I looked a bit more closely at the Eufy cameras and they have a user community forum similar to Wyze. They advertise full AI with human and pet detection but some users are complaining about people not being detected half of the time. Also, their pan/tilt camera lacks the ability to recall itself back to a default position after motion tracking auto tracks something or you manually pan/tilt the camera. That little feature is a must for me. So, to sum it up I sort of wanted to return 2 of my Wyze Pans that I recently purchased but using two apps for different cameras instead of one app for all of my cameras and dealing with other small features missing…I am just going to wait this out with Wyze and hope they come with something good. Overall, budget cameras with good AI for person and other smartish detections seem to still be in their beginnings. Perhaps within the next 2-3 years things will be a lot more stable with budget cameras with good AI capabilities and consumers will have more choices but for now it just seems to be a waiting game to see what each company comes up with.
Yes, or put in the extra effort into using RTSP mode with something like HomeAssistant or TinyCam, trying to get to vendor neutrality. Or go the HomeKit route.
I used to have nothing but Foscams and I could use whatever DNS service I chose but those cameras got old and Foscam stopped improving/updating them and then discontinued the line of products I was using for a much more expensive rebranded one. When it came time to upgrade, my options were limited and one of my neighbors told me about Wyze. Now, here I am again wondering what will happen yet again but nothing lasts forever and I have spent a bit less $ on my Wyze cams versus Foscams. It seems that if you want to have certainty with this type of tech you have to pay for it and Google/Nest and Amazon/Ring are more than happy to provide that certainty…for a price I am not willing to pay and feel that no one should.
Well yes and no. Once you turn these into ordinary IP Cameras (using RTSP mode or via 3rd party firmware) you should be able to use them for free forever with a little bit of effort / maintenance. I’m not down that road quite yet.
It’s when we expect the vendors to stay in business and keep providing “cloud” services (even for a fee) that we have something to lose…
I think the WYZE RTSP firmware still requires that the cameras connect to a WYZE account.
I caved in and bought one to compare after worrying I’ll need a new free PD alternative to Wyze for a few cams now. Installed it yesterday right along side my main Wyze cam watching the front of the house/porch.
So far so good. It’s at 100% of recognizing and notifying about people, no false alarms and none missed yet. Higher quality (2K), no cool down limits (though I can choose to set some if I want).
Wyze misses a lot of PD alerts because of motion from bugs, and plants, or my cats sending a clip to the cloud and not allowing any other alert for 5 minutes, so if a person comes I’m out of luck. I did a work around with a motion sensor that forces a clip and notification, but then those particular clips rarely tell me it was a person unless the cam noticed before the sensor tripped, and sometimes there are still false alarms. It’s a tough thing to balance.
Eufy gives me awesome detection ranges. 6 adjustable points, instead of a square, and allows me to set up 2 of them. Other motion doesn’t interfere with PD notifications at all.
Eufy has awesome notification options. I set it to send a notification immediately, then provide an image of the person as soon as it’s available. It loads live way faster, audio is quicker and clearer both ways. It has alarms and a bunch of other neat things.
I have had some issues with it sometimes not sending a thumbnail of the person or not easily linking to the right location from a notification or to go live, but usually it’s faster than Wyze. Haven’t tested it enough. It also hasn’t recognized or alerted me about my cat at my porch yet though I have it set up to do so (ie “pet detection” alert).
Their SD card timeline is AWESOME… Shows a different color for where it recorded people so I know exactly where to look in the timeline.
It’s $39.99 but shipping is included, so just $14-ish more than a V2 after shipping costs or through Amazon. Not bad for a pretty decent upgrade.
It has some other really cool features (if it detects a pet in an area like a couch you can make it play a pre-recorded message telling your pet to get off, etc), It also allows you to go full NAS with RSTP too, though I haven’t tested that. Supposedly I read that there’s something about face recognition, that it can tell and remember who individual people are like nest does and let you know it’s so and so, but I haven’t looked into that much yet…It will send you a special alert if it detects crying (ie: as a baby monitor), which I’ll test out in a few weeks when my wife gives birth to our 2nd daughter. (doesn’t appear to have the smoke alarm, etc detection though). There are some other interesting things i haven’t tested yet either. Been busy with another project.
