Just robbed - unable to determine serious issues

Cameras
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I’ve had OG cams for years, and loved them. I had 4 setup in front of house and inside, no SD card but had Wyze Plus on one.

Four nights ago we had a home invasion - woke up at 4am with 3 guys in our bedroom standing over us. No one was hurt, but dug deeper to see what happened…

  1. Wyze Cam Plus only recorded 12 seconds of the guys out front, then never recorded again - even tho they were out front for much longer.

  2. Wyze Cam OG recorded nothing at all to the server - while they were scaling the wall.

  3. Two of my OG cameras inside were broken (my fault for not replacing them). When you plug them in there’s a power issue that makes them stutter on and off.

I just upgraded to version 3. Purchased 8 camera and installing SD cards. Plus I have a pan coming.

The issue is that I just can’t tell what is an event that I need to look at, and what doesn’t matter. We get event sounds ALL THE TIME. We live on a slow dirt road where maybe 50 people may pass per day mostly on foot or motoribike. Both of our Apple watches trigger, both of our phones trigger. Because of camera overlap we get multiple triggers.

Yes I’ve used the geofencing bit - but the alert still triggers from car lights going by, and sometimes even lightening. (at night).

When you’re getting hundreds of alerts each day, you may as well not have any alerts. Since there are too many to check.

We need the ability to add sounds (of our choice?) to cameras. If something goes by outside - yeah that’s mildly interesting. If someone is at my front door - interesting. If someone has just scaled my walls and is upstairs that’s URGENT. Right now - a lightning flash at night, or three guys walking down our stairs has the same weight.

Also, I don’t have time, or don’t understand what sensitivity is - I think this is a UI issue, You need to test the sensitivity and give us a target… Does 40% prevent cars driving by, does 60% stop it picking up on cats? Right now have no idea.

Last - still love Wyze, but it’s a shame we weren’t alerted to the home invasion. If the cameras had picked up the guys scaling the wall, or if we had multiple alerts in a row when they were standing out front deciding if they could cut the locks on the door - we probably would have stood a better chance of checking our phones and having a different outcome.

Also, I’m paying $45 a year for Plus, and I still have no idea what it’s supposed to do. I got it originally so it wouldn’t trigger everytime it saw one of our faces (familiar faces) but that doesn’t seem to work at all.

Also, I have 5 older originals, but for some reason they’re blurry, even tho the camera lens (outside) is clean - so we have to toss them… I’m hoping the V3s won’t experience this.

Anyway - that’s my feedback.

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I have overlapping cameras due to the fact that my Wyze cams Do Not Always Capture Events, this is a known issue they act like it never happens… But obviously it does.

Even the SD cards will stop recording too, in which a power cycle and or SD format fixes. My other non-wyze cams definitely don’t need the “Baby Sitting” the Wyze cams do‼️

Search and you will find others like you with lack of event capture when most needed.

For me the Wyze cams are a hobbyists toy, nothing more.

Won’t buy anything from Wyze anymore, when the current cams die the will be replaced with other cams not made by Wyze…

Sorry they failed you when it was most needed‼️

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First of all, I’m glad to hear no one was hurt!

Second, I see you corrected a major part of the problem - you said you added uSD cards to the new cameras. I HIGHLY recommend uSD cards in every camera and have them set to continuous recording. BTW, periodically connect to every camera and play back some video so you can confirm that each camera is actually recording to the uSD card and will successfully play back that video - uSD cards die, card slots die, and cameras can go brain dead (welcome to reality).

As for event notifications. I have 47 cameras (all with CamPlus) and if I were to get notified for every event, I would never get anything done. I have notifications turned off for 46 of the cameras. The only camera with notifications enabled is the camera in the back of my mailbox - so I know when the mail was delivered.

I am somewhat like bryonhu in that I do not consider Wyze cameras (or ANY WiFi based camera) to be a serious security product. On the other hand, unless you have someone dedicated to watching your cameras 24x7, cameras are mostly an “after the fact - let’s see what happened” device, not a real time prevention device.

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As others suggested…door and window sensors with an actual siren. The cameras are a terrible way to protect against someone breaking in. I have YoLink sensors on my doors and also use their outdoor motion sensors around my rural home. Also have sirens located outside and inside.

Glad no one was hurt.

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If you want security, then you need to take the time to configure your Detection zones, detection sensitivity, etc. IF you’re getting too many alerts, adjust it to be less sensitive. If you’re not getting enough, increase the sensitivity. Do this and run some tests. Nobody can ever tell you what sensitivity level you need because it will always be different in every place you put it. Only you can realistically figure out what is your needed sensitivity level for your use-case. Nobody can tell you if 40% will prevent cars driving by or not. Nobody knows the distance, angle lighting conditions and various other factors that make a difference in your use case. You have to test it out yourself.

If you are getting frivolous notifications like cars driving by while dealing with something serious like break-ins, then my main advice is to just cut out ALL frivolous notifications. block out the road with a detection zone. You don’t need to know anytime a car or headlights pass by your house. It’s making you ignore important notifications. Block out everything that’s not important. Make your cameras and your detection zone ONLY trigger when someone comes to your house. Ignore the street, and everything else. Block out anything not close to your house. You may need cam plus on the cameras to make sure you can tell it to only notify you when a person is detected. Forget about lightning or car headlights or cats or whatever else.

If you have Cam Plus, you may need to make sure you have the cameras assigned to the licenses. Then make sure to set up the detections and notifications in a way that works for your needs. Stop getting alerts for all motion. I don’t get any notifications for lightning or cars, or headlights, or cats, etc on 99% of my cameras (there are a few I do want notifications about my cats on). I have most of them only tell me about person detections.

