it is the one on my main front door). Whenever the LOGI sees motion it pops up a PiP in a window right on the TV screen in the corner of whatever I am watching. This is just one of the great values of Apple Integration.
I am a tinkerer, and from the description of my Smart Home above, I am sure you can see that. I spent hours writing ShortCuts in HomeKit to automate my entire environment. SO, I suppose I will take on the challenge of learning about Containers, Dockers, container applications, Bridges and whatever the heck is required to patch around the incompatibility. Could be a fun challenge.
Thanks again!
Itâs more like isolating applications (each in their own container) from affecting other applications.
Which part of IT? Development? Testing? Networking? And which segment? Mainframes? PCs? Embedded? If you have followed IT news in the last 3 years or so, you should have encountered the term, âDockerâ. In simple terms, think of it as copying all the executables it needs, into a separate folder that other applications canât touch/modify/uninstall.
Docker/Wyze Bridge is a bridge in the sense that it bridges the path of the video from the camera to the PC. Itâs because Wyze steadfastly refuses to release a PC client.
Most of my time in IT had to do with controls involving solar systems. And since Iâve been mostly in the Apple world, I donât deal with PCs at all. In fact the new Apple processors allow iOS apps to operate on the Mac, so I can use the iPhone app on my Mac, itâs a little bit clunky since it hasnât been Verified for Mac, but for the most part it works.
I think your mixing bits and bytes. The camera display will show kilobytes per second, the network bandwidth is megabits per second, they work out to the same thing. If you look on the cam SD card, the files are around 10 megabytes per minute.
That works out to an average 166 kilobytes per second or 1.3 megabits per second. The stream fluctuates a lot depending on motion and lighting, so it will be above or below that at times, but the average seems to be targeted at right around 1 megabit per second / 125 kilobytes per second. Iâm guessing thatâs not unintentional on Wyzeâs part.
Iâm using the term, PC, as a general term to refer to personal computers, that to me at least, includes macs.
To oversimplify a bit -
You need something to consume the camera stream and output it to something useful to you - thatâs what Wyze Bridge, Tiny Cam, and a couple others can do for you. Theyâre simply there to emulate a user watching the video but instead of showing on your phone screen adapt it to something else.
Docker is sort of like a virtual PC, a self contained software environment that makes it a bit easier to run linux based programs, it will have all the dependencies and necessary components integrated into the build (where normally with linux you have to install and maintain those things separately).
Iâd say think of Docker as a lightweight OS that will run on many NAS or other appliances or even PCs and MACs (that isnât really what it is, but close enough) and Wyze Bridge as a piece of software that runs on that OS. Wyze Bridge is what youâre actually using to stream the cameras, Docker is just one way of running Wyze Bridge if you donât want to set up a linux box that runs all day.
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10,000,000á60 is 167K isnât it?
Approximately (depending whether youâre using 1024 for Kibi or 1000 for Kilo). My point is the stream bandwidth is about 1 megabit which is around 125 kilobytes (will go higher and lower with motion and complexity). The files on my SD card tend to range from 8 to 12 megabytes per minute, or around 10 on average, and the stream will be the same.
Has anyone answered why canât we download what is on the SD card directly from the camera without taking the SD card out and plugging into ba computer. Also without re-recording the video already recorded in the SD card. This should be an option.
I think this is verbiage situationâŚ
Subscribers can download âEventsâ which are cloud-based. âCloud Clipsâ still suggests our Continuous Recordings are in the cloud. Which is what was confusing this.
The new user always asks about âEventsâ/Thumbnails vs. Local Recording when they donât have a subscription, and gets âEventâ videos conflated with their SD Card recordings.
In this case, a Subscription is needed to see/download âEventsâ. Iâm aware of the sub-caveats to that statement. That is because the Events are in the cloud.
A Subscription is NOT needed to view your SD Cards or to record a clip from your SD Cards. Your continuous recording is NOT in the cloud.
And as others have mentioned, there is no way to dump a timeframe of video from the SD cards other than to pull the physical SD Card out of the camera and do it manually.
Probably because the functionality is already there using ârecordâ and for most purposes this is sufficient. There are security concerns with allowing direct access to the card over the network, and it would obviously require significant programming and development. Would definitely be a nice feature to have, and you can check the wishlist forum to see if there is an active request for it (and if not, start one), but their focus seems to be more on new devices and subscriber features and not so much on SD card stuff.
I agree, itâs a hassle to remove the SD card. We should be able to download videos directly to our phone or computer. Screen recording isnât a good fix. This needs improvement.
Welcome to the Forum, @kynthar7! 
Note this previous post with links to topics where you can vote for these requests:
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The main reason for this suggestion is to voice a shared need for more convenienceâmany of us want the ability to download SD content directly from the camera without having to physically remove the card or re-record footage. Climbing up to access the camera or losing valuable content due to re-recording just isnât practical. We know itâs not currently possible, and we donât need to keep repeating that. Letâs push for change and make this feature a reality!
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Not disagreeing at all, it would be a useful feature, and definitely give it a vote in the wishlist. Just also relaying that from what Iâve observed over the last year, they seem to be focused on other things.
Though one thing people have wanted for a long time is RTSP and that seems to be gaining traction. Not sure if it will be for subscribers only or not. But that would theoretically allow you to have a central NAS/hard drive pulling all the video into one central accessible place.
understanding the difference between a cloud recording and a SD recording, I believe the request is to be able to download the entire contents of a card, rather than short clips. Doing a live recording as it plays back could take forever.
at this time many of us are trying to catch the celestial event of the Comet passing by, and trying to review eight hours of darkness, on five different cameras overnight would take 40 hours each day, and as we know thereâs only 24. Since we canât scrub through it, and a shooting star is normally not enough to trigger an event, it is very difficult to find one in all of that footage. Once the full video files are downloaded from the card, other programs can be used to scrub through faster and locate the one to two second event that may happen several times overnight on several camera cameras.
Yes itâs nice to be able to record the clip where viewing from the SD card, but I think what the request is looking for is the ability to download the contents of a card without having to climb a ladder and get the card out of the camera.
I addressed this at the end of my post. This has been asked about dozens of times. I completely understand what you are trying to do and I agree a feature should exist to pull long segments of recordings.
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