Google Nest is in the process of taking away some favorite features as part of slowly forcing us to their new Google Home app including Zoom & Enhance and they are multi-$Billion company. I have been using this great feature for over 10 years.
The reason I mention this is I have been much happier with new functionality from Wyze than from $Billion Gooogle. There are always challenges to who you partner with and how you deploy limited resources having worked in the tech industry. Nest has been incredibly slow with functionality since they bought Nest (previously Dropcam). Dropcam was smaller, nimbler and focused with many early customer endorsed advances. Good timesā¦
I stumbled upon Wyze due to very limited needs. At the time in 2018, ring and nest were the popular choices for a db cam, but overkill for our needs. Only reason I got into Wyze was for the low cost, NON-subscription cam since it wasnāt worth the expense of a ring or nest, or subscription, just to see packages being delivered. It was a gated community, nearly zero crime, no thefts were ever reported in our time there. The $25 and no subscription was an ideal entry to ip cams to see if it provided any benefit. I then fell into the Facebook group, this forum and this thread among a few others since the topics make sense.
FWIW, I have used a usb connected drive somewhat successfully but only on my own samba server, never reliably on a router. Itās was a really old pc that took up too much space so I shut it down to sell off the parts. I replaced it with a buffalo NAS which is old now, but still would be ideal to use for cam storage since my routine pc backups only use 1/4 of the space available. Plus my desktop has loads of spare drive space I could easily share across the lan. But, as it stands now, Iām not sure we even need any cams here at the new house. I did install the db the other day, and it would be nice to have it store clips on my NAS, but I would not be interested in paying Wyze for another NAS or one tied to their router or any other proprietary stg.
I stumbled onto Wyze about 1 1/2 years ago.
A good friend was at his cabin for the week. He has a Nest cam at the front door of his house and a Wyze cam in the living room. The Wyze cam provided him with info that went to police and they caught the intruder a couple of days later. The indoor Wyze cam let them know that he was only in the house for 2-3 minutes before their alarm went off. It was comforting knowing he was out quickly.
We do have some challenges in our area. I have had my car stolen in 1981 and window broken on each of our 2 cars in the past several years. The low cost of Wyze and great night colour vision has resulted in me putting up additional cams which provide surround the house coverage.
A combination of motion lights and cameras in our front yard and carport scared the most recent attempt a couple of months ago. Neighbours were not as fortunate and they had items taken from vehicles & a garage. His face was covered and he had head spotlight that blinded the cameras but I did get shape & size on video clip which I gave to neighbour for police file.
Since then I recently put up reflective āVIDEO SURVEILLANCEā signs to make it more apparent to GO elsewhere.
NAS storage would be nice though I have been quite happy so far with the micro SD cards and it is great to see the ongoing improvements to the access, tagging, etc. NEST only has cloud storage.
The idea, the work, the effort, the so-to-speak promise of Maxdrive is what very first brought me to Wyze and then I looked at their cameras - with Maxdrive making them ever better. I was a heart-ripping announcement when they told us their ādealā with their Maxdrive vendor had fallen through. And we hoped that they would find another. So, this is a Second time.
Not without 3rd party software. Check out docker-Wyze-bridge, wz-minihacks, homebridge, scrypted, and the forum subject here regarding rtsp solutionsā¦ if you need more than reading the wiki info for those applications, then they may not be your cup of tea. But I know some are using docker-Wyze-bridge to get recordings on their existing equipment. I have not gone that far since Iām happy just getting my cams into HomeKit.
All of these option work within the realm of mediocrity without some sort of officially sanctioned API access. They are also limited as to which cameras will work, because some of them are weird. Heck, even Wyzeās own webview doesnāt work with all of their cameras.
Agree, but mediocrity is also somewhat subjective since there are a wide range of needs. Like you say. Wyze itself is mediocre. Also what may be mediocre to you may be ideal to me. I tend to just enjoy the challenge of getting these things working and having a small pile of old laptops, these solutions have given them new life. Iād never go out and buy more wyze products based on the ability of 3rd party software to add value. I donāt have high end needs and they work fine for my simple needs. I suggest them only in the event that they might help someone. I agree, without the official wyze support, itās difficult to create reliability. I think I see you listed as a developer so you know full well the challenges. But for now, those who are inclined to dive in, can, in many cases, add functionality.
Iām not a developer, but I am a dabbler. Iāve waded deep into the mediocrity, and I find myself wanting.
For example, dabbling with the new plugin on Scrypted to push feeds into Homekit and Homekit Secure Video. Itās messy, at best and only works with a subset up cameras.
