Looking for Advance Help Tinycam Pro + Wyze + Multiple Fire TVs/Fire Sticks

I have finally gotton all my 5 Wyze Cams working (more to be added like 7 to 10 more if things go OK) with Tinycam Pro and it would be great if some one could offer me some add’l insight/tips/etc.

I have multiple questions on best setup/settings when one has multiple FireTV/Fire Sticks. I wish not to slow down my network too much - I have a Gibi Lan - but my internet is around 450kbp. It would be ideal to share recordings (from each Fire Device vs each Fire Device making a recording of the same motion detected which will slow down the network, yet I want to be notified on the device I’m using (like one of the many FireTV/FireSticks (have 7+)

  1. Does Tincam Pro pro operating or executing from the cloud or the device (like phone, FireTv or FireStick where it’s installed)?
  2. I have found when I want notifications and recordings that it can slow the devices down or like my phone it can get hot?
  3. To avoid using the CPU of the device, I’m using On-camera motion detections, seems to speed up process and network and help on device and network lag.

Thus was thinking it might be best have recordings down on FTP server on my NAS (local lan) but issue I’m missing the thumbnails on my computer. I have used the onedrive setup and like the thumbnails and can see on computer. This it looks like I’m duplicating recordings and this will slow down the network? Recording to the device (such as a Firestick or FireTV seems to cause some lag too and there is not a whole lot of space on those devices and I don’t want to create recordings from each of these devices.

Also like to know, if I use the TinyCam Pro record to Onedrive , will it take the Wyze recordings and just copy from Wyze Cloud to my Onedrive in the cloud which would be faster than taking the recordings to the device where the app is installed and then send it to Onedrive in the cloud, which would be slower and cause network congestion?

I’m thinking I should have the device that is on all the time (like a firetv/firestick) that is not used often) and can act as the webserver where recordings and notifications are some how shared between the devices?

I would love to use the TinyCam Pro background service but it tends to cause lag. I’m still fine tunning camera’s where I’m getting false notifications. Like it to pop up on Firetv’s with a live feed if there is a notification alert when using that FireTV/FireStick?

Finally after I get one Fire device setup with Tinycam Pro, I’m exporting the setting to my onedrive then importing then on the next FireTv/FireStick device which speeds up the process faster.

@Customer is basically our resident Tiny Cam Pro…pro…but I will say a few things.

If your device is on the same SSID(router/network) as the camera(s) you are streaming, then it is connecting locally, not through the internet/cloud. The video stream goes straight from the camera to the router to your device (phone, firestick, etc).

If you leave your house and stream the video to your phone, or you are on a different network from the camera in any other way, then the stream is going through the internet.

Yes, streaming video does use a lot of RAM/GPU/Processor resources on your device, so if you are constantly streaming, then the device won’t do other things as well as it might if it wasn’t constantly streaming and/or recording video. A lot of people like to use an old phone as a dedicated Tiny Cam Pro Server and then stream all the video streams from that onto other devices and record video on the server or to Onedrive with the Server or something other than their primary phone…but then still be able to access it from another device like the primary phone.

There are lots of options, just depends on your preferences.

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Additionally, there’s many projects on GitHub for custom firmware if your willing to try that. It has lots of advanced features, but will void your warrenty.

TinyCam runs on the Fire or other Android device on which its installed. As Carver said, the streams should be local on your LAN. TC uses the same authentication and streaming as the regular Wyze app.

There is no on-camera person detection on Wyze cameras. Edit: I had some inaccurate info here before - thanks @carverofchoice . In my console the on-camera motion detection is grayed out. What camera make and model have you defined?

One option here is to run TC in an Android emulation environment (Win10 compatibility layer, MacOS, or emulator). But obviously the TC generated thumbnails are only viewable in TinyCam itself.

If you can mount SD or other storage on your Android device, I think TC can write directly to it. And - this is important - you should NOT set up the same cameras on more than one copy of TinyCam. That would mean creating multiple streams from each of your cameras, which will quickly lower their quality and use up camera and network resources. It’s better to have satellite copies of TinyCam accessing the streams from the main TC. Similarly only your main TC will be making recordings.

Not sure what you mean here, but if you think one “cloud” service will copy a file to another “cloud” service without channeling the file through your local computer, it won’t. (Except in those cases where there’s a special function for that and you’ve authenticated one to the other.)

Yes. As I wrote above, you can have additional TinyCam instances looking at the camera streams redirected from the main TC instance. (Not recordings though, I don’t think. :frowning: )

Background mode has worked okay on my two generations of Fire tablet. I think the 4K sticks are actually faster. And to be clear, you’re not going to get Wyze app notifications on TInyCam - only notifications based on TInyCam’s own detections.

Again, while this is convenient, it’s NOT a good idea if you will be leaving more than one such instance running at a time, because you will be pulling multiple streams from the same camera. Instead, point the additional TC instances to the web service port of the main TinyCam Pro instance.

Also I am FAR from a pro at using TinyCam. I hope some other more experienced users are merely lurking…

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You’re pretty good, though. Look what you just did. :+1:

I’ll bet you’ve spelunked through every feature, option and setting.

Not this frog. Once he’s satisfied he stops. :stop_sign:

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To clarify, you just mean in the context of Tiny Cam settings?

Because Wyze cameras do their initial motion detection on-camera by comparing pixel changes between frames to determine whether to upload a 12 second event to the cloud (or longer if someone has Cam Plus).

But Tiny Cam doesn’t use that at all, so in that sense there is no On-camera motion setting that works for Tiny Cam, right?

Unless I was misunderstanding.

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You’re quite right, and thank you for the correction @carverofchoice .

  1. For some reason I always thought that on-camera motion detection setting was for on-camera person detection, not general motion detection. Wrong. But there’s a separate setting for object detection, AND there doesn’t seem to be a toggle to use onboard camera AI? I was under the impression TinyCam was aware of such on-camera features.

  2. The on-camera detection box is grayed out for all my cameras, Wyze and otherwise. This appears to be a function of the camera model selected. I wonder what the OP’s setting is if he or she can select that box and still have the WyzeCam function with cloud credentials.

  3. See, I told you I wasn’t the expert. I’ll edit my earlier post.

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Addendum on this - there is a list of camera models at

https://tinycammonitor.com/support.html

The ones that say “motion detection” to the right should correspond to those that enable that checkbox in TinyCam. (I am guessing that if the OP specified a different camera model that would still work with a Wyzecam, then the checkbox would still NOT have any real effect?)

Still a pity that there doesn’t seem to be native AI support for any cameras. The TC object detection works okay but…

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I’m so disappointed. You’re only informed, correctable and humble. Not an ‘expert’ as we know them at all.

Next. :slight_smile:

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