Motion sensor tends to clear itself too quickly if a person stops moving or is moving very little. Would be great if it was more sensitive. Also, there is a serious lag between motion sensor detecting movement and turning on a Wyze Bulb sometimes to the point where I have to stand in front of the sensor wave my arms and jump around for 30 seconds or more before the Wyze Bulb finally turns on. I am using this configuration because I want the option to have timed lights that turn off once the sensor clears. The sig other tends to forget to turn lights off……. so would rather just leave the switch always on
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Welcome to the Wyze forums hoofster!
I have similar frustrations as you expressed here (including family members who don’t turn off lights and motion sensors not working as well as I’d like for automating lighting).
I have looked into this a lot, and I honestly don’t think there is a lot that Wyze can do to make a PIR sensor (particularly this one) function really well the way we want. This is mostly due to the way PIR sensors work with detecting heat moving from one part of the sensor to another, thus causing sufficient ambient heat changes from the left to the right or right to the left, etc. PIR works really well to detect dramatic movement far away (such as someone walking into a room), but they don’t do very well at detecting small movements (such as when someone sits down in a chair or stands at a sink for a while or something and isn’t really moving around the room. The reason for this is that the heat signature of our body is fairly stationary at this point and not triggering different parts of the sensor to detect heat and cooler changes since we are fairly stationary.
Thus, in order to detect someone who is sitting down or not doing other dramatic movements across the room, a sensor needs to be really close, often within a few feet. The problem is that Wyze doesn’t allow Motion sensor groups to combine for rule automation, so even if we did have multiple sensors in a room, it wouldn’t help with our lighting automation struggles because when sensor A stopped detecting motion, it would turn off the lights even though sensor B still recognizes motion. That is a huge automation flaw.
A lot of people with desires for lighting automation have started to use what they call “Presence sensors” that include PIR and mmWave signals as well. In this case, the PIR sensor does what it does best (turn on the light at a distance whenever anyone immediately enters a room), and the mmWave signals are more precise in keeping track of whether a person is STILL in the room, even if they’re sitting down and sitting pretty still (something PIR sucks at).
Unfortunately, Wyze doesn’t yet offer any mmWave presence sensors, just PIR sensors. And there really isn’t a way to make a singular PIR motion sensor sensitive enough to do what you (or I) really want them to do. I have been advocating for Wyze to at least allow groups of PIR sensors to work together in a room so we can improve automation options…but unfortunately so far this has not been a popular request with the majority of users (most people don’t care, so presumably it hasn’t made sense to devote the resources to implement this). Alternatively, Wyze could make a mmWave sensor that could cover a whole room and accurately tell how many people are in the room and know whether to keep the lights on or off. But that definitely won’t happen this year, since Wyze is committed to 2023 being the year of the camera.
Although, Cameras would be another great solution if they’d allow us to have lights turn off as soon as no person (or motion) is detected for at least 5-10 minutes or whatever period we set. That would be a great option. But not many people have been requesting that either.
Anyway, the short answer is that it is not likely that Wyze even CAN increase the “sensitivity” of a PIR sensor to be a really good lighting automation option. They aren’t precise enough to be able to do that. They really do require dramatic heat changes from side to side, like someone walking, or else they just start to think that stationary heat source is part of the normal background and soon stop reporting it as movement.
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As an alternative I was thinking a simple beam sensor that turns a light on the first time it is interrupted (entering a room or in proximity to the light) and off the second time it is interrupted (leaving the room). It might have to work in combination with a motion sensor so as to not shut off lights if a second third fourth person enters the room and crosses the beam path. Or two beam sensors next to one another so the direction of movement into or out of a room can be detected. I recently proposed the beam sensor in the wishlist, it is still pending review… what you said makes sense, thank you for the information!
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Welcome to the Wyze User Community Forum @hoofster! 
There is a setting in the V2 Motion Sensor that can adjust the sensitivity. Be sure it is set to High.
Action latency using Rules varies for all users. The V2 Motion Sensor Trigger happens as soon as the motion sensor senses the motion, but that trigger has to travel by RF to the Hub, thru the Router by WiFi or Ethernet, thru your ISP and the interwebs to the Wyze Server, trigger the rule on your account, and make the opposite return trip to your bulb or other Wyze device to be actioned. The same is true if using Alexa, Google Home or IFTTT for automations with added time to, from, and on their servers.
This means that the latency is affected by distance from the hub (minimally), WiFi speed (if hub on WiFi) ISP speed and routing on both ends, distance from Wyze Servers, and traffic load \ processing time on the Wyze Servers.
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I’m getting a lot of insects (moths, ants, spiders, beetles) triggering events. I would like to reduce these, but still get our flying squirrels. Would lowering the sensitivity help in this regard?
@PaulT, this thread is dealing with the Wyze Sense V2 Motion Sensor used in conjunction with the Wyze Sense Hub and HMS.
You are most likely getting false positive motion alerts moreso at night when the IRNV is active and the LED IR Light Emitters on the face of the cam are active. These can attract insects due to the light and the heat. It also spotlights the insects that are close to the lens with Active IR. Insects make great reflectors for IR.
You can try to reduce the sensitivity, however you risk not catching what matters. I would first try to run the cam with the Night Vision Mode off to see if there is enough ambient light for full Color Night Vision. If not, you might add a low watt light source to the FOV. Alternatively, as I have done, you can leave the cam in IR Night Vision, turn off the LED IR Light Emitters, and install a IR Floodlight away from the cam that will illuminate the FOV.
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Thanx SS! I do want the color for the critters and this one particular V3 has a preference for the light source to come from the camera location (remove shadows’. Indeed, I am using an inexpensive round adjustable nightlight from WMart with only 0.3 watts. I would like to keep it as is, and maybe just drop the sensitivity by 10 steps at a time and see if it improves
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That sounds like a good strategy. Being as close to the lodge as the cam is, since there is considerable light in a relatively small FOV, anything flying or crawling in that FOV is going to be illuminated well and will most likely produce a motion event.
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