RTSP Enthusiasts! Wyze cofounder here looking to gather data on how we might finally check RTSP off the wishlist and into the features column for you. Please give us your feedback if this is something you’re passionate about:
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Anyone looking for ideas, here is what I told them for my thoughts:
Why do you want RTSP on Wyze Cams and what will you do with it that you can’t already do with the Wyze app?
- Local functionality for when AWS goes down (not a single point of failure).
- Local Storage to NAS with unlimited and encrypted storage.
- Integration with smart home systems (you are lacking TONS of smart home options so we are forced to look elsewhere for some solutions and still need things to work together for automation).
- Better privacy.
- More flexibility:
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- There are docker integrations for specialized things like tracking kind of traffic at certain times, custom detections and automations not possible through Wyze app or rules.
- I use RTSP to automatically make sure there are no cats in the utility room before my cat litter robot is allowed to cycle the litter to clean it (otherwise it will scare my cats and they’ll stop using that litter box). I can’t do this with Wyze rules to connect to that Litter Robot 4, so I need Wyze cams to connect to Home Assistant so I can use them to detect a cat and only cycle the litter when they are not in the room.
- There are a billion things I WANT to use Wyze cams for, but I can’t because you have no RTSP or Home Assistant integration and I need that to do half the stuff I want to do because you don’t offer things like smart buttons, or Non-neutral wiring switches, or zigbee stuff, or litter robot cleaners, or smart speakers, or local connections, or water valve shut off, or a billion other things. All you really do anymore is cameras and your cameras won’t work together with anything else so people have to go elsewhere if they want a smart home.
What 3rd party software would you be most excited to use with your Wyze Cams if it had RTSP that you would want Wyze to support?
Home Assistant 100% no contest . I could do unlimited things with my cameras. I could make them into Motion sensors, I could use them to automate lighting and only have lights on when a person is there and turn off when there is no person for x minutes. I can do custom detections that aren’t possible with Cam Unlimited or CUPro, especially since you abandoned your Smart Vision feature. I can even do audio triggers with words. If you let Wyze work with Home Assistant, Wyze cams would actually be insanely powerful.
What functionality or camera features should Wyze RTSP support beyond just basic video + audio.
- Multi-Stream Support for different quality streams.
- PTZ control.
- Metadata streaming.
- Username/password authentication option.
- adaptive bitrate streaming.
- Multicast support.
While mostly outside RTSP, it would be great to have the following (to use in Home Assistant integrations)
- power on/off,
- notification/alerts,
- motion detection on/off,
- storage and playback controls,
- AI-based features (would be awesome if you integrated your AI detections or notifications into Home Assistant. I’d still pay for it if you did that),
- Cloud integration and remote access.
If you could only add RTSP to one Wyze Cam, which would you choose? & Please leave any final thoughts you wanna share with Wyze cofounders and dev teams before we begin work on RTSP:
I don’t like how “which camera” question was limited to 1 answer. You are implying we could allow this to a SINGLE Wyze device and no others ever, or instead pick to get it for EVERY SINGLE New Wyze device from now on (which is a no brainer to me). The question isn’t fair. I think every device from now on should be a given. Then the only remaining question should be which existing models should get priority first. That is how I am choosing to answer, but don’t think it means that I don’t want it on EVERY future camera, because I do.
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Yeah, that’s how the question was phrased, but the survey item used checkboxes and not radio buttons, so I picked, like, four different options. 
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Thank you for the wording. I just filled it out and full Home Assistant integration without AWS would also be my number one reason by orders of magnitude, but the way you wrote your answers were much better than I would have done on my own. I didn’t copy them, but it helped me to describe why it would be so helpful. Full HA integration would be like having a whole new and far more capable camera system.
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Thanks. Yes, that was exactly my hope. I was definitely not asking or hoping people would say exactly what I did, but I know that for me, it is helpful for me to see others’ thoughts and that helps remind me of things I have thought about over the years. Even if I have some different thoughts, seeing what others say helps to inspire my own thoughts. I was hoping sharing what I submitted might make more people consider doing the survey feedback even if it’s different from my feedback. I’m totally okay with and supportive of people disagreeing with or sharing different feedback. 
Any engagement at all on this topic is beneficial IMO.
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I use Ubiquiti. Their CloudKey2 has the capability of local recording through RTSP. It also has some AI detection I would like to explore.
Not a requirement, but a nice to have feature…
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Thanks for the feedback everyone! I’ve done the full analysis of the results, built a PRD and send it to our dev team to review. Next step would be to get our dev resources aligned to work on this. As I’ve said before, it’s a bit of a tough one because direct financial impact doesn’t make much sense given nobody wants to pay for this and its a large undertaking for our developers serving a relatively small group of power users, BUT totally understand you power users drive a lot of the word of mouth to our brand and we risk losing you if we don’t get it done! We don’t want that to happen ever, We are on it.
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Overall, this is extremely reassuring and I really appreciate the transparency. I understand this won’t be an instant thing and will likely take a while on the roadmap, but I have been appreciating the communication, particularly appreciating that the communication is coming from Dave, as one of the founders. Thanks for seeking our feedback and listening and taking it seriously. It’s really appreciated. 
