I need a recommendation for a substitute camera monitoring system for my primary residence, since Wyze cannot come up with a solution. (I have Wyze system in remote building connected to my home internet via an underground cable, but cannot add cameras to my house.)
Can someone make a recommendation?
I don’t have recommendations for an alternate ecosystems, but from your post history I only see recent posts regarding the use of two HMS Systems.
What is restricting you from adding cameras to your account or the account your Wife uses?
SkabSlayer, what’s preventing connection to my wife’s account is that one is for a seasonal residence 225 miles from our home
My account is connected to the remote building at our location.
I understand from reading your previous posts that you are using an HMS system and subscription at each address on two separate Wyze accounts since the HMS is limited to one per account. There isn’t a way around that.
What I was asking about was the trouble you are having adding a camera to your house. I don’t see any other posts from you discussing that issue or any reference to how Wyze is ignoring you.
It doesn’t matter which account is used to install cams at either address so long as the phone doing the install is logged into the WiFi at the physical address. Cams can’t be installed remotely. Then, once installed, they can be shared to the other account.
SlabSlayer, maybe I am just not technologically saavy enough to know what’s possible, so let me lay it out.
The Wyze camera and other sensors are in an automotive shop 300’ away from the house. An underground Cat 6 cable connects a T Mobile gateway (router/modem) that is in the house to a Smarthub and wireless router, both in the shop.
I was under the impression that the cameras and Smarthub had to be in the same location and that I could not add a second Smarthub in the house. I.e. the Smarthub in the shop will not connect to cameras 300’ away and if I put the Smarthub in the house I cannot connect to things in the shop.
The shop is an all metal building, essentiala Faraday cage, so no signal gets out or into it wirelessly.
Thanks for sticking with me.
If your phone can log into the network, either in the shop, in the house, or on the WiFi network at the Antarctic Base Camp, you can install a cam on that network to your account.
Cams are not restricted by network. Many users have cams in their account that are on multiple different networks around the world. The network that the Wyze Sense Hub is installed to does not restrict the network you use for any of your other cams.
If you can install a WiFi network in the house, and your phone can log into that WiFi network, you can install as many cams as you like on that network.
Here is the neat thing… You have the Shop HMS on your account, you install a House WiFi router in the house and install cams to your account, you go to your other house where your Wife’s account holds the HMS there, install cams there to your account while logged into that network… You can add up to 5 of your cams to the HMS as security cams… from the Shop, from the house, and from the other house.
The ONLY restriction is that you can have only one HMS subscription per account.
SlabSlayer,
Thanks for the explanation. I need to buy another camera now, or maybe several.
Does your explanation apply to only cameras, or also to sensors for door openings and temperature?
BTW, I just read an article from about a month ago in the NYT saying they were pulling their recommendations about Wyze due to a camera security breach the NYT felt was inadequately handled by Wyze.
It applies to any Wyze device that connects to WiFi. Mainly Cam’s and any other Wyze WiFi device.
It DOES NOT apply to the sensors (contact, motion, climate, leak). The sensors do not connect by WiFi. They connect directly to the Hub by Radio Frequency and the hub acts as the controlling bridge box. For the sensors to work with a Hub, they must be within RF range of the Hub to which they are installed. For a sensor to trigger an “alarm response” on the hub with the HMS subscription, it must be within range and installed to the hub that has the HMS subscription.
But… You CAN have as many Wyze Sense Hubs on your account as you like, at any location that has WiFi, like the cams. The restriction is that only one of your hubs is allowed to have the HMS Subscription. The extra Hubs can be installed without the subscription and the Sense V2 Sensors installed to that hub (within RF Range) will work for Push Notifications and any Automation Rules or Alexa Routines you develop. You just cannot use it for any of the features you find in the “Monitoring” tab. The extra Hubs cannot trigger an “alarm” response like the hub that has the HMS Subscription assigned.
The restriction Wyze has is on the subscription, not the Hub. And, it is because of the way the subscription is monitored by Noonlight and the limitations of the Wyze App. Your App only has one “Home Address”. So, Noonlight can only send police to that one “Home Address”. If you had multiple HMS Subscriptions at multiple addresses, house #2 would trigger an alarm and police would show up at house #1.
Many users have multiple hubs for 2nd and 3rd locations. They just don’t have Professional Monitoring there. They “Self Monitor”. They install very loud bullhorn sirens connected to stacked Smart Plugs and use Rules and Routines to enable and disable them. The top plug is the one that triggers the siren from Rules and Routines when a sensor is activated, the bottom plug is the one that activates and deactivates the “system”. Here is a great How To if you are interested. They also use the Sensor and Plug Push Notifications to receive alerts when the plug and sensors are triggered. The Rules to activate and deactivate the siren plugs also turn the push notifications on and off respectively.
Yes. IMO it was shoddy journalism at best and a deliberate hatchet job for shock value and click bait at worst. All of their “investigative journalism” was from reading other online reporting of the incident over two weeks after it was first reported. I think they were just miffed that they didn’t get a press release before customers were informed and lost their bid at the scoop. With social media nowadays, mainstream media is suffering. And for good cause, it cuts out the middle man and removes their ability to create their own spin and narrative.
Wyze shut down the site in 40 minutes, it was limited to the WebView website only for Cams Plus users and only for those logged in at the time, directly affected the source streams of only 10 customers, and Wyze was immediate in making announcements that it happened on their many social media platforms. They kept customers updated with several follow up posts and were quite transparent about it in the process. I knew about it within minutes after it started and personally saw the Wyze response to the initial reports in real time. Here is the Topic Wyze created in the forum the day of the incident.
Wow. This is amazing information, SlabSlayer. Some time ago I called Wyze and this is not at all what I understood from them, so thank you very much.
You’re welcome!
You called Wyze Support. They are actually a contract Customer Support provider in the Philippines. They have their usefulness when dealing with “technical” malfunctions, hardware failures, and account related problems.
But, they don’t get paid by how much time and effort they put into each case. They get paid based on volume and how quickly they can close a ticket speeds that up. They are also very inexperienced when it comes to hands on working knowledge with the actual hardware, firmware, and App. They operate based on scripts and flow diagrams developed by Wyze.
When it comes to education about how the stuff really operates, from experienced users who have tested and used it, “where the rubber meets the road”, the Forum is the place to start. So many experienced users here happy to share.
The parent company to EzViz in china. Theyre called HikVision. I suggest going to them because these only work for a couple years, they lie about AI because true AI doesn’t exist and this definitely doesn’t run on it, they care too much about nickel and diming you and you can’t ever have a centralized NVR to be able to watch on a dedicated monitor because they’re too busy taking our money for substandard products and the brand I mentioned up there at least have way better stuff to them and you can have them served to anywhere in regard to server. If you’re going to go all out don’t get this brand unless you like replacing all the cameras every few years… They let me down they screwed me over and I have so many other cameras that I bought in the last 3 years that look like a small dead robot army that it’s sickening