The idea of live-view-only-access makes me think of what household members in the Google Home app have with the Wyze cameras I’ve linked to Google Home. That’s all they get. Unfortunately, Wyze’s integration with Google Home (and/or Google’s ability to consume and display the Wyze camera feeds) can be spotty at times, so sharing through the Wyze app is a more reliable way to allow others to view what the cameras see.
I haven’t taken the time to do that, either, and I don’t think it’s necessary for the average user to read back through 5½ years of posts. I think the list in the immediately preceding post and the poll attached to the initial post seem like good starting points, and maybe someone on the app development side will get on the stick and assemble a list of potential user/permissions features to add and post something akin to what the Rule Team did recently.
Something I’d personally like to see on such a list would be giving users control of what notifications to receive. If I want to receive all sound and motion notifications for a camera and also share that camera, the person I share it with might not want to be bothered with the same notifications.
This topic is quite depressing. People complained form 10 years ago and Wyze doesn’t bother to allow shared user to see SD card.
I shared once with one other user and they can play SD card playback. One day (about 1 week after shared) the SD card viewing is blocked. This smells fishy.
I understand that SD card viewing is not beneficial for Wyze because it reduce the attractiveness of Cam Plus paid subscription and gives burden to their streaming server for letting free users watching the playback from device to cloud then to mobile device.
At least add this to your business model to allow purchase credit to view playback or something.
Yeah, I think the original In-progress was applied toward their entire rebuild of the app from scratch, then they had to scrap that for a while when the 2020-2021 challenges came. Then they also wanted to add the HMS sharing permissions and other things, but wanted to research how they could do it using their current app build with all the design debt, and that is a little more complicated due to compartmentalized structure of the app. I think their backend has also had to go through a lot of changes. I know the database itself was originally set up a little weird since they tried to use email addresses as the primary key for a while (I’m still not even 100% certain if this has been fully updated since there have been recent issues with services not transferring when someone changes their email address).
So I think they have been working through the extra challenges of implementing this with all the design debt on their early foundation, so it’s really slow going, but I also know that Jason does go out of his way to check and see what on the wishlist is still in progress in some way or not and works to keep this updated. So if it still says in progress - researching, they’ve likely got some real plans for it. We just don’t know the ETA or anything. We can only hope that the new stuff they keep hinting about coming out soon might help a little or at least be a step toward improving the foundation in a way to make this easier for them to implement in the future. I never thought they’d do dark mode on this app foundation, but they have actually started to convert a lot of it to dark mode now, so miracles do happen.
That certainly seems more promising than maybe-later or probably-not. I realize that fixing or improving products that are already out there and broken or sub-par doesn’t generate revenue in the same way that pushing subscriptions or shipping new products does, but I firmly believe that there’s a material benefit to generating good will with customers by being transparent and demonstrating real progress toward something like this, which seems like it should be a priority for a business selling products and services targeted at security.
Interesting update but also disheartening. Technical debt be real but it’s difficult for me to imagine a situation where some form of sharing couldn’t be implemented within 4 years of changing course.
In other words, don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. And here it seems to be that someone has some grand vision for the right way to do sharing … which might be fantastic, a wondrous vision of the world to delight us for ages to come. but if it takes a generation to introduce?
If leadership isn’t driving this change, preferring new products and incremental updates (Dark Mode be good) then it could be many more years before someone decides to pull the plug again and go back to the drawing board.
I struggle to make the business case, myself, unless they were to add “Advanced Sharing” as an add-on subscription line-item. Extra buck a month to have advanced sharing features?
I wonder if that would be enough to get them to prioritize development time on the necessary changes. Hm.
Yeah, it’s almost certainly not a top priority as evidenced by the amount of time taken and resources devoted to it, but I am happy it’s at least still on the table.
I think that the priority in this case is slightly lower for a couple of reasons (keep in mind, I don’t work for, speak for or represent Wyze here, I am speaking my own opinions/guesses…and keep in mind that I am very supportive of this wishlist request and want it myself, because I do a lot of sharing too):
It isn’t something directly related to Revenue (I’m not disagreeing that user experience is indirectly related to revenue though)
It doesn’t affect EVERYONE and they generally try to give first priority to things that will be used by and affect most everyone.
Yes, it can be really annoying to some of us, I am simply pointing out that there are a ton of people for whom it isn’t even on their radar.
It works PASSABLY well without being implemented.
There are workarounds for many people, though they aren’t ideal. For example, my wife logs in to my account to view SD card footage, but that gets annoying for her to use the scale or a watch, etc. I also can’t share my password with other people who may need access to the SD card footage, and if I share an outdoor cam to my teenager, I don’t want her having access to turn off the camera. So yes, I agree there are huge flaws. There are ways around some of it for the more tech-savvy, but there should be a native solution. I’m not saying it works ideally, but for the main user it still works well.