For that matter, you could consider Cam Protect on one of your cameras instead of cam plus. It has a specially enhanced AI training on it for person detection that is even better than regular cam plus AND it can call law enforcement for you when triggered if you are indisposed and don’t disarm it.

You can have events set off the camera siren in the rules. Just set the trigger to when a person is detected and set the action to trigger the camera siren. Then you can schedule it to only happen during your sleeping hours, or setup shortcuts that turn the cameras on and off manually (or motion detection on or off) and you can just turn it on while you’re sleeping and then deactivate them when you wake up.
Pro tip, make sure to set a “shortcut” rule that allows you to turn off all sirens with a quick button press.

If it were me, I would temporarily be putting some cameras inside my house too. I would have them turned off during the day time while I’m home and then use a shortcut to turn them on at night when I am sleeping. I’d have them set to make the siren go off any time they detect a person.
If I’d already had a break-in, I’d probably even get Cam Protect so the cops could be called automatically if I don’t answer and disarm it. But at least this way I wouldn’t be surprised anymore.

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Everyone above has given some great suggestions and feedback. Some of this may be duplicating.

I have 27 cams on a 360° perimeter, all with overlapping Fields of View and several redundant coverage from a different angle. Mainly V3 cams with VDBv1, OG, V3Pro, PanV3, and FLP cams also. All cams (except VDB) have a 256GB High Endurance SD Cards recording continuously.

Each cam has been individually tuned for its specific placement (angle, direction, lighting, FOV depth), Detection Sensitivity (how much motion does it take to trigger an Event upload), and Detection Zone (block out objects that create excessive motion or are mistaken by the AI as Smart Detection objects). Where you place your cams is far more important than what the settings are. If you are pointing your cams at an area that is known for high traffic, you are asking to be bothered by excessive notifications. Your Field of View (FOV) is the most important decision you will make with any security cam. You want your cams to identify perimeter threats, not cars on a public road or people walking on the sidewalk. Their most likely approach to your house is where to start.

I have Cam Plus Unlimited so every Cam is assigned. Every cam has Person Event with Notifications enabled. Some also have Pet and\or Vehicle enabled. In the Notifications for each cam, I disable the notification for “Other Motion Events”. I don’t want to be notified unless it is a tagged AI Smart Detection Event. This cuts down on the Notification Overload. Then, because I use an Android phone, I am able through the use of a 3rd party App (sorry, don’t believe iOS allows it) to designated a unique notification sound for each different type of AI Smart Detection (person, vehicle, pet, package) followed by a second notification sound that indicates which of the 27 cams that detected it. Each cam has its own sound. Just today I received 7 consecutive Person notifications on my phone. 7 cams identified a person walking up my driveway (cam 1), past my front door (cams 2 & 3), toward my garage (cams 4 & 5), up to my back door (cam 6) and into my breezeway (cam 7). Amazon delivery. I got 6 Person Notifications on his way back out. I was driving at the time, but I knew that it was a person, exactly where he entered the property, and where he was headed simply by the sequence of the tones coming in.

When I view my Events in the app, I filter out all the Motion Events. Again, I am only concerned with the Cam Plus AI tagged Smart Detection Events. This cuts down on seeing all the unimportant videos for trees waving and bugs flying.

Beyond my cams, I also have the Wyze Home Monitoring Service that is the professionally monitored security system. I have all windows and doors with sensors as well as motion sensors in every room. If any are breached, the system immediately triggers Noonlight to notify and dispatch the Police. It can also be activated manually thru the app or a panic button on the keypad. I have added two incredibly loud sirens, one inside and one outside, that will wake the entire neighborhood when the system alarms.

Since you now have more than 5 cams. A Cam Plus Unlimited subscription would be the most economical choice. But don’t cancel what you have just yet because you will NOT get a refund for the time left on your existing subscriptions. A year of Cam Plus Unlimited is $99 and covers 99 cams. Cam Plus adds:

  • Full length Event Uploads up to 5 minutes
  • No cooldown between Events - back-to-back Event video uploads (this was the most important for me)
  • Person, Vehicle, Pet, and Package Detections (Cam Plus AI Smart Detections)
  • Access to view your cams and Events thru an Internet browser on Wyze WebView Live
  • Automation Upload Notifications

The Friendly Faces is now only available thru a Cam Protect subscription.

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I have 6 of 12 new camera up, and I subscribed to the unlimited plan. SD cards in all so it records everything for review, but only notifications for people. So far so good. I feel like when I first started with the company/products there were a set of features - and the longer we go the more tiers they introduce and move the useful features into these tiers. annoying as I didn’t know it would record 12 seconds of the home invaders and then ‘cool down’… ie… record nothing else for the next half hour. what good is that?

Also dislike about the V3 - you can’t daisy-chain cameras together, and the dongle to plug in isn’t long enough to go through a typical concrete block wall, so you’re left with the join part in the middle of the wall. Just give us one foot and everything would be cool. Also, no way to change it to 90 degree view.

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Great points! When I started w\ Wyze a long while back, the 5m cooldown was the single biggest reason for me to select Cam Plus.

I have also had to deal with the issue of the micro USB plug and boot being inside the wall. I took to using non-adhesive self-sealing silicone tape to wrap and secure the plug so it wouldn’t disconnect with a simple tug.

I have several cams that are vertical mount shooting to the side. But since the mount is double jointed and the Cam will rotate 180° on the mount, I was able to get it to shoot in normal orientation while mounted to the side. I wanted 90° rotation originally also, but I since learned that the limitation to Wyze doing that is it will rotate the aspect ratio of the video image and will not stream in the app properly where all the video place cards are programmed.