[POLL] How about that Wyze app 3.0 (in Beta 2!) šŸ’Ŗ

Unfortunately; you CANNOT sort the Automations/Rules (still). This is long overdue and Iā€™m unsure why itā€™s not possible. This is my most requested feature update. #2 is finishing Dark Mode throughout the app.

I feel itā€™s a bit of hubris to call this a version 3.0 when itā€™s still not polished all the way through in terms of UI layout. I know they want to get the app out there, but it feels alittle ā€œhurriedā€ by not having Dark Mode throughout.

They were hot and heavy to change some pages 6 months ago but then the progress stalledā€¦ Not sure why. Seems like you could just assign someone that task and thatā€™s all they do until itā€™s finished. Being half-baked with Dark Mode does make me wonder how else they might half-bake things.

Overall, Iā€™m happy with the app and overall camera/automation experience. I have a pretty elaborate Automation Set and a lot of devices. Everything seems to be working and stable. No issues here.

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Yeah, thatā€™s a mystery. Maybe their usage metrics indicate people have no desire to sort Automations/Rules?

Seems unlikely, but these metrics are very smart, they know how to ferret out these things. :grin:

Maybe @carverofchoice wants to add it to his hashtagged ā€˜askatnextAMAā€™ list, or maybe he doesnā€™t, or already has. There are so many things we still donā€™t know. :wink:

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Thatā€™s why I called it bloatware. Looks like they took v2.5 and just started changing things instead of writing the app from the ground up.

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The PM already said theyā€™re working on adding sorting features, so Iā€™ll wait to see how extensive this are first. The commitment to adding sorting is a good enough start to me for now.

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Thank you, sir. I wait. :slight_smile:

image

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Thatā€™s disappointing to read, and itā€™s something I would want to see prioritized, as well. Itā€™s one of the things I mentioned back in March. (I wonder if/when weā€™ll see responses in that topic bear fruitā€¦. :thinking:)

I hope thatā€™s actually true, because sorting in the current app is a :poop: show.

I realize I'm likely in a tiny minority hereā€¦

ā€¦but whoever is responsible for the Notification area for the Watch module in the current app should be embarrassed (and I donā€™t expect that his has gotten any better in the Ī², though, to be fair, I havenā€™t tried it). The main screen shows a few commonly-used apps (though why Spotify qualifies for that area is a mystery to me, since the Watch has zero music player controls), so thatā€™s easy enough to navigate visually. Tapping Other Applications revealsā€¦

The horrorā€¦the horrorā€¦. :scream:

There is no rhyme or reason at all to this list. None. Itā€™s not alphabetical according to an appā€™s name (which would be logical and perfectly acceptable) nor ordered by the most recent or most frequent notifications (which would be cool if this was a user-selectable sorting option; I imagine the app would probably need permission to access that data from the OS, if itā€™s even possible, but showing a user which apps are generating the most notifications so that the user could easily select/deselect these would be a somewhat unique and super useful way to do it, Iā€™d think) nor arranged in any other organized scheme that Iā€™m able to discern. Itā€™s just a [censored] mess.

Frustrating and insulting the user is not the way to do good UI/UX.

Give the Watch some more :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: love, Wyze!

:bowing_man:

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Iā€™m currently preaching the value of emojis for naming cameras and automations.

It sorted my device list by doing this and will future sort my automation list. But for now, it makes my automation list look much better.

I use these same emojiā€™s on the devices so there is consistency. In my example below, the Tree Camera Front Person Light Night meanā€¦

If the Outside Front Camera detects a person, turn on the spotlight, but only a night rule.

If the House JasperFood Camera detects a cat, tun on the spotlight, but only a night rule.

Satellite Dish (LR MOTION) has NO MOTION (ghostbuster, running man) Day rule.

Basically.

My Device list has the OBJECT device symbol first (so the list sorts itself to device), and then I break that down into room or room - thing in room (like lightbulbs). And I still distinguish between inside and outside camā€™s. I even add a battery symbol to cameraā€™s that are Battery Cam Proā€™s.

It has really cleaned up my view. I tend to speedread (my wife will tell you I skip words but ā€œwhat ā€¦ she know?ā€) so the symbols help my eyes and brain.

Iā€™m still tuning it and cleaning it upā€¦ spaces, periods, things I was usingā€¦ Iā€™m basically going with less is more.

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I used to use emojis for most of my devices, and I agree it can have HUGE benefits. Lots of people also use them to help find rules. In fact it was this thread that gave me the idea to do this for devices too:

The problem I ran into for doing this with my devices is that I like to use the cameras with lots of other platforms including Home Assistant, Alexa, Google, etc. And it can get difficult to tell an AI by audio to stream or turn on/off or do something else to a device whose name starts with an emoji :joy: So I ended up removing most of my emojis from the device name because it actually made things too inconvenient for my particular use-case where I use the cameras in so many other applications where I need to be able to say the exact name of the camera, and having symbols and emojis can be nearly impossible for voice conversion to text or text to speech conversions.

