Over - Reddit AMA - Wyze Cam Pan v3 and Wyze Cam OG Product Team - 1/19/2023

[carverofchoice]

AMA: Wyze Cam Pan v3 and Wyze Cam OG Product Team - Reddit Summary

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Why so many different cameras with similar functionality?

@WyzeDongsheng

In general, each category has 2-3 models. For example, for wired cameras we have Wyze Cam OG at the entry level, Wyze Cam v3 and possible Wyze Cam v4 at the mid level, and Wyze Cam v3 Pro at the premium level. In the doorbell category, we have the Wyze Video Doorbell at the entry level and Wyze Video Doorbell Pro at the premium level. We will do a better job at explaining the product lineup so customers can understand better how to choose the product for their needs.

What is Wyze Cam V4? Spill some details for us.

We don’t have details, since it is a bit far out…

Why so much more attention for the OG compared to the other recent cams?

@WyzeDave

Great question. I am happy to give you the true reasons.

When you acquire a new smart home user with a super low cost camera, we see most customers come back to purchase other Wyze products and subscribe to services. We build a long term relationship with the user.

For Wyze to be sustainable, this long term relationship is critical. We barely make any profit on a single camera sale. We have to focus hard to make sure users have a great experience and then they come back to purchase more products and services as they build out their Wyze ecosystem.

When Wyze first launched, We were 1/10th of the price of competitor cameras. Over time, these competitors are starting to copy/paste our business model. The whole market has come down, and the battles to acquire new smart home users are tougher.

As their prices and features have gotten closer to ours, we feel it was critical to once again make sure we had a big separation between us. We were determined to have the top feature loaded cam at a ridiculous price to ensure the sustainability of Wyze well into the future. That’s why this particular launch is so important and why it’s gotten so much focus, including from Dongsheng as the PM. It’s how we acquire the next big wave of Wyze users at a price point that the new Wyze Can Pan v3 and Wyze Cam v3 Pro can’t do.

Why would you get a V3 over an OG or vice-versa?

@WyzeDongsheng

Wyze Cam OG improves over v3 with a lower price point. It has a built-in spotlight, improved audio quality, faster in live-streaming and notification, and BLE for easier setup. It is the best entry point security camera.

It also comes with a new Picture in Picture functionality, where you can view two Wyze Cam OGs live streams on the same screen and toggle between the two with one quick click. In general, if you are looking for a well-rounded security camera, OG is the choice.

Wyze Cam OG telephoto boosts a 3x Telephoto lens, which can let you keep an eye on a point of interest far away. You’ll be able to see the far-away object like being 3 times closer.

On the other hand, if you want to control the garage door, lamp socket, etc, you would want to go with v3.

RTSP

@WyzeDongsheng

Wyze Cam Pan v3 and Wyze Cam OG do not have RTSP. We don’t have a concrete plan to add RTSP in the near future. Currently, our resources will be focused on improving the product features and reliability that the majority of the users will benefit from.

Any chance of an officially-blessed interoperation with Home Assistant?

@WyzeDongsheng

Sorry, but we do not have plans to build an official connection with Home Assistant. Our plan is to focus our resources on features and reliability that most of the users will benefit from.

When are you going to up the bitrate on the cams?

@WyzeSteveM

No plans to do so at this time. Most broadband plans, e.g. Xfinity, are asymmetric and support only 5 or 10 Mbps uploads, so increasing our bitrates would soon overwhelm an average user’s upload bandwidth

Security

@WyzeDave

Thanks for asking! Security is a big deal for us and an area where we have made significant investments, especially in the last few years. For security reasons, we don’t want to give exact details on how we protect users. But here’s what we can say:

We built encryption and privacy into our products such as using a P2P live streaming solution

We’ve added features like 2-factor authentication to help protect customer accounts, and have this turned on by default now for new customers.

We have a dedicated Security Team that goes through our hardware and software to check for issues and monitor tools.

We have a bug bounty program for security researchers just in case we miss anything

We have an email address that goes directly to our Security Team for customers to report any issues or concerns that they have

We prevent employee access to customer content and have processes in place for extreme cases like a court subpoena

You can learn more about this on our Security & Trust page here: Security & Trust – Wyze Labs, Inc.

If you have a specific question or concern about security at Wyze, please email our Security Team directly at security@wyze.com.

Will shadows trigger notifications for these cameras? How is the audio? How fast are notifications?

@WyzeDongsheng

1. If you have too many notifications, you can adjust motion sensitivity, and detection zones to minimize false alerts. And if you signed up for cam plus, Cam Plus will be the best solution to only notify you when there is a person, vehicle, pet, or package detected via AI. This is the same for all Wyze cameras, not just Wyze Cam Pan v3 and Wyze Cam OG.

