Please make Continuous Recording Free for existing users, say, with a minimum purchase of cameras (say 4). Please consider.
Thank you.
@cyberxmt: Wyze has stated that, since they operate on very thin margins, they would not be able to provide continuous cloud recording for free.
However, just in case you are not aware, if you install a microSD card in the camera, you can record to it continuously (or only while motion is detected) at no cost. See this:
https://support.wyzecam.com/hc/en-us/articles/360029728632-microSD-and-Continuous-Recording
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Yesterday, there was a product live on the Home Depot site that was a 2-pack of Wyze cams which includes 6 months of free Complete Motion Capture for free for both cameras. Today, it disappeared, so it may be something they’re intending to launch on Black Friday or something. But yeah, there’s no way they could make CMC free forever with no limits.
At Waze’s price point I feel like I am getting a very good deal. I’ll pay more for a better deal. Wouldn’t want to squeeze only to see them go under cuz that will be a lost to all of us who like what they are doing. Less than $1.50 per month per camera for full motion capture is reasonable. I am signing up.
It would be a nice option to provide an increased cloud storage capability. Starting at small amounts per year, allow longer than 12 second, and longer than 14 days.
I get that people want this full motion subscription service. And it’s not a bad deal. I personally hate subscription models. In this case, I would be paying the subscription price because I would have no other option. Why not provide an option? A year of cloud service would run $18. I’ll gladly pay an extra $18 per camera to have a version with local storage. I know about the SD card but I’m referring to off camera local storage. Is that possible? I have to believe it is given the discontinued NAS storage development. So $20 for limited clips in the cloud and the optional subscription or $40 for limited clips in the cloud and local storage. Wyze gets paid either way.
You can get off-camera local storage if you want to set something up yourself on a PC using the RTSP firmware. There’s also a way to do NAS if you want to hack the firmware, as I mentioned in an earlier post, but it may be somewhat advanced, and it’s obviously not officially sanctioned, so swim at your own risk.
Wyze why does this say launched?? We are asking for extra cloud storage like for 30 days!! You did not launch this yet
The original post didn’t mention anything about 30 days, but you could add that as separate wishlist item if you’d like. The purpose of the subscription was to remove the current limitations regarding event length and cooldown period, and that has indeed been launched.
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I have been known to be the hack-y type before. But I would rather avoid the complication and use the native software. And it’s not like they haven’t already been working on it. If their partnership with MaxDrive hadn’t fallen through, that functionality may have already been launched. Like I said, I’d pay an extra $20 for that functionality. Wyze gets a year’s worth of subscription money without having any extra server use by me. And I get on-site, off-camera storage that isn’t restricted by having to use a 32gb micro sd card. And Wyze gets to make back the money it spent working on the programming before the partnership with MaxDrive fell through. Everyone wins.
I’m not sure how difficult it would be. The fact that the guy from GitHub managed to do it with a couple simple firmware tweaks suggests it wouldn’t be too tough, but if they’re still working on their own NAS hardware, that may be the reason they haven’t tried to implement it yet.
As far as the idea of paying extra for, basically, the privilege of the functionality – I doubt they’d do it that way, just because it seems like it’s sort of antithetical to their company values. They place a big emphasis on adding as much value as possible. “Making Great Technology Accessible” is the official website tagline. They keep adding software features to the camera, and they never charge extra except where the feature would result in an ongoing expense for them. (As with the CMC – they have to charge money for that because cloud storage costs them money.) Basically, if they DO add NAS support, I think it would be free, because it doesn’t cost them anything other than the initial cost of paying their developers to implement it.
As a personal example, I was looking at buying a smart garage door opener as a gift for my brother, and I was sort of incensed to realize that the Chamberlain MyQ charges a subscription fee for the simple privilege of using it with Alexa. These kinds of fees seem greedy, in my opinion, and Wyze seems keen to avoid stuff like that. If Amazon was charging Chamberlain for each call to the Alexa API, for example, it would be an understandable fee, but that’s simply not the case. It’s just a money grab. In my case, it made me decide NOT to buy the thing, because I certainly don’t want to impose a subscription fee on someone else by buying them a gift.
It’s a little like the idea of paid apps versus free apps. In general, paid apps cost money because the app IS the product. But if the app supports a physical product that you paid for, the app is free. People would probably be pretty annoyed if they had to pay $4.99 to download the Wyze app in order to use the Wyze cameras they just bought, for example. It’s a similar idea, in my opinion.
It’s interesting that you mention it would be “antithetical to their company values” to charge more for functionality in an official thread about them charging more for more functionality. Yes, I get that they have an added expense. But as you acknowledged, they had an added expense, not yet recovered btw, in the programming.
I never mentioned paying for the app but since you mentioned it, that’s a great idea and an easy solution. A free app with an in-app NAS purchase. That way nothing changes for people who don’t want it but people who are willing to pay for it can get it.