So, I think they have this in progress and it is being worked on, but they certainly haven’t devoted full primary resources at it to get done within weeks or whatever for the above reasons. That’s not to say they won’t get it done, but they’ve long indicated that they devote their primary resources to things that will first be useful for every user, and not every user shares their cameras, so this would likely fall into second priority status…something that a large marketshare of their users needs for an ideal experience, so they’re still going to do it and they put some resources on it, but it will take a little more time than the things that affect and improve the experience for everyone.
I know the above is really simplified and doesn’t address everything involved in deciding which wishlists get what level of priority…I do elaborate on that a bit in other posts like this one:
But again, I don’t speak for or represent Wyze. I just pay attention to most everything they say in AMA’s, forum posts, and I do get a chance to interact with some employees, but the above are simply my interpretations and such.
Hopefully we do see some progress on this issue over the course of this year.
I’d argue that it IS tied to revenue, just not measurably (or at least not easily measurably).
I for one dismissed the new camera release and bought a Ring cam to replace the Wyze cam where not being able to pause notifications was a problem. I already had 3 Ring floodlight cams bought before Wyze introduced theirs, and knowing about the Wyze software limitations, will not replace with Wyze when they fail or if Wyze comes out with better hardware.
And I’m sure I’m not alone. I’m 1 customer, but my Wyze cams and my recommendations to family and friends will be moving to Ring now. So that’s fewer cameras sold, and fewer supporting subscriptions.
Sadly it’s a recurring theme with Wyze: great hardware, passable at best software. My 3 Wyze locks/keypads are great, but the app is so bad at detecting low battery (the warning comes weeks/months early) that I just let it die rather than replacing perfectly good batteries when the app claims they’re low.
Wyze seems to only be thinking of how the equipment buyer might use Wyze equipment for their own needs. My Birdycam involves enjoying the beauty of long distance sharing. It’s a show vs. a security system with an alarm and a spotlight, etc. I shared My previous cameras with as many as 30 viewers. I can’t do that unless I can limit viewers to just viewing, taking still photos and videos. Imagine how many viewers I could introduce to Wyze. The marketing value alone would justify Wyze helping me out.
Your post seems to be a good analysis, though it makes me curious what the data says about how many users are sharing. I’d be surprised if it was less than half. Half your user base would seem like justification enough. (Or perhaps a better metric would be how many Wyze app installs are being shared with?)
I hope Wyze employees are looking at the sharing metrics and making the case that every time a product gets shared that’s a potential future customer. If their experience sucks, they aren’t likely to spread the ‘good word.’
I trust they are working on it but the long delay is worrying. If their database architecture makes it so difficult to add better sharing its no wonder they’ve had these security mishaps.
Wyze, just throw advanced sharing behind the Cam Plus paywall and use that to justify the development costs. If that gets it done 2 years sooner, I think we’d all cheer.
When I have a bird family in the house my participation for watching skyrockets. I notify folks the minute a bird family begins building a nest. The show is very popular on a daily basis during nest building, egg laying, Mom and Dad feeding each other, then hatch day is intense, and baby feeding, and finally fledging. I’ve had probably 50 folks watching at 30 locations, some quite distant from me.
With my current setup I don’t dare share with 30 locations. Just one teenager who discovers the siren or the light, or decides to shout at the baby bids via the 2-way audio and the whole show is destroyed for the well-behaved viewers. I can’t risk it.
Can you count the potential customers for Wyze gear?
There is a huge potential market being overlooked: Nature lovers. A handful of nature lovers would set up Wyze cameras, but a huge audience loves to view the cameras set up by other more technical nature lovers. One Wyze camera user might attract 100s or even 1000s of viewers, and a certain percentage of those viewers get curious about the possibilities and want to become first-time Wyze users. Have I got your attention now, Wyze Marketing Dept?
This would be a tricky market for Wyze to tap into without some design and planning. The design ethos of its current cameras is essentially “This is private.” A public nature webcam is diametrically different.
So it adds another attack vector if you are using the same software and hardware. It doesn’t matter if someone accidentally enables sharing their child’s nanny cam – it would reflect badly on Wyze.
Then there is the cost of bandwidth and streaming video to hundreds or thousands of viewers?
However, all these issues could be addressed. Careful design to make it impossible to sureptiously enable and banner warnings on a public camera. A separate “stream to the public” license to cover architecture for streaming and bandwidth.
It’s an interesting idea but enough different that Wyze couldn’t just flip a switch.
That said, with the Telephoto OG, the Pan Cams, and the new high res cam a compilation of nature you could capture with Wyze cams isn’t the worst marketing idea
Thanks for your thoughts. It just seems to me to be a wide open market. maybe I’m buying cameras from the wrong company. I wonder if there is a camera and sharing systems well suited to sharing nature scenes live. Anyone?
I share my bird feeding table and birdbath with family, and just post videos on YouTube to share with them and anyone ekse who wants to watch. Works for me.
I just pay attention to most everything they say in AMA’s, forum posts, and I do get a chance to interact with some employees, but the above are simply my interpretations and such.
