Hi, everyone!
We wanted to give you more information about Cam Plus. We know that this launch has been a bit bumpy because we caught some unforeseen issues with the site and decided to hold the big announcement until we could resolve those. We know that this added confusion to the community, so we’re taking the opportunity to push part of the website live and to answer some of the questions we’ve been seeing come up about Cam Plus.
We’re super stoked about Cam Plus because this is the service that allows us to put Complete Motion Capture (CMC) and Person Detection together at long last. The standard cost for new users will be $1.99/month/camera or $14.99/year/camera. The cost for users that got automatically upgraded from CMC to Cam Plus will remain at $1.49/month/camera until August 2021. This has been a request from the community since we first launched CMC and we’re glad we can finally provide it for our customers. Cam Plus does not remove the legacy Person Detection plan that was outlined in this post.
For folks that were already subscribed to CMC, you have received a refund for the remaining time in your billing month and been charged for the same time with Cam Plus. This was a necessary part of the migration and you can find more information here.
If you would like to see the marketing page before we do the full announcement, please note that the subscriptions section has a little bit of work still left. As a pro-tip, if you’re planning to upgrade to an annual plan and want to save some money, we’ll be announcing a limited time promo code (hopefully) next week. Here is the link to the page!
Q&A About Cam Plus
- Will international customers be able to use Cam Plus? If not, when will they be able to purchase subscriptions?
A. We are looking into this but don’t currently have timelines.
- Is there a technical reason that such expensive processing couldn’t be done by a PC on the same LAN?
A. It’s possible but more expensive. Lots of work needed for that.
- Why does Person Detection use the cloud rather than being Edge-based now?
A. It isn’t easy to create an Edge solution for these cameras. They have a fraction of the computing capabilities of the cloud.
- If I do nothing, will my Wyze Cams still work the way they do now? I do not remember installing Person Detection. But I do get video when something moves in the camera view.
A. Yes, your camera will still work with all the out-of-the-box features if you do not subscribe to Cam Plus or the legacy Person Detection.
- I’m going to subscribe to Cam Plus. So when the September update arrives, that means I don’t lose Person Detection, right?
A. Correct, you won’t lose Person Detection if you subscribe to Cam Plus.
- Why does Person Detection cost more than regular motion detection?
A. It requires processing power to run the algorithm on the videos and it costs more to do this than to just store videos.
- Will Person Detection not work on devices that use microSD cards and not rely on the cloud?
A. No, the person detection algorithm is run in the cloud and will not work on microSD cards. However, you can use the cloud storage and a microSD card if you would like.
- What will the pricing be for cloud storage for Wyze Cam Outdoor?
A. Wyze Cam Outdoor is not compatible with Cam Plus at this time but we are working on it for the future.
- This has nothing to do with motion detection, correct?
A. Cam Plus is separate from motion detection. Motion detection will trigger the Event video that is saved on the cloud and the Person Detection algorithm is run on the existing video.
- Will the cloud-based person detection perform better than the on-camera XNOR.ai?
A. We’re already seeing a high rate of success. But one of the cool things about a cloud model is that it can be updated separate from firmware updates so improvement can be made more quickly and continuously.
- Will you enable PayPal as a payment method for premium services as has been requested multiple times by your overseas customers?
A. This is something we’re looking into but we’re being careful because of legal requirements so we don’t have a timeline at this point.
- How are my monthly and annual subscriptions billed? Are they grouped together?
A. Whenever you purchase or adjust the quantity of monthly plans, you are charged a prorated amount and then they fall into the same billing cycle for next month.
Annual plans are billed at the time of purchase and will be processed again the same day each year.
- I don’t want Cam Plus and don’t want to have it enabled. How can I opt out of the free trial?
A. You can opt-out of the free trial by disabling it under Services in your Wyze app.