This could be mitigated by Wyze offer up full API access to those that want it. They could likely charge a subscription for thisāsince they are now a subscription company. Iām sure people would happily pay for that to use better front ends, for example.
Donāt agree on subscription, seems like most of those going to these options are looking to avoid paying a subscription. Not sure how the scrypted nvr will fare since I think itās planned to be by subscription. Certainly will need to be reliable and offer more than camplus at least for the wyze crowd. But maybe for those wanting a nvr who do not already own a NAS it will have some appeal.
@WyzeSteveM I tried to contact support regarding this issue and was initially offered only a $5 happiness credit, which I find rather insulting considering I spent $300+ on a set of 2 of these routers with the intent of the local storage option for my wyze cams.
Honestly these āpro routersā are no more use to me than the regular wyze mesh routers.
Hereās the problem as I see it. The community has repeatedly asked for the ability to record to a centralized storage medium, such as a NAS, for 4 years. Wyze has repeatedly acknowledged this and at one point, even looked into it. Now we know this is possible as you can easily do this with a Plus series Synology NAS using Docker and Surveillance Station, but the problem is cost as the licenses for Surveillance Station are not cheap. So why isnāt Wyze developing their own method for doing this? Itās really quite simple. They would rather nickel and dime their customers by forcing them to subscribe to Cam Plus instead of providing customers with what they really want. Wyze will never provide its customers a NAS solution, which is why they are losing longtime customers.
I donāt think itās that. They know that the people who would use local recording are already the same people who are unlikely to subscribe to Cam Plus. Adding or removing that ability is unlikely to have a statistically significant affect on their cloud subscriptions or theyād stop offering the SD card as an option too to prevent people doing local storage. Itās close to the same thing. Most people who get the cloud subscription do so for the convenience, plus no tech skills required to figure out an NAS, and get access to all the AI detections/notifications, etc all managed simply through the Wyze app. If it was fear of local storage theyād stop supporting SD cards.
The main issue is the wasted resources theyād have to pay and devote to develop it with little to no return on the investment, and for something that only a fraction of their customer base would use. They have said that they prioritize the majority of their resources to things that all or MOST of their userbase will use or benefit from, and all else is secondary not necessarily off the table though. So, itās really mostly because theyād rather devote resources toward things that almost everyone can benefit from, or that will actually have a return on the investment of those same resources. In the case of this year, they said in AMAs that they are devoting a ton of resources toward AI advancement. One of the founders even said something about an AI robot theyāre developing that could do chores for us.
Having said all that, In the most recent AMA on Reddit, we users all bombarded Wyze with questions about supporting RTSP, and other local improvements, and actually got some positive statements this time about how they are finally considering some new local options, though nothing is set in stone yet.
We users who strongly want RTSP and local options may not be the overwhelming majority at the moment, but we are growing and we are more active and loud and we do make up an IMPORTANT section of their userbase. This change of statement from them that they are considering some new local options is a positive tone change from previous statements in other AMAs that have basically been solid Noās, to now say they are having discussions and considering some options. I think it is only a matter of time as RTSP and local options are become standard and more popular and they will need to do it just for the extra exposure on tech site recommendations, etc.
But in summary, I donāt think it is really about thinking theyāll get more people to sign up for cam plus. The people who want local recording are not their target market for cam plus. most of those people are unlikely to get cam plus anyway, so they donāt really statistically gain or lose much anymore than they do by offering local recording to an SD card. The main issue is the return on investment for the same amount of resources or cost expenditure (employee salary/time) that could be devoted to something with a higher return on investment. From a business standpoint, on direct measurable return it makes sense. But I think the indirect and secondary factors that are less obvious will eventually bring them around to need to start adding it to some future newer cameras. My guess is that they will start doing it to some newer Pro cameras first, and that it wonāt happen soon, quite likely not this yearā¦but I bet I suspect they will get to that point in the next 1-2 years especially if/when matter ever finishes their standards for cameras and pressure builds for that. I donāt think they will be among the first launches of matter on cameras, but I suspect they will join it after it becomes more normalized. THENā¦then we will have our local NAS options. That is my guess.
Stumbled across this. And its what I have wanted for years. Wyze intent to provide a NAS product is what brought me to Wyze in the first place. I bought a bunch of there stuff, to support the development of their NAS. If they are not going to offer one, then I will start my move to Tapo when this is Smart HomeBase available. Storage capable of 16 TBs.
Considering that other products have had centralize storage for years yet Wyze has continued to fail at delivering on this promise is exactly why Iām moving to Eufy. Yes their stuff costs a bit more, but at least they listen to their customers and deliver.