This is why, while I LOVE the workaround creativity, and TOTALLY support this option/suggestion/usecase for some users where this wonā€™t matterā€¦I still think Wyze NEEDS to add normal sorting options anyway like is fairly standard practice.

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Itā€™s funny you mention that you had problems with thatā€¦ I wondered if the symbols would get in the way of certain things. Google is pretty good with it. I donā€™t use Alexa enough so I canā€™t speak to that. I totally understand that.

They definitely need to use sorting. Plan B for me would be:

Automations
Device-Room-Rule param
or
Room-Device-Rule param

Devices
Device-Room-Name
or
Room-Device-Name

I had this but not consistently before because the Rules never sorted. And because the devices were in their device type group (and not in one list, which Iā€™ve grown to love) I never thought about it.

I would definitely like to see your setup. What descriptions I can remember of your setup, you have a LOT!

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Mine is a work in progress in my spare time. I wouldnā€™t necessarily call my setup super advanced, so I am not EXTREMELY satisfied with my organization just yet, but Iā€™m slowly building it the way I want it to be.

I have started using a system similar to what you proposed above, though I am trying to migrate most of my stuff be managed primarily by Home Assistant, then everything else secondarily. I just started migrating to home assistant since winter time, and only in spare time (Home assistant is a fun time sinkhole though). So, Itā€™s slow progress.

So for Automations my naming convention is actually first based on What KIND of automation it is primarily designed to be: Announcement, Notification, Schedule, Zone, Guest rules (rules that are solely used when guests are visiting), manual Button, and a few other types of rules that are common for my uses. Then a word for the location it is in, type of device name that triggers it, what the trigger is then the action. So my automations often look named like this:


image

HA also now lets me add custom labels to my automations as you can see above to make it easy to sort or filter them to my desire. I can sort by location, category, state (enabled or disabled), by name and many other things. I can filter it by which devices are used in the automations (triggers or actions), and countless other things. I have so much control over it, that itā€™s basically gotten to the point where I no longer even need a good naming convention for my devices or automations because itā€™s SOOO easy to find and sort and filter things that even the most basic user can find whatever they are looking for with the sorting and filtering options. Iā€™m just barely getting started with adding labels now that they are available:

image image

Devices have similar filters and sorting and allow labeling too. So, I can just label specific devices or their ā€œEntitiesā€ (features of the device, like turning it on/off or triggering the siren or various other features) as being part of Wyze, or a light, or in a zone/area or various other things and easily control or find anything with those tags. And any device can be in multiple groups.

I also have unlimited dashboards to control my stuff however I want. Here is the first one I created. A majority of these items are Wyze devices, including controlling my Thermostat, Security system, lights, lock, etc:

This is my primary lighting dashboard. Itā€™s just simple, but it works for my needs:


Also note that I can have lights in multiple groups. For example a bulb can be in a group for a particular room while also being a group for a whole floor, while also being in a group for ā€œall indoor lightsā€ while also being a part of ā€œALL LIGHTSā€ at the house. I can turn off all lights in a room, or have all indoor lights turn off when nobody is home, but leave out the outdoor lights. Wyze currently limits us to 1 group.

This is a dashboard tracking some of my Wyze sensors (I havenā€™t moved them all over yet):

I currently have 15 different dashboards setupā€¦so I wonā€™t post them all, and I will be redoing some of them But theyā€™re super simple to switch between and I can link notifications to pull up a specific dashboard or device.

I am slowly implementing more and more with better organization and design, but for now my stuff is pretty basic because I am kept so busy. I will be integrating my Wyze cameras video streaming and detections soon too (currently I only have control of some non-streaming features for the cameras). Itā€™s a slow process because as you mentioned I have over 300 Wyze devices alone (50 of them are cameras), let alone my other smart home stuff.

Still, the main point is that I am pushing Wyze to build a better FOUNDATION similar to this so that it is simple for people to be able to organize things in the way that best suits them. Allow sorting and filtering options. Allow Rooms/areas/zones so people can better organize their stuff. Adding custom labels would be extraordinary progress. Allow us to make our own custom dashboards. Maybe have a lighting dashboard we can toggle to. Let us have

If Wyze did some of these things it would make for an amazing experience for EVERYONE without having to do ingenious creative workarounds like you are sharing with people. I fully support your awesome workaround, donā€™t think otherwise. I just HOPE it is a temporary workaround that wonā€™t be necessary later if Wyze builds a good foundation like they should with better sorting and filtering options.

