V3 cam on porch
Overhead light on porch
Wyze switch connected to porch light.
Rule that says turn on light when cam motion is detected works, but there is no way to turn off the light automatically? When I turn off the light manually, it triggers a motion event and turns the light back on!
Surely there must be a way to do this, right? I don’t know if the upcoming wyze socket would help, but mine is a multi-light candelabra fixture anyway.
Wyze motion sensor is not weatherproof, and seems to require a monthly subscription.
So is this the way Wyze really intended it to work? Is there another solution outside of the Wyze ecosystem? BTW, laugh if you like but even my old x10 system could handle this scenario.
Welcome to the community @bobpellegrino . I am a community member as well and try to help when I can.
Sounds like you are using the Camera to trigger the lights based on motion. Unfortunately, at this time, there is no event for when there is no motion ends. Do you have the Wyze Home Monitoring system? If you do, you could place a Motion Sensor on your porch and have it trigger the switch and then when motion ends turn off the light. The motion sensor is not outdoor rated, but some of us have put them on covered porches and under soffits.
The other option would be to set a rule tha says if the switch is on, turn it off after 10 minutes or so. You can set a trigger and action on the same device.
Ideally I would like the switch to work like the old x10, which is that if I turned on the light manually it would stay on but if the motion sensor turned on the light it would time out.
If I got the Home Monitoring System, would this work? Perhaps making a double tap mean “stay on”? Maybe the switch firmware needs to change to accept an optional timeout parameter with the On command.
the HMS wold allow you to use Motion Sensors. you can then set the rule up for certain times of day. I don’t have my switch yet, but not sure if you can target individual tap sequences in a rule.
I am going to Tag @R.Good or @carverofchoice to see if they have any other method to provide what you are looking for.
There are some potential solutions, but part of the main problem here is how the wired cameras (and most cameras in general) currently work to detect motion using pixel recognition instead of PIR.
The cameras “motion detection” isn’t actually really detecting motion. What it is detecting is enough pixels change between one frame and the next. This certainly works to detect all motion, but that is not technically all that it detects. It will also be triggered by…yep, lighting changes. Light vs shadow vs different shades will cause enough pixels on the screen to change to trigger a motion detected scenario. That means that anytime your light turns on or off, the camera will think that is motion and this will cause it to trigger your “turn on the light” rule. That’s what’s happening to you here. Every time the light turns off, the camera says there is motion and turns the light back on in a loop ad-infinitum.
I tested this issue with the new Wyze Flood light and I am happy to say that somehow Wyze seems to have fixed this looping issue. I set my floodlight cam to only turn on the light at night when the camera senses motion, and magically it is not turning the lights back on every time the lights turn off. They must have figured out a solution for this. I haven’t tested the sockets yet, but I understand they work this way too, especially since they allow you to set a timer to turn the lights off after X minutes without the cam detecting motion.
Unfortunately that fix hasn’t [yet] been extended to other devices as far as I’m aware. Therefore, using [Wyze] rules to turn lights on or off based solely on camera motion detection is probably not going to be a viable integration for at least a while.
There are other solutions though. As @spamoni stated, you can use a PIR based motion sensor to determine whether to have lights on or off. I use this method on several of my lights. Any time the sensor detects new heated motion (so a person, etc) the light turns on, once there has been no motion for X consecutive minutes, I have it shut the lights back off. That works pretty well for several situations.
Similarly, you can use a Wyze Outdoor Cam and have it’s PIR sensor trigger to turn the lights on, and have a timer of some kind turn the lights back off after X amount of time of the lights being on.
Another option is if you have cam plus you can have the camera only turn the lights on when it detects a person, then have a timer turn the lights off after X amount of time of the lights being on.
As a timer to turn the lights off automatically, some people use a Wyze plug. They’ll have a rule that also turns on the Wyze plug at the same time as the light, then tell the plug to turn off itself and the light after 5 minutes or whatever.
Wyze is currently working on a solution to train to their AI to ignore lighting changes. I’m helping them train on this by submitting example videos where nothing changes but lighting so they can learn to have those videos ignored. I also think they might be able to extend the solution they created for the floodlight and socket to not be triggered by lighting changes to also work for the rules of other cams too. Maybe we’ll actually get that solution coming up (it just doesn’t help RIGHT NOW).
