Still listed as “maybe-later”. 
This seems the proper if neglected thread for all the MANY recent clamorings for local control after two successive and prolonged Amazon AWS outages and cleanup periods.
Just noticed that TP-Link seems to be doing it mostly right already:
See also interesting digging at:
All my camera’s and doorbell after resetting are now working but my thermostat will no longer connect. Reset multiple times along with no help from Wyze Support. I had to re-install my old thermostat so I could heat my house during winter. Almost a week later decided to re-install yesterday to see if it would finally fully connect and set up. No luck. I have owned many thermostats. Horrible design that the thermostat will not work without initial set up connection with the phone app. Leave people in the position of not being able to use their thermostat even manually until you all get this connection issue figured out. I am pretty much ready to move on to another reputable company.
This should be a higher priority. With the recent AWS outage, it took over 24 hours for some of my bulbs to come back online. Had I known the bulbs require the internet to work, I would not have bought any and will not buy any more until I see this feature. Local control on the same network should not be hard to implement at least for basic on/off features from the app.
Wyze Ecosystem Local Control
I have around 15 Wyze Switches in my home and all but 2 are setup for ‘Smart Control’ of Wyze Bulbs. We lost our Internet connection and only the 2 switches setup for ‘Classic Control’ (regular light bulbs) continued to work without an Internet connection. Not being able to turn on or off your lights is a quick way to make Wyze a bad word to the non-techies in the home! Can you please add local control!?
Control Outlets or Switches when Internet is down
I have a router separate from my internet modem. When the modem stops working and I want to reboot it I have to and physically unplug it. I added a WYSE outlet, but without an internet connection I can’t power cycle it. I tried a different outlet by TPLink/Kasa and without the internet I can power cycle that outlet. So that tells me it is possible to be able to do this from just the app on your home network where the device is connected but without internet.
It would be a great feature to add the ability via the app to do basic on and off with WYSE devices if there is not internet connection, but you are on the same network as the device.
Thanks,
Ken
[Mod Note]: Your request was merged to this topic for consistency in grouping similar requests. Please remember to scroll up to the top and click the VOTE button. You may also wish to comment on and/or vote for Ability to use app WITHOUT internet.
Local Authentication or Trusted device
It is my understanding that currently all authentication runs through the wyze app and/or servers. I would like there be a way to have at least 1 device authorized locally. The reason being that a storm can and has knocked out our ISP for days despite us having LAN which leaves us unable to connect to any of our WYZE products if we don’t have cellular Wi-Fi. Imagine being disabled (as I am) and having the remote deadbolt lock, but being unable to unlock it for assistance to get to you. A local trusted device on the same LAN perhaps authenticated by MAC address stored on the device itself could allow a user to still use the device. Maybe even a unique token could be shared between the device and the app on the trusted phone/tablet could be a secondary validation measure. Perhaps someone else has a better way of doing it. I just know i only have one individual with a spare key and should an emergency occur if they are unavailable, EMS would have to break down my door.
The internet access requirement is a major weakspot when using Wyze for security. A smart intruder would take advantage of an internet outage and target Wyze houses….or create one (it’s just a wire on the side of the house, all you need is a knife to take the internet down)…then no video, no motion sensors, no floodlights, no alerts.
Ideally you could direct connect on WiFi through a local hub that would provide access through the app or browser page and features as normal. If that isn’t possible maybe limited functionality such as notifications and access to one stream at a time, or at the very least a direct WiFi to one cam at a time.
Except that internet outages don’t affect every ISP at the same time, and people are no longer limited to a single ISP who owns a monopoly like in past decades. Nowadays there is no easy way for a malefactor to know which ISP a house is using.
Just using my house for example, I have the following options:
Tons more. And even with Fiber, I may have a ton of different ISP’s managing the fiber. There are 16 different Residential and 25 business ISP’s allowed to use the Fiber in my area. So they would have to know WHICH of those ISP’s I use unless the whole fiber line is dead, then they’d have to know I use Fiber instead of one of the competitor options, and hope I don’t have a failover dual WAN going on like lots of people do nowadays (you can even get a second WAN failover using LTE for nearly for free if you use less than a few GB per month on it and only use it for emergencies when the primary goes out (there are ways to set this up).
I think a burglar would be crazy to think they are in the clear just because one ISP has an internet outage. That may have worked more than a decade ago when there were only 2 realistic options (DSL or Cable monopolies), but within the last few years, there is now a ton of competition and it’s hard to know what someone has.
