I set up a schedule on 2 Wyze plugs to turn lights on and off while I was away in Italy. Found out that they were running the schedule based on the time in Italy rather than Eastern US time. This happened if I tried to use the vacation mode as well. Is there a way to specify that the plugs (or maybe the Wyze app) always works based on a specified time zone? It kind of defeats the purpose of schedules/vacation mode if the plugs are turning on/off based on where I am vs. where the plug is.
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Sounds like you need a local account and a traveling account to keep things in their place.
Welcome to the Forum, @stevewigren! 
Although I haven’t traveled to Italy, what you’re describing is a frustration I’ve also experienced, even when I’m away from home in the same time zone. I still don’t have a good concept of how Vacation Mode is supposed to work, but in my experience it hasn’t worked as expected for any of my Plugs or Bulb Colors, because it has turned things on outside of stated operating hours.
Regarding schedules, you didn’t say whether you were using Local Schedules or Schedule-type Automations, and that might be part of the solution for you because these things operate differently. If you have the original Wyze Plug, then your only scheduling option is with Automations (formerly Rules), but newer Plug models have the Local Schedules feature, so determining which you have is where I’d start, and then keep this in mind:
- Local Schedules (set through a Plug’s
Settings ➜ Schedules) are stored on the Plug and can run based on the Plug’s time, even if the Plug doesn’t have an Internet connection. - Schedule-type Automations (
Add ➜ Automation ➜ Schedule) run from Wyze’s servers and require an active Internet connection to function.
That still doesn’t answer my own question about how a particular device determines its time, though. I’ve read other Forum posts complaining about cameras changing time when a person travels to a different (non-home) time zone and opens the Wyze app to check something—then the current time on the phone (which has changed because the person has traveled) gets applied to the camera, instead of the camera maintaining its own local time. It seems like kind of a mess, and I don’t have a good concept of what’s happening or why it seems to operate this way. There are several Wishlist topics related to these issues:
That third topic seems most like the one related to the issue you described, I think. I’d encourage you to visit those, click the Vote button above the initial post, and add your own comments/use-cases to support the features you’d like to see Wyze implement.
I still have testing Vacation Mode on my to-do list, because I want to have a better understanding of what’s happening there, but I haven’t made it a high priority. In your case, I think I’d look at the Wishlist and also try using Local Schedules (vs. Automations) to see if that makes a difference in your experience. I don’t know if it will or not, but it seems like it’d be worth trying.
At least you’ve been able to sort of make sense of where the time is coming from? I can’t make automations work, so I use sunset / sunrise timing for my lamp sockets as that’s the only thing that will work reliably. However sunset timing is generally a couple hours too early? I can’t figure out where it gets it from. The time is right on my cameras.
Seems like a simple solution would just let the user specify a location. I set my location in SmartThings, it’s nice, simple and easy. It seems they complicated things, and it breaks things.
I haven’t, no, and that’s what really puzzles me. Like I said, I haven’t yet tried a thorough test of Vacation Mode, but I know that when I turn it on for Plugs and Bulb Colors and am away, I get motion detection notifications from indoor cameras at hours outside the range when Vacation Mode is supposed to be operating, and when I check the events I can see that lights are on at hours when they shouldn’t be. That’s frustrating, especially when I’m in the same time zone while this is happening, so I have no idea what time the devices “think” it is. 
So you’re using Wyze Lamp Socket? I don’t have any of those, so I don’t know what their capabilities are with respect to settings and Automations.
Have you seen this Wishlist topic?
It looks like that one is requesting an offset parameter to be added to sunrise/sunset times for some devices, and if you can select sunrise/sunset for Lamp Socket, then it would make sense to me for this product to have the same options available.
Yeah, I think that’s really the right answer, and for people who have devices at more than one location, they should be able to specify different physical locations—like when I’m a member of two different households in Google Home, but Google Home is given the address of each physical location so it knows the time there and can calculate sunrise/sunset and be given Routines that specify a time offset: For instance, I have a Household Routine that turns exterior lights on 15 minutes after sunset and off 30 minutes before sunrise.