Has anyone figured out how to turn camera notifications on/off from Google Home?
I currently pay monthly for a pro IFTTT subscription to control push notifications from the cameras based on my location/geofencing. Last I tried, geofencing within the Wyze app was horrible - in just a few hours, it drained half the battery on a nearly new Galaxy S23 Ultra because it was (apparently) pinging location every second. IFTTT works, but there is often a 10-15 minute delay (which is frustrating, because it was very responsive when I first started using it).
With Google being highly integrated into Android, Iāve noticed that my Google Home app notices Iām home very quickly, sometimes before I even pull into the driveway. I already use a few automations there, and the Wyze push notifications is the only thing I canāt get added.
If youāre set on using Google Home and are satisfied with its responsiveness to your location, then my first inclination would be to use a Wyze Plug or one of the sockets in a Plug Outdoor as a bridge from your Google Home Routines to Wyze Automations. You could have Google Home change the state of the plug (turn it off or on) and use this as a trigger for a Device & Service Trigger Automation in the Wyze app to have the Wyze Automation change the state of your camera notifications (off or on).
That seems like potentially the easiest way to do it, and I imagine the desired effect would be achieved much more quickly than what youāre describing with IFTTT. I have extra Plug Outdoors available just for this kind of ecosystem bridging purpose, and I think those are great because you get two sockets with each device that you can use as independent switches/triggers.
Thanks for the response. This is an interesting solution and it might be worth the investment just to be rid of IFTTT pro. Two follow-up questions:
Two of the cameras are actually Flood cams and are hardwired to a switched circuit, and so there is no way to plug them into a plug. Would this still work?
As far as being set on Google Home - I like the responsiveness of the geofencing and the lightweight nature of the app. It doesnāt drain resources and just seems to work, unlike IFTTT which will occasionally decide to stop working altogether, which goes unnoticed until I realize I havenāt gotten a cam notification in days. I have an android phone, a Google nest thermostat, and a Google home mini, so the ecosystem makes sense for me.
That being said, if there is an alternative that doesnāt require buying more Wyze products, I would be interested. Iāve been looking into Home Assistant and really trying to justify making the jump. I donāt need a lot, but it would be nice to add some logic into some basic automations. For instance, if I arrive home and itās near dark, turn on the living room lights.
Youāre welcome. I think the smart plugs are a good investment because theyāre a simple way to enable things that might not otherwise be possible (or might be more difficult to implement if attempted another way) by acting as an integration bridge, and if youāre looking to get rid of IFTTT Pro then you have the one-time cost of a Plug or Plug Outdoor instead of an ongoing subscription, so Iām a fan of that. (I donāt currently use subscriptions with any of my Wyze cameras, but each does have a microSD card set to continuous recording.)
Iām not saying that a Plug will solve all of your problems, because I donāt know what else you might be using IFTTT to do. Iāve used IFTTT Free a few times in the past for testing things or temporary solutions, like if I wanted to receive an e-mail message and have a light turn a certain color when a nearby weather station reported a certain temperature to Weather Underground. I understand that itās good for a lot of different things, but I think a Plug will answer the question from your initial post.
Yes, because you donāt actually need the Plug (or one of the sockets if youāre using Plug Outdoor) to power anything. Youāre just using it as a virtual/logical switch to trigger a Wyze Automation and provide an answer to your first question:
The Plug just needs to be connected to power and Wi-Fi so that you can include it in the Google Home Routines youāre already using with your geofence. You give the Plug a name and assign it to a home and a room and then add it to the Actions of your existing Routines, like āwhen I arrive at home, turn off Notification Switch (or whatever you want to name your Plug)ā and vice versa. Then in the Wyze app, you create a couple of Device & Service Trigger Automations:
Camera Notifications ON
IF
Notification Switch (Plug)
Turns on
DO
All devices
Turn on notifications
Camera Notifications OFF
IF
Notification Switch (Plug)
Turns off
DO
All devices
Turn off notifications
I think this would probably be the simplest case using UNIVERSAL ACTIONS in your Wyze Automations, but obviously you could specify the scope more precisely with DEVICE ACTIONS in the DO sections of your Automations to apply effects only to specific devices (like maybe you want to turn off notifications for individual interior cameras but leave notifications on for exterior cameras). You can play with it and see what works best for you.
Incidentally, if you live near a Home Depot, theyāre known to put Wyze products on unadvertised (in-store only) clearance at times, and Iāve read reports in the Forum of 2-packs of Plugs for $5 at times if you can find them. I went into a local Home Depot once last year to see if any of those were available but didnāt find them and instead found Plug Outdoors at the same price.