In the automations section of the Wyze app we should be able to select a device and tell the app to pull up all automations that involve that device. We should be able to tell it to show us all automations related to a specific room of the house, or level of the house. We should be able to tell it to pull up all automations related to lights. We should be able to sort automations based on how they are named, or other kinds of ways (again, custom labels would be amazing). This foundational functionality is critical for a good user experience.

Since none of that is currently possible, your suggestions are GREAT for a majority of people who only use the Wyze app to control their devices. The VISUAL aspect makes it extremely appealing too! I love it, donā€™t think otherwise. I was simply annoyed that sometimes text to speech occurred, but that was more than 1-2 years ago when I last tested it. It might not be as big of a deal anymore since you are reporting that it worked okay with Google for you. That is reassuring progress. :slight_smile:

I should mention that I do still use the Wyze app a lot, but Iā€™d say it is secondary use compared to my Home assistant integration with my Wyze stuff. I can do much more advanced stuff with my Wyze devices through Home Assistant, and ironically many of the bulbs even react much faster than going through Wyze because Home Assistant appears to have local control of the bulbs, while Wyze automations appear to always go through the cloud. Kind of ironic.

Keep sharing buddy. Know your creativity and sharing and efforts to help people ARE appreciated. :+1:

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Keep preaching! I know weā€™ve discussed this in another topic previously, so I wonā€™t completely rehash my own habits here. Iā€™ll just say that I personally donā€™t find a convention like this useful for most devices because Google Home (which I use) can have issues with that. I do use it routinely (pun intended) for my Google Home automations, because thatā€™s where I try to do as much automating as I can, and that helps me to keep my long list of those organized.

The current production Wyze app doesnā€™t do this (automatically sort by alphabet or emoji order in the Rules section), and thatā€™s what I hope will change in a future version (or at least have that be one of multiple sorting options for the Rules part of the app).

As an example, I use clock emoji to begin time-based Google Home automations (you can see examples if you hit the link in my first paragraph above), and the Google Home app sorts those for me. If I try adding a new Schedule type Rule in the Wyze app and begin its name with an appropriate clock emoji (like the others I already have there), the Wyze app just gives me the finger and adds it to the top of that subsection in Rules. Same with Device Trigger Rules.

Thatā€™s not a huge pain in the cheeks when I donā€™t have a lot of automations there (I have a few because I need those as work-arounds for some other Wyze device integration shortcomings), but if someone is basing the majority of their smart home automation entirely within the Wyze ecosystem, then this could be a real headache.

Yup. This is a major reason I donā€™t do it for devices.

In Google Home, since the trigger phrase I call out by voice doesnā€™t have to be the same as the automation name, I donā€™t care if the name has emoji in it, and neither does Google Home. The important part is that what I say is just regular olā€™ words.

If someone else has better luck with emoji in device names, then more power to 'em, and Iā€™m glad they found a system that works. One of the great things about a lot of this stuff is that we get to find our own ways that work for us, and weā€™re not all forced into using the exact same scheme. That can result in a lot of creative problem solving, and Iā€™m a fan of that.

:shushing_face:
Pssst! Heā€™s busy writing multiple lengthy posts on this Forum!
:wink:

Oh, yeah, and heā€™s also pushing. :point_down:

Yeah, that really needs to happen.

Another way to look at it is that itā€™s a long-term solution for organization that makes a long list of items (devices, groups, automations, whatever) easier to scan. Thatā€™s what originally caused me to hit on the idea in Google Home (before I even joined the Wyze Forum and then later read about similar things here).

Exactly. :ok_hand:

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Haha, only partially-trueā€¦I actually use the forum in a way that helps me work better.

Not that anyone cares about my personal/work life, and it's not a 'watercooler' thread, so I'll collapse this part down into this details tag. --Feel free to skip all of this

So, for work, I am not ā€œhourlyā€ based with a certain amount of ā€œtimeā€ I need workā€¦I have an amount of work that needs to be done. But because I have ADHD, I can burn out in some cases and become less productive if I just try to work straight through several hours at a time. I am less productive that way. So, to improve my effectiveness, I take breaks over here for a minute. Then I can go back to do my work more refreshed and clear-headed again and get things done better. Itā€™s oddly helped me be way more effective and productive, and is MUCH better for me than the alternative wastes of time I used to supplement with instead or get really addicted to and then get less work done. Coming to the forums is actually significant step in keeping more productive with my work. :joy: And since I donā€™t have a ā€œBossā€ telling me what I can or canā€™t do when Iā€™m ā€œclocked inā€ or when or how or anything like that, I get to figure out what works best for me and all that matters is that I get done the things I need to get done.

