Extend duration of livestream via Alexa to more than 10 minutes

Wishlist Maybe Later
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I found this note on the “How do I use my Wyze Cam with Amazon Alexa?” page:

  • The camera’s livestream will be displayed on your Amazon device for 10 minutes before it automatically stops. To continue streaming, repeat the voice command.
Request you extend that duration. Indefinitely is what I would prefer, but could live it being 24 hours.

 

Related notes / questions:

  • Does the data go to the cloud and back, or stay within my network? (The answer to this question could impact my desire to have it running 24 hours/day :-) )
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This topic has been moved to #roadmap. Please be sure to vote for it by clicking the VOTE button at the top.

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I recently got an Alexa and two V2’s just to work as baby monitors and apart from some problems yesterday with connecting to the cameras I haven’t had an issue but it seems like Alexa will time out the camera stream. The camera will stay on the show’s screen for 5 minutes or so and then it’ll go back to running the home screen. I checked for settings in both the Alexa and Wyze app but don’t see anything about continuing a live stream. Is there any solution to this problem other than asking Alexa to show me the camera every five minutes?

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4

So the integration with Amazon Alexa is interesting (in spite of the connection issues). But what is the reason for the ten minute limit? I can’t make sense of that.

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5

Good question I would like to know also

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Does anybody from Wyzecam monitor these forums? Why do I have to keep reconnecting my Fire tablet every ten minutes? It greatly reduces the advantage of having Alexa integration, imo.

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I would love to figure out how to turn off the 10 min limit. I’m trying to use a WYZE cam and an Echo Spot as a baby monitor

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8

As would we all. But a better option for you might be the app called “TinyCam Pro”. It’s $3.99, and runs on Android, Amazon tablets, Fire TV, and probably iOS.

It has a baby monitor mode that lets you watch without sound, until a threshold is reached, at which point sound is turned on. You set the threshold yourself. So you can run it at night and not wake up unless your baby cries, for example.

Search YouTube for set up instructions.

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The bulk of the data stays within your local network.

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It is my understanding that this is an inherent limitation of the Alexa API.

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11

When Google Assistant gets integrated, will there be a time limit as well?

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My understanding is this uses too many resources on wyze servers to go indefinitely and it would cost them too much money.

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Maybe Amazon wants users to use these for Alexa, rather than solely as “dumb monitors”.

I wonder how well the cameras could additionally handle 24/7 output to your own network?

When 5G arrives, I envision that we will be telling our Alexa-enabled Texas-size TVs to change the display to show all our Wyze live feeds.

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We bought the Alexa show and Wyze cam combo for specifically for monitoring the front door but this time out issue is a problem. I have the Wyze app on my iPhone and I can the live stream indefinitely so the timeout issue must be a Alexa problem!? We need a fix for this. Thanks.

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It’s not an issue, Alexa streaming requires increased load on wyze’s servers and that means it costs them more money. That’s why they purposely set the limit on live viewing.

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Sorry, don’t agree with you. When you say, “That is why they purposely set a time limit on live viewing.” I assume you mean WYZE, but that is not accurate as I mentioned, I can stream continuously, no time outs using an iphone or my Samsung tablet. It is only the Alexa Show that times out. I would be interested to hear from a network expert and have them explain how much traffic goes to WYZE or Amazon as opposed to staying within my own private WiFi. I am sure that the viewing device plays part in all of this, the live stream on my iphone is real time but the Samsung tablet stream is delayed by approx. 15 seconds.

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As stated in the rtsp roadmap topic,

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So, if I understand you correctly, Alexa Show acquires the video stream differently than my iphone or Samsung? This is an important issue for us as we need continuous live stream of our front door as we have many health professionals coming to our door throughout the day, so I need to find a solution that will work.

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Correct, it is a different type of stream.

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I’ve used my fire tab 8 from 2017 works great/all the time as a baby monitor. I added a new fire 8 with the alexa enabled dock and this is the one that times out.

I just enabled developer options on my Fire 8 and set display to always on. Being this tablet is used as a baby monitor and is almost always in the Amazon docking station we’ll see.

There must be work arounds for this.