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This is a Home Assistant example of what your competitors already have available using API access locally to the camera. Keep in mind, tp-link devices are within the Wyze price point and offer more for less at this point. Every situation where I need something where Wyze is, I have to replace it even if I don’t want to.
For example, I replaced my wyze floodlight with a Reolink one. Now I can create alerts and automations based on local person / animal detection and have my smart home do specific things I setup based on this. This is why power users such as myself are starting to phase out Wyze in favor something that offers “better bang for the buck”.
I like Wyze, but the software / firmware openness is a weak spot and I can’t recommend to most people like I did because times have changed and it doesn’t fit into ecosystems like they used to many years ago. Eventually all these people I talk to come back to me asking to do XYZ after they get adjusted to the devices, and hit a roadblock because of some weird functionality decision which makes it not fit their needs, then they are stuck with 10 devices that operate only at a basic level, and wait a few years until they need replaced, and go with some other brand. That’s my 2 cents input on the matter.
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I know you have been transparent about subscriptions and other costs which is amazing. Has wyze ever considered a one time purchase model for some features like local RTSP to help offset those costs?
Is it the cost of new software development that’s stopping Wyze from adding rtsp? They already have an rtsp beta. The bulk of the code is already well-tested FOSS. Only the integration part is needed.
I think the real reason is that Wyze sees cannibalization of its subscription base to the rtsp group, either directly or by word of mouth.
But now that people are realizing that there are other vendors that are on par with hardware that Wyze offers, and also offer rtsp, Wyze doesn’t really have a choice.
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It could be the potential subscription loss but I read the statement as more pointed at the development cost (time, testing, execution, not working on more broad features) based on the below quote. Both are potential financial impacts in their own way so good question.
Quote
“As I’ve said before, it’s a bit of a tough one because direct financial impact doesn’t make much sense given nobody wants to pay for this and its a large undertaking for our developers serving a relatively small group of power users”
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The percent of our user base that will actually use RTSP is like 1-3%. It won’t hurt our subs much at all. The biggest issue is actually hardware constraints and dedicating dev resources to figuring the balancing act out. We’ve been worried about it breaking other features on the cams or just not being able to build other features because the hardware is maxxed out.
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That’s the “direct” part. And it has always been that way since the beginning. But why the sudden interest to work on rtsp after a long time? Maybe it’s because more people not belonging to that 3% are thinking of jumping ship?
Edit - I have Cam Ultimate and don’t plan on terminating it. But I also have a need for rtsp.
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It’s always been on the wish list for us, but other stuff always gets prioritized because of the small number of users that would use RTSP and the hardware constraints it might place on all the other users who won’t. There’s been a number of moments that made us look into it again, but the most recent at least for me was this monster thread from power users that popped up on reddit. We studied all the feedback and saw that like 60% of these power users regretted picking Wyze as their foundation because no RTSP. That was just painful to see that feedback from our most hardcore supporters. So we started evaluating again to see what it would really take to get it done.
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Are we talking onboard soldered-in storage?
If so,
- How much does the v3 have?
- How much does the v4 have?
- How much does RTSP take up?
- Can it be offloaded onto the SD card via a button in the app to enable it? That way you can keep a reference in firmware, but the files on externally?
I would just be super upset if this was not on a v3 because that is the model I have all over my home. So even if RTSP was added sometime in the future, I would have to replace all of my devices, and most likely go with another brand where I can trust RTSP won’t be ripped out in a year. Yes, I’m afraid of this happening because it did the first time Wyze added it.
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I don’t have all the details easily accessible or I’d tell you! When we had it before we did it on a separate firmware so it wouldn’t mess with all the other users’s cameras, but sd card is some feedback I’ll pass along! But to me sounds like you need to join Wyze and come help us build it haha
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I try to throw my input in where possible, even if its negative. One can’t improve if the only thing being heard is sunshine and rainbows. I started as a normal user and evolved into wanting more eventually after get comfortable with the platform…maybe because of my IT background, like most advanced users. I try to get into every wyze test where possible, usually don’t get in, but sometimes it happens. This led to me testing for other companies as well, so my mindset is always a tester perspective, and I want wyze to work because the hardware is good…just needs that tiny push to finish covering all the bases and checking off all the boxes.
Do we need a full on centercode project with advanced users? Or is it better to develop the features and drop them in the open for the world? Would like to help where possible to test and implement this so it doesn’t get excluded in a future firmware update again. I really like having local control for quick and easy viewing, and having the cloud as a backup option.
Things will definitely need to change, like if the cloud goes down or cannot be accessed, we can’t have the cameras do an endless looping reboot cycle to try and re-establish a connection. There’s a lot to consider. We really need camera-synergy as well with the UI.
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I have an old D-Link camera that I can access locally thru RTSP or thru the internet. When I run the app I have the choice to access thru the internet or locally. This camera is around 15 years old. I just do not understand why wyze is having such a problem implementing this feature.