Trying to make Wyze Cam v4 cameras work in Bluestacks > TinyCam-anything. They won’t work in TinyCam Pro. This morning I got what Google Play said is TinyCam Monitor and they don’t work there either, it looks like the original TinyCam. I find TinyCam Monitor Pro in Google Play using a browser, but it is not on Google Play through Bluestacks. It is available on Amazon.
How do I get it from Amazon into Win 11 > Bluestacks? Is it not compatible with Bluestacks?
If the end result you want is having the cam in bluestacks, you either need to use a cam that supports RTSP (like the v3) or pay for Tiny Cam Pro to convert the Wyze feed to RTSP which it then sends to bluestacks.
Or as we’ve been discussing, if you already have an older version of Tiny Cam Pro and you don’t want to pay to upgrade (not sure if you already have it if the upgrade is free or not) you can downgrade the v4 firmware for now and disable auto updates, and wait for the v4 RTSP to come out, which will interface directly with bluestacks like the v3 does.
I think you may be confusing BlueStacks (an Android emulator) with Blue Iris (video management software capable of consuming RTSP feeds). As far as I know, Wyze has never officially supported the app on an Android emulator, so in this case I’d be pointing the finger at the emulator software.
Oops, yeah, my bad. Sorry @Fwvoice2 too many “blue” things related to the cams - the emulator issue is a different one, you’ll probably need both older firmware and app version to make that work.
Maybe if you have a list of the goals you want - like viewing on certain devices, recording to hard drives instead of SD cards, we can figure out the best solution? RTSP will still probably be the best solution in the long run, but interim there are a few potential options.
One of my v4’s is working fine in the original TinyCam Pro I have had for years. It came with 4.52.9.3415 which does just fine with Bluestacks > TinyCam Pro.
I have absolutely no problem paying $3.99 for TinyCam Monitor Pro v18.3 but it is looking like I won’t need to. The problem is that it is not in Google Play in any version of Bluestacks I have installed and run, that is v5, Android 11 and Android 13 beta. It is available on Amazon but only for some apps and I have no idea how to get it into Bluestacks from Amazon. I am in the process of trying to put v4 firmware 4.52.9.3415 on my other v4 , then all my cameras should be happy in TinyCam Pro again. So far the rollback has failed twice so it is third time’s charm now.
I didn’t come her to stir up a hornets nest, you are reading me wrong. I am just spending a lot of time trying to recover from a bum firmware upgrade that left two of my cameras useless. That is changing now with only one v4 left to fix. The biggest part of my fix has been corralling all my cameras in one isolated IoT network where they have really settled down from all the dropping out.
Nah, no hornets nest, there have been a lot of people in here recently fuming and demanding to “speak to the manager” about the firmware update breaking 3rd party apps (which it was expected to do) so maybe the responses have been getting a bit terse.
Make sure to disable auto firmware update on all the cams.
Just bear in mind that the only apps “officially” supported by Wyze are their latest app running on a supported device (phone or tablet) or the web view, and running latest firmware on the cams. It is great to have 3rd party options, but you just need to hold off on firmware updates if they mention that security has been updated or they require a new app version. Wait until the developer/app mentions it has been updated to work with it, and test the update on a single cam first.
FYI the developer of TIny Cam is a Wyze employee (he was hired after developing tiny cam) so that one will tend to be the one that is updated the fastest, but he probably does have to get sign off from Wyze since he likely has access to things that others don’t, and they don’t want to compromise security. He (Alexey Vasilyev) is pretty responsive in the tiny cam reddit sub. Obviously pretty sharp guy if Wyze hired him even though he made a product that technically loses them a bit of money, and have let him continue developing it.
Hopefully the v4 will get RTSP soon and/or bluestacks, wyze bridge, and others will start supporting the updated security.
I do disagree with your “bum firmware” assertion though, it works fine and did what it was supposed to for officially supported apps, Wyze’s main concern is functionality with their official apps. Developers of other apps are welcome to follow the beta threads and try to get their stuff working in advance, but they’re obviously busy and usually doing it for free in their spare time. And some like bluestacks are not focused on individual apps, just an overall emulator.
For the cam downgrade, make sure you’re using a 32GB or smaller card formatted to FAT32 file system, and you’re putting the file directly in the root of the SD card. No folders, no other files. You may even try partitioning the card to 2GB and formatting it as FAT16, but I don’t think that will be needed.
If your card is larger than 32GB just create a 32GB partition on it (windows disk manager is the easiest way to do that) which will let you format it to FAT32.
Then sometimes it is just a matter of trying a few times to get the button/power timing correct.
Third time was charm. Wyze Cam v4 Number two gave up this morning and accepted my offer to downgrade it to firmware v4.52.9.3415. Now Tinycam Pro decided to let it show it’s face there again.
All six of my cameras are now on I0T which has really cut down on P2P dropouts. If I could find out how to get TinyCam Monitor Pro 18.3 I would like to see if it would make more improvement to stabillity. Your comment on getting the Setup button coordinated with plugging into power was just what I was running into the first two tries at flashing Cam v4 #2. I didn’t get the “purple“ light on them. On try # 3 I got it and the camera went on and did the downgrade.
If you ever need to do a microSD flash again in the future and can easily move the Cam you’re working on, then plugging it into a power strip can make the job easier because you don’t have to coordinate holding the Cam’s SETUP Button while plugging it in; you just flip the switch on the strip instead. I almost always do that if I have to try flashing a Cam.
Good tip, but my power strips are very occupied and hard to get to. I figured for only one camera needing flashed I’d just haul the cam to my desk in the kitchen where I could hold the camera on the desktop with the button pressed in and the front so I could see the lights while I plugged it in. Curiously the first two failures ended with the little Wyseguy inside announcing the camera was “Ready to connect“.
Now a question. All my Cam v3s are asking to upgrade. Do you know if that new upgrade is safe and ready for prime time?
The v3 upgrade will give you the same issue. However it does add RTSP support which you could potentially use instead to stream the video.
That’s fair. I usually just grab an extra strip and do it at the desk if I need to flash.
I’m the wrong person to ask, as I don’t own any Cam v3s. My oldest Wyze Cam is a Cam Pan v3. My advice here would be to search the Forum for recent posts using the cam-v3 tag and to look at recent Wyze News topics related to firmware releases, specifically whatever version is being offered to your Cams. See what other Forum users are saying about it, whether or not they’re reporting problems, etc. That’s my typical practice before I update any Cam firmware.