Outdoor Camera vs. Indoor Camera for Front Porch

I’m already using a Wyze (indoor) Camera to monitor our front door area from a weather protected location under our front porch roof, with USB power cord neatly routed. I’m wondering if there would be any advantage to moving to the new Outdoor Camera for that location. I would want to leave it plugged into USB power continuously for convenience since it’s already available. The only issue I have with the current setup is a substantial number of useless Motion events per day due to flying bugs. The Person alerts work very well.

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Not a reason in the world to replace what you have with the WCO. I would suggest supplementing your existing V1/V2 with a Wyze PIR motion sensor to cut down on the bug alerts. That’s what I intend to try.

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At one time, I added a wyze motion sensor to a v2, it actually worked pretty good.

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I like the idea of using the separate motion sensor to trigger my V2 front door camera, but am wondering how I enable ONLY the separate sensor motion detection (and disable the V2 motion detection) to get away from all those flying insect motion detection events I’m seeing now?

IIRC, you have to disable event recording on the cam, then set up a rule to record a video on that cam when motion is detected on the motion sensor

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Thank you, Ken. Does that make it to the cloud server or do PIR induced recordings on a V2 have to go to SD? That would be problematic because my Wyze SD cards hardly ever work.

Sense triggered videos goes to the cloud and are labelled smart video alert. I only use my V2s with external PIR because bug alerts suck. Person detection or CMC does not work with sense triggered videos right now. Not a big deal for me since the external PIR cuts out most of the false alerts and is real motion anyway. I’d say 90%+ of my external PIR sense videos has a legitimate heat source moving in the viewing area and bugs are pretty much a non issue for me. If Spider webs are allowed to build up in the area it seem to produce some weird results but after clearing them away it works really well for me.

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True that. What kind of effective outdoors detection range do you get from the external Wyze PIR sensors? Thanks!

Hmm sorry I don’t really have a good answer for that since in my placements the range is pretty restricted and nothing can really move beyond 30 feet since there is wall or embankment opposite the sensor. If you were pointing one towards a busy road it could get annoying and would probably have to play with the mounting location to exclude unwanted areas. I.e. Angle it downwards or block off part of the detection area with a piece of tape partially covering the sensor. I’ve read users placing the sensor in a piece of pvc pipe to focus and restrict the area and create a sort of “trip wire” to trigger recordings.

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Thanks! 30’ is good for most of what I have in mind around entrances. Angling down to limit excess range is a good idea too.
My driveway alarms much more easily detect traffic moving across their field of view, rather than directly toward or away from them. Do Wyze PIR sensors work the same?

I think PIR would detect better across than towards but this is more a feeling based on my basic understanding of how it works and not backed up by any strict testing. I can’t say I’ve noticed towards motion being less reliable. If the sensor is angled downwards any motion directly towards it would also have a “across” component as well.

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I should mention during the majority of the time that I tested the outdoor cam it covered an area that overlapped one of my motion sensor triggered V2’s. There was a very high degree of accuracy between the two setups. Almost every sense triggered V2 clip had a corresponding clip from the outdoor cam and vice versa unless there was a bug in that firmware revision.

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IIRC, using the motion sensor to trigger a smart video alert does not have the 5 min cooldown, I’m sure @kjay can confirm.

This was my set up a year ago, but I can’t remember why I stopped using this method.

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Thank you that is great to know. My case is only somewhat similar except that I am pointing down at steps, a walkway, and trying to exclude the sidewalk and street beyond. @desertshores described how he tested his sensor by repeatedly walking near it; his is mounted pointing down at a threshold so that all approaching people “cross” the sensor I suppose.

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Yup the cool down can drop down from 5 minutes to as low as 40 seconds which is another bonus. If you have continuous recording on and are trying to find an event it’s much easier to have a timestamp that allows you to review footage In smaller intervals.

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is there any downsides to using smart video instead of the v2 triggered motion? I know there was a reason I switched back to the v2 motion, but for the life of me I can’t remember why.

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The only downsides I can think of is the lack of person detection and CMC. If you have trouble with the sensors in general then that would be problematic as well as it is another potential source of failure. I use 4.9.5.111 firmware on the camera that has the bridge connected (I had issues with the newer firmwares and sense). I also have rules that reboot the camera with the bridge (all cameras actually) twice a day. I do not own any pan cams but have read users having more issues with sense if the bridge is in a pan.

Personally I don’t find person detection necessary if the majority of your alerts are real and i can decide for myself if there is a person or not. CMC I can live without as well since I got a lot of recordings that were not very useful if I turned off the person filter. Also one less subscription service is a win for me even if it’s affordable.

Edit: One thing i just remembered is that the motion sensors seem to be less reliable if its cold outside as well (near freezing or slightly below.) I have not tried it in super cold climates. If it’s super cold and you have problems you could always switch back to the way you had it before since there are way less bugs when it’s cold.

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Great summary, thanks. It almost lets me believe I might not have to dump my Wyze stuff for a “real” security monitoring system after all. :slight_smile:

I already have mostly old firmware and of course I’d put the bridge on an indoor cam with a short power run.

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the picture I posted was July '19, so I never tried in the cold MN winters, maybe it was the lack of person detection that made me switch back, definitely wasn’t cmc since it wasn’t available then.

I currently have 2 bridges, I have them both in PANs, but moved one to a v2, it didn’t seem to get much better. The other one is still in a PAN with the latest alpha/beta firmware & never had a issue with the contact sensor connected to it.

I have 2 motion sensors I’m not using, guess I need to give it another try :slight_smile: the bugs during the summer just creates way too may false events.

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Hmm, but the whole reason I want to add the PIRs is to avoid the bug false alarms.

Edit: sigh I just realized I misread @Ken.S . He wasn’t saying the PIRs are susceptible to bugs (though I’m sure they are), he was saying that, like me, he’s hoping they will cut down on the camera bug alerts.