If they implement it as a package only deal with their hardware, they are essentially doing what you feel they wouldn’t do, charging extra for functionality because if it can work with theIr hardware, it should work with mine. So in order to get that built it functionality, I’d have to pay extra, probably a good bit extra.
I can’t believe I’m the only one who would pay a one-time, nominal fee for that functionality. And for the people who won’t, they don’t buy the “pro” package and they gain and lose nothing. And after a year, they include that “pro” feature in the standard package. And because it’s not an ongoing expense, it’s not a subscription.
I was saying that it seems antithetical to their values to charge more for functionality that doesn’t directly add costs for them on an ongoing basis – in particular, costs that are specific to a user who uses the feature. For example, if my normal usage costs the company the exact same amount as your normal usage, whether or not I use a feature they’ve developed, that would probably be a free feature. If my normal usage costs the company MORE because I choose to use the feature, that would be a paid feature.
That seems to have been their standard so far anyway. Initial development costs of any new feature can be considered sunk costs of marketing and customer acquisition/retainment. Any business that continues to run has unavoidable ongoing costs, and their product pricing has to take those costs into account upfront.
Sort of, but not really. By that logic, they should also have a completely open API so that any third-party manufacturer can let their own sensors or cameras work in Wyze’s ecosystem.
I’m not saying that you are. I’m just saying it doesn’t seem to be the way Wyze operates, that’s all. I just don’t think that’s an attractive option for them.
No, that logic doesn’t lead to an open API. All of the configuration can be done within the app, eliminating the need for an open API. Oversimplified, their package implementation would likely have their app search the network to find their hardware and store that address with the camera. Changing that auto search to a manually entered address should essentially accomplish the same functionality without needing their hardware.
And you’re right, having their customers willing to give them more money is not an attractive option to most companies. I mean, what company really cares about bringing in more money.
Whether a larger number of customers will be willing to give them money for it, versus customers who would complain that they’re charging more for something that doesn’t cost them anything to run is a matter of debate. I tend to think a lot of Wyze’s customer base would find it distasteful, and based on the way they’ve run things so far, it seems like they do too. It’s not that no company could ever possibly run something like that – I just gave the example of Chamberlain who does exactly that – it just doesn’t seem to be in their company’s DNA, that’s all.
I suppose they could charge more for all sorts of random features – scheduling, rules, Alexa integration, etc. It’s just not the way they seem to operate, and I think a lot of their customers would complain if they started to.
They wouldn’t be behaving in the way you are describing. They were working on that functionality but stopped when the partnership fell through. That would suggest they didn’t intend to offer NAS functionality without an additional hardware purchase. Otherwise they would have continued the project. So it seems they were planning to “charge” for the functionality anyway. Personally, I would find it distasteful to have to pay $75-100 for unneeded hardware just too get the functionality that I’d be willing to pay $5-10 for.
I’m not suggesting they do what Chamberlain is doing. They have a subscription. I’m talking about one and done. I’m talking about paying around 1/10 the price I might have needed to pay with their partnership.
Would you find it distasteful if they required an additional hardware purchase to get the software functionality?
Arguably that’s what any hardware product is, if a generic version exists. Plenty of generic cameras exist. I don’t find a closed ecosystem inherently distasteful, but it depends on the intent of the product. When a company that had previously had an open ecosystem, like Nest, actively decides to close it in an effort to screw over its competitors, I’m not a big fan of that, for example. I think it would be nice to open it up a bit, but if they’re trying to create a seamless user experience, that may require them to control the products to some extent. They may want to make the experience plug-and-play, for example, which would require them to build a piece of hardware for that experience
They provide RTSP beta firmware. They have demonstrated their willingness to allow the end user the ability to have more control than one would get with a simple plug and play setup.
If the goal is to give the user the best possible experience, they could easily continue their behavior by offering both a plug and play version and a user configurable option. If the goal, however, is to sell more hardware, then they are trying to create more profits and I’ll gladly pay a little more to use my hardware.
I agree. Anyway, I think they may still add it eventually. I don’t think they’re inherently opposed to allowing access, although they might be if they’re trying to control the user experience. I just don’t think they’d go the route of charging for that particular feature
There are some features I’d personally be happy to pay for, too, if I thought it would expedite the development process, but it doesn’t really work that way. (Especially a Virtual Switch functionality – Go vote for it!!! Haha.) Even though I personally want it enough I’d be willing to pay for it, their wishlist isn’t Kickstarter. If they decided to make every piece of functionality cost extra for arbitrary reasons, people would probably be annoyed and abandon the product.
Just for the sake of a bit of added context, part of the benefit of partnerships is the experience that the partner has that perhaps we don’t. We didn’t have all of the software solution ready to go when the partnership fell through so we unfortunately can’t just flip a switch and make NAS compatibility available for everyone. I can say that it’s still something being discussed in the office but it won’t be an immediate change if we find a solution. We would probably need to do a lot of rework at this point.
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