The main client I took on, when I first started, the work was taking me like 80hrs/week. It was insane. I leveraged some of my hyper-focus, etc to reorganize and create some automations that now brought that down a lot. Sometimes I work full time, sometimes I was able to get away with less than 15hrs/week (at least until this Winter/Spring hit when they doubled AGAIN) with stuff that used to take more than 80hrs/weekā€¦and weā€™ve now more than 20Xā€™d everything (revenue, and data I needed to review/fix, etc) from when I first took them on (half of that 20x just took place this spring when everything nearly doubled again from this time last year). Without my automations and programs I created to analyze all their data and only report to me the important things that need manual review/fixing, theyā€™d have to hire several more people and would still be losing a lot of money compared to what I find/fix for them. :joy: The last few months have just scaled too far beyond me handling this by myself anymore that I am working on figuring out how to hire some virtual assistants to help out with some of it and then looking to self-host my own local LLMā€™s to implement some better, automated workflows (I canā€™t use the cloud based LLMā€™s because they canā€™t sign BAAā€™s and promise privacy at the level of HIPPA requirements, so their AI Agents arenā€™t suitable for my needs. :sob: So Iā€™ll have to go do my own self-hosted oneā€¦but Iā€™ve been so busy lately that I havenā€™t had time to figure it out. Kind of a Catch-22. I first need to set up Procedures I can train someone on for the mundane routine stuff I need them to do for me, then that will free up my time to learn how to do the other stuff I need to figure out. :slight_smile:

More than doubling my work load from a single client in just 1 month is a lot to handle. :scream: The main problem is that a lot of my work canā€™t be done until the business week ends, and there are big deadlines at the beginning of the week. So I sometimes have to cram more than a full time schedule into the first few days of the week, leading me to have to stay up ALL NIGHT about once every 2 weeks.

This week is especially bad because of the Juneteenth holiday closing some of the partner platforms we rely on, forcing me to cram normal deadlines in an extra day earlier than normal or people will have a tantrum about getting paid late. :joy: So this weekend has been ROUGH! Iā€™ll probably be up all night tonight cramming this stuff in on time.

Plus I have 2 high attention demanding toddler terrorists (who only like to let me work after they go to bed), and a teenager. :slight_smile: and my wife works more than I do. :joy: Soā€¦ just a little busy, but life is good.

But I love my life and choose to do things this way. So the rest doesnā€™t matter because I feel like I have a lot of freedom, particularly once I clear some of the critical deadlines. early in the week.

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Thank you for your suggestions. Prefixing devices by location or other attribute is an excellent way to establish your own sort sequence. With every app thereā€™s an ā€˜improvement lifeā€™ that changes the app from useful to unnecessarily complicated. I often find that ā€˜improvementsā€™ in version 3 or later of any app are subtle an actually reduce usability especially for new users. When this occurs, users must resort to work arounds to restore usability and defeat the ā€˜improvementsā€™. I hope Wyze is wise about changes. Iā€™ve already caught them being less than accurate/explicit with device features and specifications.

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I am sort of looking forward to the new challenges with the :deciduous_tree:. o app.

Hopefully, I wonā€™t need to devise a code or plan. Luckily my system is not built like Fort Knox.

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For those fond of substance, meander up from here. Info-rich is an understatement! :+1: :smile_cat:

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The more I use :evergreen_tree:.0 (thank you for this @ssummerlin, hilarious!) the more I donā€™t dislike it.

Needs some work, but not nearly as bad as I initially thought.

Iā€™m also finna start calling @Crease Creaseofchoice :rofl:

Listen pal, I only gots time to read one persons long posts and thatā€™s @carverofchoice, been doing it for years. Ainā€™t nobody got time for the two of yinz :wink:

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Oh, yeah? Well, itā€™s a good thing thereā€™s no policy against changing my own username!

Well, in that case, pal, you really donā€™t want to read my post from last monthā€™s Fix-It Friday where I felt like I was channeling my inner Carver by the time I got to the end. Also, donā€™t read the mess I posted in this monthā€™s Fix-It Friday, either. Maybe you should just hit the olā€™ ā€œignoreā€ button on this guy entirely! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

(All kidding aside, I genuinely enjoy the conversation and good-natured ribbing here, and I agree with @ssummerlinā€™s suggestion about getting together for drinks sometime, even if @R.Good isnā€™t supplying the premium whiskey. Thanks for making this a fun place to spend time.)

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Yea, I readā€™em. :blush: and appreciate them.

If itā€™s in my cabinet, itā€™s shareable!

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:tumbler_glass::+1:[1]


  1. See? I can do brief posts! :wink: ā†©ļøŽ

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Iā€™m in :laughing:

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