I donāt have any experience with that at all, but if I was considering that platform Iād probably do my own initial research and then ask @carverofchoice if I had specific questions, because I think he does a lot of stuff with Home Assistant. (Heās actually the guy who clued me into using Wyze Plug as a bridge to Google Home.) The stuff Iāve wanted to do (so far) has been simple enough that Iāve been able to base as much as possible in Google Home and then use Wyze or other third-party (Kasa, Tapo) app automations to fill in, but occasionally I get a little curious about things like Home Assistant and Hubitat.
Oh buddy, do it already! Jumping into Home Assistant was the absolute best Smart Home decision I made. You will ditch IFTTT so quick and never look back!!!
Home Assistant even has a 3rd party Wyze Integration. And while I havenāt used the ānotificationsā toggle entities that come with it, it does include Toggles for the notifications for individual entities like cameras, and all for free (no IFTTT).
(Note that the notification toggles for a couple of newer camera models in the current Wyze integration werenāt working, but our Wyze Maven @IEatBeans actually submitted a fix for those and weāre hoping they get implemented in the next update, or itās possible to just fix them yourself by adding the pending patch).
Even without notification toggles though, I have home assistant as my new main smart home driver because itās so powerful.
The Geofencing works really well with the default settings and doesnāt drain my battery. You can configure it to use more or less if you want though. You can choose when it uses high accuracy mode, the frequency, or whether it just updates whenever the location sensor normally updates so it doesnāt use any more battery regardless. It works really well. I have it set up to track my whole family. When my teenage daughter leaves home it automatically turns off all the lights in her room, her TV, etc. When everyone in the house is gone, it can tell that too, and turn everything in the house off and run āAwayā routines. Or if anyone comes home, it can tell that too. I get alerts when my wife is almost home from the grocery store so I know to go out to the driveway to help her carry stuff in. All sorts of things.
Though, keep in mind that Home Assistant is local-only by default, and while you can set up a VPN, or remote proxy or a number of other away from home solutions all for FREE, I like paying Nabu Casa their subscription because I like to support what theyāre doing, and it makes integration with Google and Alexa really simple (those can also be integrated for free, though itās a little more complex than most integrations which are simple).
Basically, if you can do anything with another platform, you can almost definitely do it on Home Assistant. And with their recent conversion into the āOpen Home Foundationā (which guarantees it will be open forever and can never sell out, etc) itās exploding and now a solid top 5 platform and will start taking over the smart home by force. It is likely to beat out SmartThings soon, then Alexa and Google Home in the coming few years at the rate itās going.
DOOOOOOOOO IIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTā¦
If youāre already thinking about it, you almost will for sure eventually.
In the past I ran Home Assistant as a virtual machine on my secondary laptop. Then I ran it on my Synology NAS, now I am running everything on their fancy little Home Assistant Green box that they sell, and I love it so much!
I even switched all of my Wyze rules (which ran through the cloud) to be controlled through Home Assistant, and it does everything FASTER because Home Assistant can actually connect to some Wyze devices locally, like the smart bulbs. So the automations are nearly instantaneous instead of having a few seconds delay when I do the same rules through Wyze. Plus I can group them with other companiesā products too. I have some Aqara Presence sensors and Ikea motion sensors that totally automate the lighting in many of my public rooms. Nobody ever touches a light switch. It will turn the kitchen lights on and off when someone enters and leaves, and will even turn on and off the under the cabinet lightstrips over the kitchen counters on or off when someone is near the counters, etc. I have smart buttons that allow all sorts of different options for a room depending how many times you short press a button, or if you long press it, etc. Different things happen at different times of day.
You can even bring your Wyze cameras into Home Assistant with Docker Wyze Bridge (or a number of other solutions) so you can do your own custom detections, or automations based on the cameras.
I use Home Assistant to do all sorts of Alexa announcements for everything going on, and can turn on āGuest modeā to have everything function differently when we have a guest sleeping over at the house (stop announcements, disable automated lighting at night where theyāre sleeping, turn off cameras in certain public rooms that may have them or use spotlights at nightlights, etc).
Even if you only use Wyze, Home Assistant is still amazing with the amount of control it offers, and faster and local control.
Plus you have Android, so thatās even better. You can use programs like Macrodroid and Tasker to watch or intercept your Wyze notifications (or notifications from ANY APP) and have the action be a Home Assistant URL (AKA Webhook) that triggers a specific action or whatever. So you can literally make ANY notification into a trigger/action.