2. Wyze Cam OG has an improved audio system, where the microphone is more clear and the speaker is louder. You will have a much better two-way audio experience with Wyze Cam OG.

3. With Wyze Cam Pan v3 and Wyze Cam OG, the notification will be sent immediately, within a few seconds of motion detected, and then will be updated if there are any objects detected AI, this is for Cam Plus enabled devices. But in general, notification speed is vastly improved over previous models.

Any chance of supporting Matter [ for the OG & Pan V3]

@WyzeDongsheng

There is no camera standard for Matter. It is still early in the works.

Is it true that the new OG cameras are using Tencent cloud for streaming now?

@WyzeDongsheng

This is not true, the Wyze Cam OG P2P server runs on AWS.

Can you add a notification into the app when an SD card in a camera fails and the camera is no longer continuously recording? I’ve had failures in the past so it is always a concern of mine. With multiple cameras, it is a bit cumbersome to check the playback daily for each camera and make sure all SD cards are still healthy.

@WyzeDongsheng

Good point. We’ll take this into the backlog.

Dark Mode?

@WyzeSteveM

It’s a ton of work and provides only cosmetic benefits, but it is still on our wishlist, so thanks for your patience as we try to prioritize it.

We’ve been told Dark Mode is going to take a while to support due to needing to rebuild the Wyze App from scratch. While we wait, can you duplicate the Wyze app, but change all the coloring to be dark mode colors in the second app and just post that as a separate download on the App Store/Play store? You know, similar to how you already have The Wyze App and the Wyze Car App, you could just make the “Wyze Dark Mode App” which is an exact replica of the Wyze app, but where the main app base is using permanent dark mode colors. That would be a great temporary solution for people who want that while we wait for your full rebuild.

@WyzeDongsheng

I wish it would be that simple, but to start off, two sets of apps would require us to maintain two apps. It will be more work than rebuilding pretty quickly.

Echo Show Streaming issues

@WyzeDongsheng

We will have to look into this more. Streaming via 3rd party players has a lot of complexity which makes finding and solving issues much harder.

Optical Zoom on the Pan v3 for PTZ v1?

@WyzeDongsheng

Great idea. We have some prototypes similar in the works, but we do not know whether it will come out to be a real product, there are a lot more factors that will influence it.

Is the Camera information (streaming info, cloud info, etc) 100% private?

@WyzeSteveM

It is 100% private to your account. The only exception is when you choose to submit a recording to us so that we can improve our AI.

@Reddit User

Or presumably when you get a court order, warrant, subpoena I’m sure. Speaking of which, since you make efforts to “Be friends with users” and treat them like you would your best friend, I would hope that if my friend received a warrant to give the government something of mine or about me, that they would inform me that it happened. Would Wyze tell us about such action as long as there isn’t a suppression/gag order (which leaves you no choice)?

It would be nice reassurance if you had an official policy to let us know if you’re legally allowed to (the whole “friend” thing and all).

@WyzeSteveM

How does Wyze protect my Live Stream and Event videos?

With Wyze Cam, users can view camera videos using two methods: live streaming and recorded videos. Streaming is encrypted during transfer from device to phone. Camera videos are transferred under a secure channel from device to Wyze Cloud (ingestion) and from Wyze Cloud to phone (digestion).

Wyze employees do not have the ability to view a user’s camera’s live feed. This is because we use a P2P live streaming solution, which establishes a direct connection between the phone and the camera. While this is a technical solution to privacy, we also have a policy at Wyze prohibiting employees from viewing live streams.

Event videos, which are videos recorded when motion or sound is detected, are securely uploaded to the Wyze AWS server. From here, the video only would be accessed with permission from executive-level Wyze managers in extremely rare or severe cases, such as if Wyze were to be presented with a court subpoena. No other Wyze employees have access to these videos.

Last year we were told Wyze was going to be releasing an update that would show us what object in the frame was an AI detection. When will that be available for these cameras and the others?

@WyzeDongsheng

If we remember this correctly, this might be related to a small group of testers helping with AI training. We don’t think this was meant to be a feature for public usage.

@RedditUser

From Fix-it-Friday:

We’re also working on a solution that will show you what was identified as a person, vehicle, pet, etc. We suspect that folks are understandably assuming that the tagged motion would be what got tagged as an object like a person or pet but that’s not always the case. When you’re able to see what was recognized, you’ll be able to adjust the camera angle or the environment it’s looking at to reduce false positives. But this will also take a while and require a firmware update.

https://forums.wyze.com/t/fix-it-friday-6-3-2022/231589/30?u=carverofchoice

Here is one example from the AMA:

In a Fix-it-Friday announcement, we were told you are working on a solution to show us what the AI detected and tagged as an object. Can you elaborate more on this, please?

