We are just talking about Image Quality though. there are plenty of other things that this will be different from v2.
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I’d say they ARE offering a quality camera for a very low price. But you’re obviously not going to get a Red Digital Cinema camera for 20 bucks or whatever.
They’re making a really good hamburger for a super low price. If you’re looking for a filet mignon, you’re in the wrong market segment, and you’re delusional if you expect to pay bargain basement prices.
My apologies to the vegans for the analogy. Haha.
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TheEggMan:
I believe you may be incorrect about being able to augment PIR with AI.
Look at the Imou Cue 2. This camera is inexpensive and has PIR plus AI detection algorithm for detecting human movement. It also has other features that seem worth having. Yes the price is almost double the V2 price but at about $39.00 (and I can’t speak for others) well within the price point I would pay.
Wyze is a small new company and I like what they are doing so I am willing to go through some of the growing pains that every startup must go through. However…that patients can only go so far. When I see other cameras with better features for (to me) reasonably similar price, I have to consider them.
I’m hoping their outdoor camera will have similar or better features than those that are already out there.
I get your point as well. Our opinions on their strategy are not too different - just guessing they’ll be moving in a more incremental fashion such as a cam v2 plus outdoor before they release a cam pro outdoor.
Fwiw, I’m no expert but PIR is not image sensing - simply heat radiation sensing. Maybe it assumes a heat signature of a certain size is a human. But AI would seem to require image processing. Again, no expert, just seems logical.
Check to see if the AI person detection is involved with the PIR or with the image sensor.
PIR is a very simple technology. I suppose you could process the raw analog signal with some sort of machine learning algorithm, but you aren’t going to do that and be low power.
Does this camera do this AI detection whilst running off battery?
No it uses a Micro USB…,thank goodness! There is no way I want my security cameras running off battery power! Besides battery not being reliable (they work poorly in winter or even very hot days), I don’t want the inconvenience of having to constantly be changing batteries every few months.
The ease and convenience of installing a camera with battery power is not comparable to the inconvenience of installing the camera to run of of direct power. Battery power is a constant headache, where direct power is a one time issue.
Add to that, who wants to be constantly climbing on a ladder to change a battery in your outdoor camera?
Give me the one time inconvenience of direct power over long term inconvenience and reliability issues of battery power.
I’m not an enthusiast of battery power for most of these applications either. I suppose it works ok if you have a camera on a porch or something similar where you can reach it from the ground, but if I have to climb a ladder to replace or charge a battery I get profoundly uninterested.
On the PIR as it pertains to the new Outdoor camera, what I’m telling you is that it is a means to extend battery life, the battery being a new feature in this product. You use a PIR in this sort of application because you must power down the image sensor to preserve your battery. The PIR sits there pulling microwatts of power and when it detects motion it wakes up the camera and it streams some video. That’s what you have to do if you’re running off battery.
If you’re locally powered, you run the image sensor and do AI human detection with that, which will be far better than whatever you might do with a PIR sensor. You’ve just got so much more information in an video stream that it is ripe for AI processing. PIR … not so much. The PIR is an artifact of battery powering. You don’t really need it when you have local power.
Everyone is so fixated on their own needs that they fail to acknowledge others have valid needs as well. They keep insisting it’s the only way so everybody should just capitulate. If you want wired powered for the greater features possible and eliminating the inconvenience of batter replacements, more power to you. But don’t diminish those who have valid needs for a battery powered device even though it may be a compromise.
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True. But if you have local power, PIR could potentially make your detection smarter. I’m not sure to what extent other camera companies have implemented that. But it could – at least in theory – make it easier for the camera to tell the difference between shadow movements and real movements. Especially if they wanted to implement some cool interactive AI.
So many shadow/light movements are specific to the environment of the individual camera, so it could be the most powerful if the end-user could go through and tag certain types of motion to teach it the difference. First, you’d set it up and let it capture all kinds of motion events for a few days, day and night. Then you’d go and tag them “shadows,” or “lights,” or “real movement” (Or even more specifically, human movement/vehicle movement/animal movement/wind movement/etc)
I’m sure that level of AI wouldn’t be easy to implement, but MAN, it would be awesome! (Oops. We’re gender neutral here, right? I meant “THEM, it would be awesome!” 
)
I didn’t really take it that way. He said he’s not a fan, not that you shouldn’t be.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
Speaking of which, I’m not a fan of how this forum deletes my backslash when I try to use a shruggie.
Anyway, lots of us chime in with our own ideas and opinions which work best for our personal use-cases. Wyze seems fairly democratic in their product development, so it’s good to see what everyone’s opinions are. Helps them make a better product. No harm in trying to get other people excited about our ideas (or trying to dissuade people from something we might think is a bad idea)
Crisis averted – I figured out how to write a shruggie: I have to wrap it in the code tag. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Fwiw, I was just commenting in general not anyone specific and actually more related to the doorbell cam thread - I kinda got lost here😬
I agree with TheEggMan. Not a fan of battery. I also agree with nerdland, however,to twm.53, No one here is fixated on their own needs. Battery is “simply put” inferior to straight power and I’m afraid that many potential users are not aware of that and simply think…wow battery power and not know or consider all the issues. (By the way, it is my understanding that the outdoor Wyze cam will have both options).