All in all their local PD seems to be pretty superior to Wyze’s cloud PD while sitting side by side each other the last 1.5 days. Again, I’m only 36 hours into the test, but pretty impressed so far. I love how fast the notification is, and so far it’s never missed and never false alarmed (a couple dozen times so far).
I would imagine that Wyze’s V3 they talked about working on will be a good competitor for it though, so I’m not rushing right out to go replace things by any means, and I’m heavily invested in Wyze lights and sensors (I turned a lot into light switches too) and lots of automation stuff. I’m definitely not looking to ditch Wyze.
Still love Wyze and will keep a lot. Just looking for potential PD solutions if it becomes necessary. Love that Eufy is 100% accurate so far with immediate notification and no cool down or other motion interference, and easy person discernment on the timeline though, and no subscription necessary for full functionality. I’m in love with all that. Might just buy a couple more for similar outside uses and move my Wyze cams to be inside-only where notifications don’t matter as much for me (my wife and I both work from home anyway).
I’m going to defend my analogy. When I bought my camera over a year ago person detection was a feature built into the camera’s firmware and did not require any cloud resources to function. It was not a “free trial” or a “service” and was actually even advertised as such. I did not want or ask for a cloud based person detection solution or storage. I want the camera that I bought to work like it did when it was sold to me. when I bought it. Just like the thermostat on my car.
I use the person detection to avoid getting notifications every time a dog walks across the room. I only have notifications come to me when a person moves in camera range.
That is a fair point about the local Person Detection feature, @jddautel01 .
To @carverofchoice, I know rbruceporter around here is trying those too. I just checked and they have a nice wireless outdoor, but they don’t seem to have a wired one? I’m also not clear on what is and isn’t included and whether any cloud storage works besides HomeKit / iCloud. My only other concern at the moment is that spindly base on the indoor 2Ks. They don’t seem nearly as prepared for outdoor mounting as our beloved squat nearly-sealed Wyze V2s.
if u hvn’t upgraded the software and firmware since u purchased the camera, u shouldstill hv that feature
Thanks for the analysis so far of the Eufy camera; now you have me wondering again to maybe try one. I would definitely like a better person detection solution for outside even though the Eufy Pan/Tilt model I am considering is not outdoor rated just like the Wyze cam pan on my front porch. Which Eufy camera model did you buy? I would definitely like to know more about your Eufy experience after a few more weeks if possible.
Also, if you get their wired doorbell let me know that’s another one I am considering.
current cloud based person detection is much better in precision compared to edge based
@jeff007 You’re welcome.
I just bought the Eufy indoor 2K model that is $39.99. Some of the other options seemed fairly pricey, and I was just looking for a V2 alternative. I am using this one (and the Wyze black V2 right next to it) pointing through my front window (I used black Gaffer’s tape to make the Eufy all black too). I use some Wyze V2’s outside as well, but they are all under some kind of ceilings (back deck, a patio, etc) and are never hit by rain/snow directly, so…I haven’t tried how anything is exposed to the elements in those senses. I’m just using the indoor cams in ways where they are fairly protected from those kind of risks…so if you need a real outdoor cam, don’t take my word for it. 
I point out windows and under ceilings…so these work well for my needs.
When I’ve tested it more thoroughly over a more extended period of time (reduce the emotional bias of having a “new toy”) and can give a better idea of how both do side by side with various tests, I’ll give you a better idea of what I like better about each, FWIW I bought 1 more Wyze cam anyway with a bunch more sensors just getting shipped today, so obviously it didn’t purely convince me to completely abandon ship within the first couple days.
Couldn’t the cloud footprint be eliminated if they had a HUB video storage solution? Then couldn’t we access our HUB from our phones to view the video? I really hate subscription services because I’m tired of paying out for so many different services and they always end up increasing their monthly fees.
Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled with most of their other prices, including most of their outdoor stuff. Really expensive. But to be fair, I only did a cursory glance. I was looking for something cheap and standalone ala V2 alternative, which is why I settled on the cheaper indoor 2K. It seems you can remove the spindly base (I didn’t actually try), but then it’s hard to tilt into the right position. I also didn’t look at what options there were for outdoor mounts. I saw a lot of reviews about people loving the HomeKit stuff. I mostly ignored it all though, since I’m fairly anti-Apple in principle…so I’m not very educated on the Apple options. It does say you can record everything to your own NAS for free (and RTSP), but since I don’t have any set up/ready, I haven’t looked into it much (yet…though I plan to look into it more, because this would be a VERY HUGE positive point!). You also get local mSD for free. I’m using a 128GB mSD, and it works great just like in V2’s. They have cloud options, but they all charge a subscription. Cloud isn’t necessary though. They record short event clips on the SD card instead of the cloud, and they link to the timeline and live camera too. Everything is accessible and seems the same as if it’s on the cloud. I can’t tell a functional difference at all, I just know it’s all local.
I agree with your assessment though that the beloved V2 seems to be much more prepared for outdoor mounting.
Thanks. There are all kinds of entry points into NAS and/or NVR functionality. I was just reading the spec table for TinyCam Pro and they claim to have their own.
I certainly don’t want to trust SD cards. Just today I tried pulling a Wyze card to find some footage from last week; yet the last thing it had recorded was in May. The Wyzes have been useless for me with SD cards.
And I mostly agree with you about Apple. I don’t want to be locked to any specific “ecosystem”, let alone one that puts iOS hardware at the forefront.
Yeah, I’ve been trying out TinyCam Pro because I wanted to try using their options for recording to your own storage: ownCloud/Nextcloud, or FTP…they also allow dropbox, onedrive, googledrive, local storage to your phone/tablet/computer running an android emulator, etc; or to their own cloud service.
The problem I’ve been having is that it’s frustratingly not a very reliable connection. Lots of disconnects or drop frames for long periods of times on lots of cameras. Drives me insane. Wyze should figure out how to allow all of the above, maybe buy out TinyCam and use their code to allow a direct access to all of those things instead of chaining through a 3rd party who first has to connect to Wyze and then to your local cam. I don’t know why, but the connection just isn’t very stable…
TinyCam IS convenient to watch multiple cams at a time live, and I prefer to look at the Wyze Cloud event clips through TinyCam rather than using the Wyze App because of the cool timeline functionality that color codes green for just motion and purple for person detected (and I think it’s red/orange for a sound-only event if you have that enabled), and I can slide around the timeline or even just click next or previous to skip around, AND you can change the speed to play as slow as 0.1x speed or as fast as 3x speed (so basically either frame-by-frame with pauses and up to 45fps). It’s really cool to view everything through TinyCam instead of Wyze! Wyze could take a few lessons from TinyCam on how to do their own system better. Seriously, you should check it out if you haven’t. I love it. So much better for checking through all event clips efficiently. It’s awesome…The Eufy cam I got does the same thing for the whole SD card recordings. That’s an extremely major plus for me after using such color coding to find things easily.
If TinyCam’s connection through Wyze was more reliable I’d use it in a heartbeat and go buy a huge multi-TB HDD to record everything on, but it drives me crazy with how often it goes out down to 0 fps for really long periods, and requires constant maintenance to try to get the video to show back up. I just can’t live like that. I REALLY, REALLY wish it worked better though.
Why can’t you find a programmer who can write person detection code? I have used person detection libraries in Python (OpenCV). It is easy! High school kids are doing it.
Please look up the “HOG” algorithm for person detection. It has been around for decades. Then you don’t need any cloud nonsense. Do everything onboard.
In electronics, we (all of us) are used to improved functionality while prices stay the same or go down. Effectively raising prices on products already sold is a recipe for market disaster.
That is the problem I’ve had with tinyCam.
I had been using ity daily to view my cameras on my work PC. Now that I am working from home I don’t use it. I have tinyCam Pro server installed on an Android TV box. The box is plugged into a Wifi plug so I can turn it on if I have to.
It’s not wrong that I’m laughing out loud. I equate the icon to Steve Austin, the six million dollar man.
We can rebuild him…and eventually make you pay for it.