Yes! We are currently testing a new feature that shows detected objects on the camera feed’s thumbnail. Stay tuned.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wyzecam/comments/vz3mhl/comment/ig6b3em/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

The following one mentions you were working on it…

We’re also working on a method to help customers with debugging AI issues and that will be available later this year.

https://forums.wyze.com/t/fix-it-friday-2-25-22/219011/19?u=carverofchoice

@WyzeDongsheng

Thank you for digging out the source. I have forwarded this to the team who are familiar with this and hope they can come in and comment.

@WyzeWenjiang

Thanks for your interest on this feature! This feature has been tested internally for some months, however, due to the cost concern, we haven’t released it publicly since we want to provide our users the most cost-efficient solution (that’s the reason why we can provide our services with such low prices). If you’d like to help testing this feature, please DM me your device MAC.

Update on the Smart Button on the roadmap?

@WyzeSteveM

We are not able to prioritize this product as we are focusing on cameras this year. However, we do have a good design and hope we can get back to it in 2024. So sorry for the delay!

Now that so many of the newer cams don’t support Cam Plus Lite and won’t have Cloud events without Cam Plus on them, that makes sharing the newer cams with a spouse or others barely usable because they can’t view the SD card playback on a shared cam and now there won’t be cloud events for the shared user to view, meaning they can only view the livestream but no events, ever. Will Wyze thus be making it a priority this year to fix being able to start sharing the SD card playback with shared accounts?

@WyzeDongsheng

We hear your point and will think seriously about this. Here’s why we have the current implementation:With cloud-recorded Event Videos, when you share a camera, the shared user will only be able to see future Events after the share but not anything recorded before that. With sharing microSD card access, shared users now have access to all the footage that exists on the card including files from before the share. There are complications with this and that’s part of why we haven’t changed the settings.

Cam Pan v3 + telephoto stack - seems like a good combo

@WyzeSteveM

Totally agree! Broad coverage plus super detail in particular areas.

Pan cam v3: I love the patrol mode. Do you know how the motor will hold up doing patrol 24/7? For years? In hot and cold?

@WyzeXiZ

Thanks for asking. We do not have this data available yet but we are running an Accelerated Life Test and waiting to get the results. Currently, we have a one-year guarantee for the Wyze Cam Pan v3 if any motor issues occur within a year we can provide a replacement. The guaranteed operating temperature through the certificated lab is -20°C - 50°C (-4°F - 122°F

Cam needing power cycle when it disconnects

@WyzeDongsheng

Connectivity is extremely complex, because of the Wifi environment /network equipment our devices are placed in. In general, we measure connectivity and we see them improving over firmware releases.

Updating V3/Pro to new OS (FreeRTOS instead of Linux)?

@WyzeDongsheng

Good questions. The operating system is based on the chipset. Once the chipset is selected, you will have to stick with its operating system. But with Wyze Cam v3 and Wyze Cam v3 Pro, we are also working on those improvements, although it is a different code base.

If the V3 has more expensive hardware than the OG, can we get a firmware update to speed up existing V3s instead of removing them to replace them with OGs?

@WyzeSteveM

We switched from Linux on RISC-V to an RTOS on ARM, so it’s not really a straightforward comparison . . .

@WyzeDongsheng

I would not recommend you remove Wyze Cam v3, but if you are adding new cameras, Wyze Cam OG is a great choice now. We are also working on improving Wyze Cam v3 continuously.

Will future cams use the new OS, chip, and speaker/mic that the OG has?

@WyzeSteveM

Yes, the Doorbell Pro was the first in this new OS/processor group. Now the OG. We will have more!

Using cams on different networks on the same Wyze Account; & what about making a cam that is 4G capable?

@WyzeDongsheng

Using one account, you are able to view cameras on different networks.

Regarding 4G camera, we have researched, but not kicked off any.

Error code 90 on Pan v3

@WyzeXiZ

An error 90 indicates that the server is unable to make contact with the requested device. Our team is working on improving the chances of getting our devices to reconnect after a network crash/disconnection. Please keep an eye on our new firmware releases. We are on it.

Make OG in 2K?

@WyzeDongsheng

Great question! Yes, in general, we plan to increase the resolution, but no, we do not have a concrete plan with ETA dates yet for Wyze Cam OG.

As you may know, with the same size of the image sensor, the higher the resolution, the lower light each pixel gets. As you go up in resolution, it becomes harder to handle low-light conditions. But as image sensing technology improves, we are getting better light sensitivity on the same or even smaller pixels, that is when you can get a higher resolution camera with better low light performance.

We are constantly in touch with the image sensor industry and evaluate when to increase resolution, not only on the Pro line, but also on the entry line

Update the app with friendly UX & handle stress better?

@WyzeDongsheng

If you have the Wyze Cam Pan v3, Wyze Cam v3 Pro, or Wyze Cam OG, you will see a new camera UI. We hope you like it. Just an example of us building and improving UI. ( The roll out to other devices will be depending on resource availability) .

