K6CCC - You are spot on the money my friend!
2 Likes
RTSP was most certainly promised, but I agree that the rest were not.
I was asked what was “wrong” with the camera and everything on my list qualifies.
Granted, but again, these are the shortcomings that separate it from being a pro-level camera, and FWIW, the V3 Pro actually has “Pro” in its name, so it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect some more pro-like features. But instead, it loses the single most pro-like feature by not supporting RTSP as it’s predecessor did. It’s hard to talk about Wyze cameras without talking about the V3 and the V3 Pro. And now, the OG takes yet another step in the wrong direction, which really does beg comparison and conversation.
If it’s not an issue for you, then that’s great for you. But if you had an NVR like Blue Iris, you would be giving up a genuinely useful security tool because there’s nothing quite like hearing a couple of bad actors calling each other by name! Or for that matter, being able to tell what kind of engine a vehicle has by the sound. I can recognize the mail truck from a block away on one of my UNV cameras.
I mostly agree with you, as long as one has no interest in using them with a more sophisticated security system, But if a Wyze camera can’t work and play well with all of the other cameras in a system, then that severely limits its usefulness.
Well, it’s Volkswagen, not “Volkswagon”, but that’s actually a better analogy than you probably realize. In the day of the bug, there was a certain something that one might never be aware of unless one happened to own one. It didn’t handle like an exotic car, but it sure was fun to drive. I’m not quite sure why. Even after making my living working on VWs for a number of years, I still cant put my finger on it. But I owned a great many of them over the years, and I enjoyed all of them. Being a mechanic, I tuned some of them up so that they were easily a match for the muscle cars of the day, and that was more fun than most people can imagine. They were fun bone stock, and they were fun to customize too.
Wyze has a sort of similar certain something. They have the bones to become the “bug” of security cameras. Do you know that they make little birdhouse enclosures for the V3? And camo skins? It reminds me more than a little of de-chroming a bug. Or building a VW engine that creates a kind of mental paradox when driving the car. I once loaned my '67 daily driver to a good friend…a guy who owned multiple big-block Mopar muscle cars. He came back with many smiles and tried his best to describe his feeling while looking out over the hood of my bug and getting slammed back in the seat like he did in his 440 GTX. He described it as surreal. See, that’s the kind of thing that set the bug apart from the more pedestrian vehicles of the day.
So I have to ask, will Wyze recognize their own potential? They build cameras that people want to love. Myself included. But unlike VW they lack the rich aftermarket. They build cameras that even a so-called pro like me could love, if only they would make a few relatively simple improvements. It requires more of a change in attitude on their part than a change in hardware. They just have to want to do it. They just have to want a more diverse customer base. not unlike VW’s journey from the humble bug.
At my VW shop, I had a long-time customer who drove a high-end Mercedes, but he came to me because the car that really lit his fire was a white '66 Beetle. He would drive up in has bad-ass Mercedes and drive off with a big smile on his face in his bug. Abandoning the car that must have cost a hundred times more in my parking lot. Is it okay to leave it (he would always ask)? He’d show up a day (or a week) later with his wife, also wearing a big smile, to retrieve his work car. I witnessed similar events, many, many times. It was a lot of fun.
Today, VW has the highest revenue of any car company in the world, It all started with the bug, but their lineup now includes Audi, Porsche and Ducati. And Bentley. They don’t own Ferrari, but they do own Lamborghini !
It strikes me that Wyze could learn a lot from the Volkswagen saga. And if they could do as well for themselves…well…who wouldn’t want that? They just need to see their own potential. They need to break their own mold like VW did when they re-invented themselves with the New Beetle in 1998, and for a time, once again had one of the most beloved cars in the world. VW didn’t get where they are today by ignoring their potential market. And neither will Wyze (get where VW is, I mean).
I once worked at a VW dealership that was affectionately known as, “The House the Bug Built” - they had it right on their sign. I remember that the price of the shiny new 1969 Beetle on the showroom floor was $1,799. VW had a lot of success with the Beetle, but they never ignored their market. Now, the VW Atlas starts at $43,000. If you can get one. The Bentley Continental is $357,000. The VW Beetle was once the Wyze cam of cars, thriving by selling inexpensive products. But they they didn’t get stuck at $1,799. They perceived that their market was calling for more, and they answered that call. I hope Wyze will be wise enough to do the same.
1 Like
But none of this justifies the “Actually yes, they are that bad”, which was the original question. Even the person posting that couldn’t add to that.
What do you see as drop dead in comparison to others in the same price range? Why do you buy elsewhere? Or should Wyze just shut down and forget about it they are so bad?
Granted, they could create a Lamborghini or Lexus offshoot, and I too would encourage them to do so, lol. 
But why trash Wyze? What is better at the same cost point?
Anyone knows the size of the OG cam mount hole? Any adapter from that size to 1/4" female?
I think I answered here, but not on any possible adapter:
Did I ever “trash” Wyze?
Well,…if one needs a camera that works with industry-standard protocols, then literally any camera that has that basic functionality would be infinitely preferable, no matter what it costs! If we fall back to your VW analogy, it would be like not offering cars with a left-hand driving position in customers in the USA. Kind of like Wyze, they would still have the right-hand market, but they’d miss out on the entire left-hand market. Wyze can keep re-spinning their current products for as long as there are customers willing to buy them.
As for me, I have a decent industry-standard security system, so I’m not going to buy any camera that doesn’t support the necessary industry-standard protocols. That’s not trashing Wyze - that’s just how it is. If they didn’t have such a cool compact form-factor, I wouldn’t even be talking about them. But they do, so I did.
As for Wyze’s direct competition, I don’t care about them because IMHO, they don’t have such a cool form factor as Wyse. Add to that the fact that they are all stuck in their their own proprietary and mutually incompatible universes, and I have no use for them. AFAIK, none of them work with any other brand. This is exactly the reason that standards exist. What if we had dozens of proprietary television protocols? You’d have to buy a TV for every content provider who had programming that was of interest to you.
Actually, they may be a bad example, because the streaming wars have created a similar dilemma…
1 Like
Good thread, @MarkTX.
Source: Reddit AMA - Wyze Cam Pan v3 and Wyze Cam OG Product Team - 1/19/2023
This also caught my ear, from their recent video (8:00):
This camera reminds us that this company is not built on luxury branding, or fancy marketing campaigns, or charismatic leadership, it’s built on users. All we want to do is make super cool stuff that you guys love, and that you want to share with your friends.
And, I know I heard it, can’t now find it, but founder Dave recently made a comment that they’d received pushback from the user base about the price of the V3 Pro.
And a significant segment have been bleating for them to ‘focus, get back to the basics’ for quite a long time.
I understand you’re lobbying, I don’t think you’re a hater, carry on… 
Thanks for sharing your perspective. It punctuates the futility of my super-insightful lamentations here,
It’s been fun, but unlike some lobbyists, I don’t get paid, and it really does take quite a bit my time, so I think I’m going to have to bow out.
It’s not that I have money to burn, but at the same time, value cannot be determined by price alone. To rail one more time on my way out, if it doesn’t support industry-standard RTSP / ONVIF protocols, it has no value to anyone with an industry-standard security system. Or to say it the other way around, no one with (what might arguably be called) a “real” security system, can justify buying into the insular Wyze ecosystem, nor any other proprietary / non-compliant ecosystem.
2 Likes