Still, Local control should be implemented anyway. I want my automations to be reliable and continue running, such as my lighting automations. I also want everything to run FAST without a huge delay. I am all about local control, especially the more I am getting into Home Assistant. With Home Assistant, I can control my Wyze lighting REALLY FAST because it connects locally, whereas if I do Wyze app Rules, there is a delay since those go through the cloud. So now I have moved most of my Wyze automations to go through Home Assistant because it’s faster and more reliable.
So don’t get me wrong, I’m all about Local control, but I don’t think an intruder would be all that smart to think they can take advantage of an internet outage because there would be WAY too many risks that it’s a different ISP, or what the failover options are, especially since my sirens, etc will still trigger without internet (HMS audible alarms aren’t dependent on the internet), and my cameras will still record to an SD card, and it’s also possible to have Wyze cameras stream to an NAS storage using an RTSP converter like Docker Wyze Bridge, or many others.
An intruder would be dumb to assume they’re in the clear even if they knew which ISP I used and were confident it was down…
But Local control has it’s own value even without intruders being in the mix. I will never stop pushing Wyze to consider and improve local control options. I think for now they are mostly waiting to make such decisions until after the Matter Camera libraries launch. After that happens they will decide how to move forward and if Matter compliance and local control for cameras is worth doing. I think we’re mostly waiting on that.
I think you missed the point and expanded on the most unlikely situation, in my mind is not about taking advantage of an internet outage, but making their own opportunity like @elan-vital mentioned. I have Wyze cam unlimited and like the service, I was about to get the yard signs and stickers when I realized I would just tell everyone “cut the fiber at the side of this house and you have free range!”. And I think most of our complains and requests for local control come from losing our primary internet connection and not being able to control/monitor any Wyze device, so maybe instead of implementing full local control, wyze could have a complete solution by making one of their routers capable of having a backup cellular connection, or give the hub that ability.
That was my point as I described at the end of my post. My point was to not focus on an intruder knowing if something is working or not (they can’t realistically know that anyway), and instead of the focus on usability for the user (reliable, fast, etc). Local control has value outside of intruder knowledge.
I think we’re agreeing about the same things that local control is important for lots reasons, but mostly so things keep working even when the ISP has an issue or when Amazon AWS goes down or Wyze server goes down, etc. We’d all like things to keep working reliably and fast, whether that be for security, automations, convenience, or any other reason. Ultimately they’re all valid.
My main issue is not the subscription service. It’s the fact that the cameras have to check it constantly. There’s no reason I can’t assign static IPs to my devices, and have that system be locally controlled instead of relying on the cloud. The cameras are getting to the point where they are smart enough to be able to determine events on their own. The net should back up local services, not the other way around.
Eventually that will be the case, and it will be a ride or die situation.
Again I think you missed the point. The thief could CREATE the outage for that house or entire neighborhood, regardless of the ISP they use with one simple act of sabotage.
A single house is typically served by a single cable. Either coax or fiber (unless they use LTE) that can be cut - just like old-fashioned phone lines. Even the cable from the a tower for LOS wireless providers can be cut this way.
Additionally, each neighborhood is served by a single POP (Point of Presence) that all ISPs use to aggregate their regionals for that street. It has the feeds from all the non-LTE /LOS providers. Taking out that POP would take down the internet for the entire neighborhood regardless of the ISP they used, (again, except for LTE / LOS wireless customers)
But how would they know whether to cut my cable coax line, or my telephone (dsl) line, or my fiber line, or my satellite line, or, as you said, how would they know if I’m using FWA, or if I’m using LTE or 5G, or WiMax, etc. EVERY house in my neighborhood has every one of those options.
Certainly they could cut all 4 cables going into my house (half of which enter the house through the top flooring require a ladder} and run a few thousand dollar jammer. In that case, yes, they would have covered all possible internet options.
But I think all this is beside the point.
If someone is determined to break in, they’re breaking in. If they want to stop communication getting out of a house, they can absolutely 100% do that.
And I’m not saying local control isn’t important. It is, as I said repeatedly above. I highly support moving to local control. I even use home assistant and docker Wyze bridge specifically so I have local control of many things, including many of my wyze devices (lights, cameras, etc). I fully support this wish list for local control. I’ve probably done more to push for local control options with Wyze than anyone out there. I have talked to multiple employees about doing it at least multiple times every month in the last year, I promise I’m an absolute huge advocate for local control, probably the biggest by most measures.
But it’s okay that different people have different reasons or understanding why they want local control. In the end, were all still on the same side of supporting the same request. I’m okay with that.