The flat face on the Wyze Cam fits nicely against a window pane for looking out a window (IR lights OFF). No interior reflections. No night vision either. This is my “front door” monitor. (or a xiaomi xiofang with no PD for an even lower price)
@rbruceporter Can you disable the IR LEDs on the Eufy Pan? (I read a review complaining that that was not an option)
I had high hopes for Wyze automation: Outdoor deer detection, turn on sprinklers, ultra-sonic noise generator etc. I don’t see that in the cards any time soon.
You can disable the lights but doing so also disables night vision. Eufy has discussed the possibility of making the two functions independent of each other but so far that’s as far as it goes.
Well, after completing a successful trial of Cam Plus, I decided to add an annual subscription to one of my cameras. Immediately, I stopped getting any Person Detection detections or notifications. Regular motion works fine.
I’ve confirmed that I have the latest firmware, rechecked the settings more than once, and … nothing. App version is 2.12.29.
How do you know this?
Without evidence I would surmise that they just have the camera firmware and apps customised…,
It’s iPadOS app has the Chinese tendency to not support landscape mode. Yes it tries for some views but in my opinion fails miserably. I get the app display, sideways and sometimes upside down. Minimising the app and then maximising it’s cures some of the views.
(TinyCam does colors for different things, Eufy does color for no motion vs event (whatever your event settings are)
Bonuses:
Crying detection color/symbol; would make this a huge sell as an inexpensive baby monitor to send an alert if it detects crying like other cams can do (love this about Eufy). It would also let Wyze reach a bigger market with a wider funnel to capture more customers without even having to launch a different product for it. These kind of baby monitors are very popular!
Other sound event color/symbol.
Automation event color/symbol (ie: from motion sensor or contact sensor or something forcing the recording through a rule)
Pet detection like others have (uh…not in the cloud though! maybe locally for a V3?)
ALSO with all these events:
Allow prioritization preferences for events that may have multiple labels…for example, if something has Person, motion, and crying it colors it as a person, or let someone else choose to have it labeled as Crying as their most important feature (basically allow selective prioritization so a person can choose what gets color labeled above other ones when a video falls into multiple categories).
Still, these are really all things for the wishlist, not this experiment thread…though it seems most of the wishlist gets ignored. Things voted on as highest demand by most customers for years in a row are repeatedly completely ignored for things that relatively very few people care about. Oh well.
A lot of the above is available on multiple competitors. Surprised Wyze has ignored it all these years despite 3rd parties doing it, tons of competitors having it, and lots of customers asking for this…instead, we get considering making heaters or some other new item.
Not able to add or edit cams now in Cam Plus. I have never been so disappointed in an update with Wyze products as this last one. I need to either add a cam to Cam Plus to keep an eye on my 97 very ill mother or edit one of the cams out and add this one. but obviously I can’t. I have tried on the Android, iphone and website I get no errors. I just can’t do it. This update has been nothing but a huge mess. And I barely get any help from CS as they “don’t know” I guess you don’t want my money? And yes I have latest firmware and app update. This gets worse every day. So far since this update I have place 15 tickets on various issues. And NOW you’re changing the price again? I’m being told that any cam added after the 30th of July to Cam Plus will be priced at $1.99 per cam even though that cam was on CMC before the first of the year? I’m sorry but that is really poor CS to do that. You can lose a lot of customers that way. You can’t promise one thing today and then change it the next day.
Also, the “free” (for now…) PD isn’t really usable in it’s current state. A shadow can trigger a motion event and then 30 people can run past the camera during the cooldown period and you won’t get any notifications.
It would be one thing if the cooldown was between PD notifications, but having it tied in to motion events ruins the feature and is not the same functionality as what it is meant to replace.
I know…It still had to be said, especially since those features are available by multiple similar competitors, not just a couple of high end super tech companies with Billion$…several others offer those things, so it’s unlikely to be super complicated to do or it would be a lot more rare.
I mean, they already have events and label events as “Person, Motion, Sound, Automation” and each event has a start date/time and a stop date/time and the label in a database format already. If they want it to be simple they can just create a subroutine that overlays a different color for those events onto the playback timeline, or mark it with a person icon just above that time. There are more complex ways of doing it too, but having done some programming myself, I’d venture that someone with access to that data could implement those simple solutions within a full shift or two of work and make it available to beta-test, and even if it takes someone a little bit longer than a couple of shifts, so what? It’s still not as complex as they’re making it appear by avoiding it for several years while everyone else implements it, even using Wyze’s own current options (You can get a colored timeline through TinyCam using Wyze’s tech…so even 3rd parties are doing it with Wyze’s own devices while Wyze ignores the thing others want so bad that they turn to 3rd party solutions for their products). I mean seriously, they already have events with all the database info they need, and they already have a timeline too. Everything is already built…they just need to create a simple subroutine to make an overlay or icon on the GUI showing the things that are already labeled. All the hard work has already been done…and overlays aren’t complicated.
To me it’s really not asking a lot. It’s simply asking them to take a few hours to implement things that are becoming standard expectations in the market and to stay competitive…however, your point is extremely valid and I get that you are pointing out that they’re unwilling to consider it and so it is unlikely to happen. So in that sense I agree with you. Here, I am just pointing out that their priorities are a little skewed in ignoring the demands of the market to stay competitive by refusing to do things that are being fairly widely implemented, including by 3rd party solutions with their own devices. That’s a little concerning.
to be clear, I did not state or try to point out that Wyze is unwilling to consider the playback features. I’m just saying we’ve wanted motion marked in playback & it hasn’t happened yet. There are several items on the wishlist that are related to playback, and they have stated multiple times the issue is related to the file system these use on the sd. If it was as easy as you think it is, I’m 100% confident they would have added these features longggg ago.
I had the same issue but I found that in order to change cams, I had to tap on the selected cam (within the cam plus section) which then de-selects that cam, then I could tap a different one to select that one. Before tapping the current one, nothing seemed to work.
I have no affiliation with @alexey.vasilyev other than as a satisfied tinyCam customer who has experienced rapid turnaround on bug fixes and the addition of new enhancements.
Yeah, that’s my point. I also prefer using TinyCam to view events because of the things you mentioned (color coding, speed change, and clicking “next” to see the next event). All of those are available for competitors and for third parties to Wyze. It should be native to Wyze though. TinyCam also does other colors for other events, As I recall, a “sound” notification (cam picks up sound even if there isn’t any perceived motion) is shown in red/orange when I have sound events turned on with a couple of cams. There could be others too.
Example of Green, Red/Orange, and Purple for Wyze Cloud Events through TinyCam:
It’s very cool. If a completely 3rd party can do it with their limited access to things, there’s no way Wyze’s excuse of it being too complicated is all that valid. Even those with less access still do it for them, and it should be native. I also don’t buy the File management excuse, I’ve looked at the file management on the SD cards, they could easily pull the same metadata of the files and print an overlay from that information for each of those clips on the app’s GUI/timeline. All that would be done through the app, and the app already uses that same metadata to show us a timeline, etc in the first place. The color overlay, etc would be done in the app, not on the camera, just as the other stuff is…that excuse doesn’t really make sense, and TinyCam offers some evidence (though admittedly only for cloud events).
I forgot to mention, tinyCam is $3.99USD (one time charge) and occasionally goes on sale for $1.99USD.
All to say, it smoothes over a lot of issues (provides enhancements to Wyze, integrated view for many, many brands and models of cameras, DVR support, etc.) for a very modest fee.
