Just to update this Wishlist, I pushed Wyze REALLY hard for Home Assistant Integration during the last AMA. It was the second most voted-on question in the AMA but despite my strong hardball question, I’m afraid the news is not very positive:
They said in a separate post that they intend for the “Year of the Camera” to continue into 2024 and that next year will have a huge focus on AI:
I don’t disagree with most of what was said above. I agree that AI is going to play a major part in the smart home in the coming years. However, you can have the absolute BEST AI in the world, but if it is 100% cloud-dependent, can’t be used with other devices (no integration with things like Home Assistant) and can only use your ecosystem, but your ecosystem is no longer expanding the smart home, just camera expansion, then it won’t matter if you have the best AI in the world if it lacks any of the other stuff critical for a really good smart home.
I still look forward to what Wyze does with their “AI 2.0,” and more, but I think they will come to regret not fully supporting Home Assistant sooner and not building out their smart home ecosystem more. There are only so many cameras a person needs, but people will always need general smart home expansion. An AI that is basically just limited to cameras will be hobbled when it comes to people’s smart home automation needs. I suspect that it will get to the point where they’ll have to add Home Assistant support if they really want to compete to “win the smart home.”
Time will tell. They said they are “happy to look into more” so you never know…Anyway, just wanted to update people that I did ask about Home Assistant in the latest AMA, and did as great a job as I could in the question to point out why they should change their stance. I don’t think it will happen any time soon still. Thought some of you following this thread would appreciate an update on the latest info though.
@carverofchoice thanks for the feedback on the AMA. It was smarmy of WyzeDC to try to undercut Wyze competitive Home Assistant integrations as
A true statement on the surface, but we all know what you intended. I’m very happy with my Amcrest/Dahua, Reolink, Yi, Ubiquiti integrations where I can take meaningful action based on device feedback.
As you say:
When I setup my first WyzeCam V1 in early 2018 it was for occasional monitoring (cars in the driveway?, garage door close? who’s at the door?, etc.) Now it’s all about the “automatons”. One product-line ecosystem will never be adequate, but one automation integration system is mandatory.
[e.g. Reolink camera detects a car entering the driveway after sunset, turns on exterior lights. No internet connection required.] I have a dog’s breakfast of IoT devices all “unified” by Hme Assistant.
I didn’t even mention Frigate, as if I want to wait for Wyze AI improvements.
I understand most Wyze customers want a low cost, easy to integrate mono-culture environment but even those customers seem to be frustrated by heavy handed subscription lock-ins. Alienating your leading-edge customers and alienating your target customers doesn’t leave you with too my satisfied customers.
[Full disclosure: I just purchased 2 Wyze CAM OGs to provide eyes into hard to access utility spaces. No automatons required. No event videos required. No subscription. Everything in its place]
Has anyone in here successfully paired Wyze Contact sensors to any other 915mHz bridge or Hub through Home Assistant, other than the old v1 Camera Bridge?
I know people have had success taking the old v1 camera bridge and plugging that into Home Assistant instead of a Wyze camera and successfully paired Wyze sensors locally to Home Assistant that way. I am wondering if anyone has ever done that with any other RF bridge/hub, especially one that has better reception coverage.
I have a couple of dozen V1 sensors that I can’t use on Wyze anymore (neither the hub nor the Bridge will complete pairing, even though they aren’t “bricked” or “brown-out” lock-up state status…though I do also have a few v1’s that did get locked up and lose their MAC address too), and I have a dozen or 2 contact sensor v2’s that I’d like to transition to local functionality on Home Assistant instead of cloud dependency through Wyze. I was hoping some other people in this thread had found some good alternatives for doing this with a better 915mHz RF capable bridge.
I love Wyze sensors (the cost, size, battery life, etc), but I’m just ready to transition a bunch of them to local control and Home Assistant use now (Will still keep some critical V2’s monitored on Wyze’s HMS), so I’m hoping to solicit some input from anyone else who may have done this or knows a good option to do this with. Thanks.
