Quite frustrating to see Wyze throw faithful users from the beginning under the bus by not continuing Lite with the new v4. I was ready to buy 3 v4 cams and then found out lite is a no-go. I get how business works. I get it is a corporation that is supposed to make money. Wyze doesn’t have to discard loyal customers that helped them get started, they are choosing to do so.
Cam Plus Lite has not been available for any new Wyze cams for over 3 years.
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To me its actually better. Its the same as the v3 Pro (which also doesn’t have lite available) as it does person detection directly on the cam (clarification: and for free). That saves internet bandwidth, some additional security, less use of the router, etc.
I’d take this over AI being done on some server any day. I wish all of it could be local. Its the only way to go imo.
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I can speak to this.
Honestly we have looked at like a dozen ways to keep CPL on all cameras, including running 3rd party ads in the Wyze app to help us pay for it, but even then CPL is dicey financially. Even if we had big popup ads on screens, we ran some numbers and don’t think even the revenue from that would help us breakeven on cost, we would still be net negative.
Believe me, we want to. We just can’t find a way to make it revenue neutral. Almost every way you slice it, we lose either a significant amount of revenue every month.
Matt Van Swol
Head of Subscription Growth
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I think Cam+ Lite is almost useless. It’s like hiring a security guard who works for a minute then takes a 5-minute bathroom break. All the time. Get a good SD card instead.
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And optionally pay for Cam+ (not lite). There are advantages to both local uSD card recording and CamPlus.
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Is that true? I was curious about the same thing when I saw the promotional videos, but the product page says this: “While every Wyze Cam has Motion Detection, our plans get you more detections such as Person, Pet, Package, and Vehicle detection.” That seems to imply that a paid plan is necessary in order to enjoy a person detection feature.
I like the idea of on-camera person detection, especially if it’s capable of generating “Person Detected” notifications without a plan, but I haven’t yet seen anything that indicates this is the case.
What’s the antecedent to your “This”? I’m confused by your response.
If you’re saying that a Cam v4 can actually do person detection and generate specific “Person Detected” notifications as a standalone camera without a subscription, then that’s impressive for a few reasons:
- It’s adding value by providing a premium feature in the base product that I don’t have in my other cameras (though the generic motion and sound detections have met my expectations so far).
- Performing this kind of detection on the device seems like it would result in significantly faster alerts to the user because there’s no need for additional calls to a remote server for the detection processing.
- I’m not aware of anything else that does this at this price.
- If the Head of Subscription Growth is telling me that I don’t actually need a subscription in order to use these features, then that seems especially bold and refreshingly honest.
Is that actually what you’re saying?
If the intention was indeed to provide it without subscription, it seems that your enthusiasm might have triggered some rethinking 
I don’t know about that. I’d just like some clarification on @WyzeMatt’s “This is actually correct.” The “This” is unclear to me.
@WyzeMatt I don’t need the cloud service of lite, but would like the option of something where I can select notification of person rather than it just being locked to “other”
Sorry, what I meant was that Wyze Cam v3 Pro comes with free person detection. Although it does have a cooldown period of 5 minutes.
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Since I didn’t get a direct answer to my previous questions here, I found this in the support article:
- Edge AI Person Detection is included with Wyze Cam v4 and Wyze Cam v3 Pro, powered by the cameras’ on-board chip, rather than relying on the cloud. It is not as powerful as Wyze AI Person Detection, included with Cam Plus and Cam Protect, and does not include any other smart features.
That’s still pretty cool to have that on the camera itself.
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The original V2 had edge computing, too. Until they lost the license to the software and had to remove it. That in turn led to Cam+ Lite.
Can we get that for v4
My theory is that eventually person detection will be standard free on all cams at some point in the future and that Facial Recognition will be the #1 paid feature for Wyze Cams. The subscription team will probably not love that I said that out loud haha, but it’s the truth.
Facial Recognition is a league of it’s own and so far beyond just “person detected” that I honestly rarely ever use Person Detection and opt for Facial Recognition (turning off person detection) on all my Wyze Cams at this point.
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I appreciate this answer, and it makes me more interested in trying the Cam v4. Does the on-camera Person Detection also generate notifications to that effect (e.g., “Person Detected”)?
As a customer and user, I respect the honesty, and it makes me more interested in the products, so thank you for that.
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On-device person detection does generate the same notifications.
and you bet 