Eufy charge a subscription as well for cloud storage. One would have to be pretty sure that the PD would work and be available without the subscription.
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You are correct.
I don’t believe WYZE made the cameras as they appear to be re-branded Xiaomi XiaoFang cameras.
We are all assuming they built the cameras, but if we realize that they are just going to Shenzhen and getting suppliers to put the WYZE name on things then the lack of support for features makes a lot more sense.
They might not have anyone on staff that knows that the brains of the camera is an Ingenic T20 chip which on the manufactures webpage highlights its ability to perform human detection http://www.ingenic.com.cn/en/?product/id/14.html
So maybe it was less super advanced edge AI and more that XNOR had programmers who understood the MIPS32 Architecture, the XBurst instruction set, and how to code for constraints.
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Thanks for finding the data sheet. Interesting…
Thanks for posting!
Now I want the rest of that “computer vision” list!
Motion Detection/Perimeter Protection
Face Detection
Human Detection
People Counting
License Plate Recognition
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And did you see on the same site…
ZRT：Advanced Battery Camera Platform
?
Development kit!
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The Eufy 2k looked interesting based on some user comments on here. I thought about ordering one to try and decided to look into it a bit more. Turns out the eufy forums and reddit have their fair share of complaints as well (mostly regarding the battery cams, the indoor cams are still pretty new it seems). Then I realized I don’t really need another cam and my 3 v2s and sense setup is working pretty well. Even if the eufy was better (it better be since it is two years newer) and I replaced everything, best case scenario I spend more money, everything works flawlessly and the only advantage I get is a higher quality version of my already boring footage of neighbors walking around and delivery people dropping off packages. I think I would also get extra tags like pets and names for recognized faces. If my wyze stuff wasn’t working well I’d totally give eufy a shot but aside from rare issues like server outages or beta firmware making things unstable my stuff has been pretty solid. My home is only 1700 sqft so that might be a factor on why everything is playing nice.
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Just wanted to let folks know that I read through here and made a doc to send to the team. I separated out questions that were asked, areas of improvement/concern that came up repeatedly, and suggestions that you all sent to us. We appreciate the conversation here and are paying attention.
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We greatly appreciate you staying in touch!!
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Quite the red pill / blue pill rabbit hole you’ve opened up. We all already knew the cameras were OEMed from Xiaomi but I never heard that about the chip. It seems “too good to be true”.
It also led me to some pages indicating that the outdoor cam is just going to be a version of the Mijia released last December…
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definitely not unique, nor is the scale or band. I have the eufy branded version of the scale, everything is identical.
wzye is just a rebadger, not a manufacturer. hence the idea of a space heater. they just look at what’s available in Shenzen to rebrand.
and its exactly the reason the software side of things sucks so hard. rebranding dumb tech is just sticking your logo on it, rebranding smart tech means at least someone at the company has to have the brains to do it. I think that’s where wyze is lacking. a couple of just bright enough guys to work out a get rich quick scheme after seeing how it’s done at amazon, but lacking the brains to properly pull it off.
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my gut tells me currently cmc subscription price is not sustainable
before it is 5 minutes, w/cms, there are magnitude higher number of videos to check for person
they should screen/score the video at local level,
i.e, use hybrid (local+cloud ai).
only let cloud ai process videos with low confidence level processed by local ai
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Incompetence always catches up with fly by the seat of your pants management. Hope the board cleans house and finds a way to right the ship. Those who created this mess should be sent packing and not be rewarded. Stick with a camera that has ample local storage and you can avoid cloud service fees entirely.
Been sitting on the fence about getting into wyze cam for a long time, with lockdown had some free time and jumped online to order some finally. All this after careful competitive consideration and monthly running costs being zero went for it. Now after reading the posts about the unknown (costs) am contemplating my WYZE (wise) decision. PS. Based in Australia, so cameras were not as cheap. Almost double the USD equivalent, but still cheaper compared to Nest/Arlo/Eufy etc.
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Hmm that’s very interesting…
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Yes it is! I hope Wyze will be able to get some edge AI people who can create PD on camera and save costs!
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It has been fairly common knowledge within the forum since WYZE’s inception that WYZE rebranded existing cameras.
Thanks for the link to the chip specs.
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I am in Canada so the price of the Cameras is similar to your’s.
I still look at WYZE cameras as a cheap way take a look at whereever I have one pointed. That’s all I bought them for. Person Detection wasn’t an option when I first started getting them.
I have never found detection and notification all that reliable and only used it when no one but the dog was home. I could tell if someone was at the door because the dog would bark, the camera picked up noise and sent a notification. Now my wife has retired, I am working from home and the dog goes when we go so notifications have been turned off.
I haven’t and won’t buy in to any subscriptions because nothing works well enough to buy.
My only concern now is that if this type of fiasco takes WYZE down we are left with installing an alternate firmware on the cameras like OpenIPC, which has linitations.
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1.3 million emails sent and only 350 response posts in the forum - is very odd.
Very disturbing to hear that Wyze is struggling with supporting person detection as an included feature. The low product price was one reason to buy a Wyze camera, but THE TWO deciding reasons were person detection and no monthly fees. Take away “the two” and you are left with cheep cameras, and that is not a market differentiator.
I have more than ten cameras monitoring two homes, but for simple math let’s say ten. If you charge me $2 per camera per month that is $240 a year an $2,240 for 10 years - OUCH! Even if you charge $10 per month per account (unlimited number of cameras) it is not what I made an investment in and was sold when I purchased your cameras.
Yes I understand and appreciate you now can’t do the analysis in the camera (probably a patent conflict) and Wyze now has an overhead cost to process in the cloud. But you need to preserve the free person detection feature if you want to stay relevant in the market and with your community of friends and supporters.
Have you considered:
- Add a pre test/filter in the camera and reduce the amount of analytics in the cloud.
- Offer a base station to do the person analytics on-prem (includ a few other good features to justify the added cost of a base station).
- Develop and offer a suite of fee based services to offset the cost of basic free person detection.
Good luck, this could be a deciding point in the future of Wyze…
~ GE Brinckmann
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One thing to think on, is Eufy’s business model sustainable? Without the ongoing revenue stream from subscriptions yet still having a dependency on the cloud, if Eufy incurs an increase in cloud costs or a downturn in revenue the cameras all become paper weights.
Especially if during the current international uncertainty the US blocks Chinese web traffic or product sales? Or China blocks the traffic themselves in a “tit for tat” move? Wyze is a US based company while Eufy is part of Anker, very much both Chinese companies?
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