Non-neutral-Wire switch update?

@WyzeSteveM

It’s in beta testing in users’ homes right now! Thanks for your patience.

Improving video quality of V3 Pro? (looks fine when still, but artifacts when there is movement)

@WyzeChao

With knowing a lot of details, my best guess is either due to the low frame rate or heavy encoding we did to improve the connectivity. Wyze Cam v3 Pro is still on H264 encoding. We might consider upgrading to H265 encoding for our future cameras to improve the video quality.

What are your plans for this year related to the app? It is getting a bit cluttered for those of us with lots of devices. Need more flexibility to add different products into one group. For example, I have 2 wyze plugs, a wyze switch, and wyze led lights that all power lighting in a bedroom. It would be nice to have these grouped together, similar to the functionality I already get in the Google Home app.

@WyzeDongsheng

Our plan this year is to focus on fundamental reliability and features/improvements that will benefit most of the users. We’ll take your feedback into the backlog.

Cam Plus Lite with the new cameras?

@WyzeSteveM

No cameras released after April, 2022 will be eligible for CamPlus Lite.

Why have there been no cameras with 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz?

@WyzeDongsheng

2.4 GHz has more than sufficient bandwidth for camera streaming, which is only 100-200kb/s, and 2.4 GHz has a longer range and better ability to transmit through objects like walls. However, we are also looking at dual-band ( 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz ) in some of the future cameras too

Any app changes coming soon?

@WyzeDongsheng

The recent big change we have made to the App is the camera UI. For other parts of the app, such as the home page and event page, it will follow after we get the camera UI right. We have to take the improvement a step at a time. Thanks for being patient with us.

Rules updates:

@WyzeTao

Thank you for your question!Rules are a very important feature that we want to improve over time. I would like to first share out what we did for Rules in the past year.

• Added ‘Preset Rules’ to suggest appropriate rules for new users

• Added Home/Away in Preset Rules

• Added Sunrise/Sunset in the schedule to allow smarter schedules based on season change

• Added Rules for bulbs to allow ‘turn on Bulb for X minutes’

• Added ‘AI events’ trigger support in Rules

• Added Rules support for all new devices

• UI/UX improvements for a simpler editing

However, we still have a long list of backlogged items for future Rules improvement, such as better searching rules, more generic parameter support, adding more condition checks, and smart (AI-based) rule recommendations. We will work on them one by one. Thank you for your patience!

Have “Smart Focus” record on events to the SD card? When is the new interface scheduled for the V3s?

@WyzeDongsheng

We are still evaluating “smart focus” and see how user’s feedback on that, before expanding it. Same goes the new camera interface.

We hope you like the new interface. We’ve been using it internally for months and we liked it a lot. The plan is to gradually roll it out, but it will depend on the resource availability.

@WyzeDongsheng

We hope you like the new interface. We’ve been using it internally for months and we liked it a lot. The plan is to gradually roll it out, but it will depend on the resource availability.

Plans to change permissions on shared cameras including sharing limits on the SD card? And make it harder to accidentally turn off all cams in a group?

@WyzeDongsheng

This is on a backlog, but it requires significant work. We do not have the plan to do it in the near future ( 3-6 months ).

Different Notification options for shared cameras

@WyzeDongsheng

Sorry, we do not have the plan to add this. But we can take this as a backlog item.

Wyze Smoke Detector?

@WyzeSteveM

Not this year, unfortunately. We have no plans for it right now.

Will other cameras be able to do Picture in Picture?

@WyzeDongsheng

The picture in picture is released on Wyze Cam OG first. If our users love this feature, we can work on including other Wyze cameras.

Will OG work with the solar panel? =Doesn’t have a battery.

@WyzeSteveM

Correct, only battery cameras can benefit from a solar panel. The panel outputs about 2 watts and cameras need about 10 watts to run.

Wyze App on Chrome OS?

@WyzeTao

This isn’t currently on our roadmap. Our Engineering Team is focusing on experience and quality improvements for Android and iOS mobile platforms. With limited resources, we want to be careful about any expansion without enough support to maintain it.

The Cam Pan V3 does not seem to be compatible with the lamp socket. The socket will power the cam, but you cannot control the socket. Will this be addressed?

@WyzeSteveM

Officially the lamp socket does not have enough power to provide the full 2 amps that the Pan (at max consumption) needs, so we don’t have plans to support that combination of Pan v3 + lamp socket. The floodlight’s USB port does provide 2 amps, however.

The new OG’s pair by using Bluetooth, is there plans to open that up to camera accessories? For example the camera controlling accessories via Bluetooth?

@WyzeDongsheng

It is definitely a possibility. But no concrete plan yet.

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Part 1 of 2 because of this error:

Part 2 of 2 in the next post