Those are the best solutions I know of right now. I would recommend also recommend voting for this wishlist item so we can have triggers on the cameras for “motion has been clear for” to execute doing something like shutting off the lights:
Wyze has found some way to get the motion stuff to work on the floodlight, so I hope they soon extend that solution for other lighting rules too. Until then, the above are the solutions I know of and use.
Well, using a poor innocent socket to trick the light switch into turning off should be grounds for admission to the software Hall of Shame. But if that’s what I have to do…
I think a more elegant solution would be for all actions to take an additional duration parameter, which could be zero to never terminate.
The switch would need to be more self-aware, so that if you turn the switch on manually it would reject any timed turn-off commands. This really becomes the crux of the matter because even if I can trick wyze into acting like a proper motion detector, I do not have independent control of the the light switch.
I’m disappointed and frustrated with the Wyze software. Maybe I’m asking too much. For example, I should be able to reset the timer if it detects motion again while the light is on. If I’m out there raking leaves or painting my cat after dark, I don’t want the light turning off then on repeatedly. It disturbs the cat.
Is it possible to purchase the motion sensor without paying a monthly fee? It does not appear so to me.
Very perceptive my friend, yes this would be true if someone sets it up that way. But the floodlight has options. You can choose to have it based solely on motion detected by the camera:
You can also choose to use the PIR or not, or tell it to only turn on when both the PIR and camera motion are BOTH detected. And you can change the sensitivity level for them both.
But I was talking about motion-specific detection only since that applies to the rest of this topic.
The official answer is not quite yet. however, you can always cancel the subscription immediately upon activation if you truly do not want it. Lots of people have done that too. The sensors do require you at least purchase the hub they need to connect to though.
The Wyze Cam Plus AI that detects a PERSON instead of just motion is working for me.
I was having a similar problem, but had to dissable my subscriptions to the cameras and reissue them for it to actually take effect.
I was using motion detection on a wyze cam pan v2 to trigger a wyze plug that turned on a lamp. The activity was on a 5 min timer that turned the lamp off. But when the lamp turned off, it triggered the motion detection and the lamp came back on.
However, when I used the Wyze Cam Plus AI, (there is a small fee), it solved the problem. Additionally, not only does the lamp not restart itself, it isn’t triggred by my many cats, or my robot vacuum, only a person, and only at night.
Yes, this is a really great solution. I also use the person detection trigger on my Kitchen and another room to determine when to turn on lights or a plug.
I have tried to set this up exactly as you describe,
Dumb bulb in Wyze Plug on porch
Floodlight Cam ‘detects motion’ as trigger ON in rule, Wyze Plug as target action -ON
Floodlights set to 5 minutes on after activation
Wyze plug as Trigger in OFF rule - ‘has been on for 5 minutes’
Target action, Wyze plug - ‘turn off’
Has not worked at all - tested for 4 hours last night
Spoke to a real Wyze techie today and was told the cam that will send motion detection even after the floodlight bulbs are ON, keeping the Plug from turning OFF, so then the 5 min is over, the floods are off, but the Plug is still ON - it just loops -
I should’ve been more clear about the Floodlight cam. The floodlight cam has it’s own settings outside the rules engine. In the flood light cam, I can access accessories, then the floodlight and then tell the floodlight settings to base on or off depending on motion from the cam. This is not using Wyze Rules (which don’t work the same way), but using the floodlight settings to base it on the camera motion detected, and for some reason this works differently than the rules, at least for me and my tests so far. When the floodlights turn off, it doesn’t trigger the camera to turn the lights back on. I don’t know why using the floodlight settings to be based on camera motion detection is different than using the Wyze rules engine to be based on motion detection.
Maybe they did something like programmed the floodlight to ignore the first 10-15 frames of a pixel change in the camera video (1 second) so it will ignore lighting changes, and if motion persists after that, then send the trigger to turn the lights on. Something like that could be a decent solution to avoid the camera-motion/lighting loop they currently have with the rules engine. But I can only speculate why the Floodlight settings work differently than the rules engine settings.
Is there any update to this?
I am using a V3 cam with Person Detection, to turn on exterior pot lights via a Wyze Switch?
I’m not seeing a way to sweep the lights off after say 10 min, post Person Detection.
I saw an older post using something called IFTTT Applets which might be a solution.
Ideally I would keep this is simple as possible and am not using any other systems ie.Alexa.
Also, has anyone used multiple Wyze cams to trigger the same Wyze Switch the same functionality as above?