For those who have no choice but to only use battery power…Wyze has you covered. BUT if you have the ability or option to use straight power you will be far better off in the long run in reliability, long term convenience and features.
To show how unreliable it is to rely on battery power, there have been studies that show that over 1/3 or more of smoke detectors are not providing any protection because the battery is dead and has not been replaced! And these units are indoors within easy reach!! Can you imagine the percentage of security cameras powered by battery that will become inoperable over time? My guess, much higher.
Considering you can pick up a Dashcam with a 4mp IMX 335 sensor for around £100, it should be possible to build an Outdoor Wyze for under that. Using slightly older lower 2 mp technology such as an IMX 291 for considerably less. I could point out the picture failing of Wyze vs a good CCTV camera but I won’t. Suffice to say, commercial cams can be had for less than the Ring offerings. As for bargain bucket hamburgers, you don’t know the price of the Wyze Outdoor yet and as I’ve said many times before, any camera with security use in mind, lives or dies on the quality of it’s picture. You can have an all singing all dancing fancy tech cam, but if it doesn’t identify a thief with a clear sharp low noise picture in all lighting conditions from at least 15 feet away, then it’s useless as a security camera. All features will get you is a bigger user manual. They won’t get you justice or your stuff back.
I would strongly suggest the outdoor wyze cam not use PIR, but instead use the radar technology. PIR is sensitive to sunlight and shadows triggering it - my outdoor blink cameras are nearly useless because of this. The radar technology is actually cheaper to implement, and only detects actual moving things in front of the camera, not sunlight filtering through clouds. It can be adjusted in sensitivity like PIR, to not trigger for things like trees moving in the wind, but still trigger for humans and larger animals. Ideally, the camera would have a PIR and a radar sensor and only trigger when both were tripped - this would reduce false positives tremendously, however it would add an additional cost and a slight increase in power consumption.
Just image quality? See also my post before this one above. A security camera lives or dies on it’s ability to identify a thief in all lighting conditions from at least 15 feet away. Build a great security cam, and it will be great for bird watching. Build a great bird watching cam, and it won’t necessarily catch thieves, The best product eg antivirus, the best watch, or best camera, isn’t necessarily the one with the most features.
Yes, it should/would. That’s $125 USD. I’m guessing they’re aiming for significantly less than that.
If I were a betting man, I’d wager on a $30-40 price tag for the outdoor cameras. Just a guess, but it’s based on their previous price points, and based on how their competitors differentiate their price points for similar product lines.
These cameras aren’t built for pro-level security. They’re for DIY hobbyists who want a way to keep an eye on things. I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of Wyze customers are NOT people who would have had monitoring cameras installed 5 years ago, as an example. At that time, the expense, the expertise required to install, the (lack of) user experience, and the overall hassle meant that those kinds of systems were generally installed by professionals, and were generally too pricy for average homeowners – even most homeowners who might have had a typical home security system at the time. But in 2019, that’s not the case. The IoT/smart home/smart device era is coming into its own, and that has opened doors for a lot of new people.
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I agree the vast majority won’t have had pro security systems installed. Neither have I. I just know a bit about them and have had a lot of other camera experience such as dashcams. This is where I think the world is changing. People are waking up to the possibility of home security and what it can offer, and with that is coming a demand for better systems at DIY prices, just as the demand for dash cameras is now starting to push up quality. There’s no doubt Wyze has been a budget brand, and probably wants to stay within that market. However, given the price of eg the Ring Spotlight @ $200, I personally see every possibility of Wyze being able to offer something like professional quality at a price considerably below the Ring and maybe even well below $100 depending on the sensor used. I’d be delighted to see a camera in the $50 price range, but I’d certainly pay a bit more, maybe $70-80 for a better picture.
You can’t use radar and run off a battery. Radars require a transmitter that is running pretty much all the time and probably at at least 10mW(ish) of power. Not compatible with battery power, and battery power seems to be the main operating mode of the new Wyze Outdoor Cam based on their hints.
I keep emphasizing that once you commit to a battery, you become very constrained on power usage. You can’t monitor the image sensor for motion, you can’t run a radar, you can’t do a lot of things. You have to have your device in deep sleep mode and then use something that is very low power - like PIR - to wake it up.
Yes, you could put a simple radar (a cheap doppler like that used to open doors on retail stores), but it would only be there for when you were running on mains power. It would have to be disabled when on battery. So now you’re adding hardware that is simply a cost burden for those users that aren’t on mains power of some sort.
You can’t keep sticking geegaws on your product because someone might want it in some installation. That’s a sure way to end up with a product that is priced out of the market and nobody wants it.