Random cooldown period, 5min is too predictable

Wyzecam being as popular as it has become means that trespassers/thieves will have heard of it, recognize its unique look, and know about its 5 min cooldown period. so they just have to trigger it by throwing a rock in its arc of vision and they have 5 minutes to do whatever they want to do.

my suggestion is to give users an option for a random cooldown period. Wyze could even make it so who chooses this will on average get less alerts saved to the cloud than a user who went for the default. Whats important is that the bad guy cant safely assume he has 5 minutes to do what he planned to do before an alert is triggered. thanks

Interesting idea. Even better, though, might be a subscription option to eliminate the cool down. Then the bad guys wouldn’t know who is subscribed and who’s not. Also an option for full time local recording to NAS or similar might also have the same effect.

(My intent is not to rain on this particular parade, but just to bounce around ideas.)

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Yes I followed that discussion, having the possibility of a paid option/rtsp would also fix this .
As it stands, anyone who recognizes its a Wyzecam can just wait for a passing car to trigger the alert & then has 5 min to spray paint the front of it , and it will never generate another push notification alert . the owner will only have an alert of a passing car (which he will have ignored).

As your colleagues explained, the paid option involves much more storage from Wyze’s end. My idea was that opting for random cooldowns would entitle you to less storage, example comparison of 10 cooldowns, default vs random:

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 average = delay of 5 min , 12 clips per hour
2 7 8 7 9 8 1 7 8 9 average = delay of 7 min , 8 clips per hour

uploading 8 clips per hour instead of 12 would mean Wyze saves 30% on cloud storage.

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Mine points at the street, but cars don’t trigger an alert or else it would be constant alerts. They don’t know the detection zone, but your point is still valid. They could use a nerf gun and cause a trigger by shooting the camera from an off angle. Heck, if we’re giving away tips, they could probably just pull out their cell phones, turn the flash on and take a picture. Laser pointers? Flashlights? Ok, enough.

I know Wyze offers 14 days of storage, but they could also offer xx number of events since they are all 12 seconds and a fairly standard size. If you choose this option, you could also choose no cooldown. There may be other issues if microSD video is saved in 1 minute blocks, iirc. If the camera is unplugged within that minute, is there actually any video saved or even sent to cloud storage? I think, No. We could easily test this or maybe some Wyze people could answer.

Your best bet is to place the camera out of reach.

thanks for your post, another way might be for an option for the push alerts to continue with a smaller cooldown period of 1 minute, but the only clips uploaded to the cloud would be those at the original five minute intervals. so the spray painter would trigger multiple push alerts to the owner before he finished his deed.

this would not involve any addtional storage from Wyze.

Thinking about your original premise, I would like to know if anyone has had a camera stolen or spray painted? While Hollywood gets us thinking about this, I’m not sure how often it happens. I’m the Neighborhood Watch Coordinator for two subdivisions, long story, and one thing we have to realize is most of us don’t think like thieves. Thieves want easy targets and obviously disarmed targets. Having a camera says you’re not an easy target and like most things, they will move on the next, least resistant, target. If you have one camera, you probably have two cameras or more and it becomes much more complicated than the usual thief wants to deal with. They are generally not over-achievers. That’s not to say the not too bright ones might do something stupid, but I’m not seeing the trend. Just put the camera out of reach.

As a side note: there might be a market for faux Wyze cameras. Don’t throw away dead cameras, put them up as decoys.

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I REALLY like that idea!

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I use my Wyzcam as a security feature to record authorized and unauthorized entry in my home during my absence.

Unfortunately, the 5 minute “cooling” period means that in any 9 minute period there can be only ONE 12 second video upload after a motion detection; the sound detection video is essentially wasted by the door knocking and unlocking.

So if I am unfortunate and a burglar enters my home while I am away on a trip he has ample time (8 minutes) to locate the Wyzecam and make himself a gift. After that he can take his hood off and take his time…

So, basically due to the 5 minute “cooling” period my Wyzecam is not fulfilling its purpose: record in the cloud video beyond 12 sec that might help identify the individual.

All this is because Wyze is concerned that the user will use too much of the free cloud space. This is ironic, since during a 2-4 week vacation, when no one is entering the home, there would be no cloud usage at all, yet Wyze with its 5minute cooling period is obstructing the very purpose of the security cam.

Now that I raise the issue - a serious one for me at least, I’d like to suggest a few possible solutions as well:

  1. Reduce the cooling period by say, 1 minute for each day of 0 video uploads

  2. Make the cooling period flexible, say start with an a delay of 30 seconds after the first video, 1 minute after the second, 2 minutes after the third, 3 minutes after the fourth, 4 minutes after the fifth, etc.

  3. Sect a configurable delay, say records every 40 seconds, until a threshold is reached
    after which set a longer - 5 minute delay.

  4. Create a shortcut to be sat for “vacation” when it is understood that there would be only occasional alerts and video uploads,

  5. Allow the user to monitor his available cloud space/14 day interval and let him manage the recording delays

There are many other options, the 1-4 above would be the easiest to implement. The best thing is that they would not increase the cost structure for Wyze.

I hope that Wyze will see that this is a totally reasonable feature request that will in fact make the Wyzcam a truly useful product.

Unfortunately, the way it is right now I believe it fails an important objective due to an unfounded concern - use of too much cloud space, when in fact during a prolonged absence there is not more but less use of cloud space.