If youāre creative, you can get Home Assistant to be able to do almost whatever you think up.
If you feel like you may not be able to figure something out, just ask ChatGPT for help doing it. I use ChatGPTās GPT Code Copilot several times a week to help me figure out how to do something, either with the Visual UI or sometimes Iāll tell it the name of the Entities I am working with and then just tell it to write out the whole automation in YAML for me to copy and paste. It does it all for me when I think of something really complex I want to do.
Yeah, ditch IFTTT. They got overly greedy and they will become irrelevant as Home Assistant dominates more and more.
If you want, start Home Assistant as a virtual machine or something if you want to test it out. Thatās what I did. But Iām telling you that a dedicated box like Home Assistant Green is so worth it. I have no regrets.
And donāt get me wrong, Iāve tried and use a ton of smart home platforms, both open and closed systems.
Disclaimer for onlookers, while Home Assistant is now really user-friendly compared to the past, itās not really for someone with technical challenges who struggles to use a computer. A person needs to be at least slightly technically capable. You donāt have to be advanced, or even intermediate for basic use, but you canāt be completely computer illiterate either.
In general though, I agree with @Crease for the simplest way to do inter-platform notification togglingā¦use a plug as an intermediary trigger.
Wow, a ton of thanks to both of you for the thoughtful, thorough, enthusiastic responses! @carverofchoice, you have convinced me that I need to make the jump. Perhaps not immediately, but very soon. Iāve been eying their ready-to-go boxes for a long time; not that I couldnāt do it myself, but my days of spending hours troubleshooting tech in my own home are behind me. Iād rather know the platform is going to work, and spend my time discovering the automation side of things (for many years I enjoyed coding as a side-hobby, so this is definitely in my wheelhouse).
In the meantime, @Creaseās solution is intriguing. I do have a Home Depot near me, so Iāll stop by in the coming days to see what they have.
Iām in the midst of a 3-day/32-hr work period, so forgive my brief response. Youāll hear more from me within a few days.
ESPECIALLY if you have even BASIC coding experience in the past you are going to love Home Assistant SOOOO MUCH. I only have basic coding skills, and I almost never do any coding. I do most of my stuff with the visual editor or use blueprints, but when I want to do something advanced, I have Chat GPT create all the YAML code for it, and then I use my basic coding to be able to READ what it says itās going to do, and make my own small tweaks to it, or catch it when it missed considering something.
Yes, I agree with getting a āready to goā box to spend your time with the automation side of things. One benefit of doing it this way is that it makes sure itās setup with full permissions. I once setup Home Assistant only to find out I couldnāt install some stuff like the Home Assistant Community Store because it wasnāt installed with āSupervisor Modeā or something weird like that, so I couldnāt use the Wyze integration and had to start over. Frustrating. A ready to go box is just worth it IMO.
Iām practically excited for you even though I donāt even know you. Itās just that good. You should convince yourself to get one no later than Black Friday / Cyber Monday, since itās unlikely theyāll be any cheaper after that anyway, even if you sit on it for a bit longer.
OK, @carverofchoice, Iām convinced. Looking at purchasing the HA Green from CloudFree at $108 with shipping as itās $130 at Amazon. They are offering free shipping if I bundle the ZBT-1 with Zigbee (and later, Thread) support for $35. Thoughts?
Correct me if Iām wrong. The easiest and cheapest sensors (etc) are going to be Zigbee, correct? I want to start playing around but remain budget-friendly.
Where would you tell me to begin? Website, blog, YouTube channel?
Thatās exactly what I got, the Home Assistant Green and ZBT-1.
I was originally getting it to use thread/matter but decided I really like Zigbee anyway since hardly anything uses thread still and thread is still really expensive, so I havenāt really bought anything for it.
Yep. Thatās the main thing I love about Zigbee. Very budget friendly and tons of stuff used Zigbee.
I really like to search for walkthroughs on YouTube too help me set stuff up,
You probably wonāt need one to initially setup home assistant on the home assistant green device, but you probably will to setup the home assistant community store and then the Wyze integration. I just followed a walkthrough for that sent to me by my buddy @spamoni ā¦ Let me call tag him in here to see if he remembers what he told me to do way back then because his suggestions were extremely helpful in getting me started.
Then youāll also want walkthroughs if youāre going to integrate the camera streams with docker Wyze bridge.
Take your time. One step at a time. But yes I love the YouTube walkthroughs I usually just Google them. Then, I will also use an AI to help me figure out things I want to do. You can also get a lot of help on the home assistant forums or the home assistant Discord server.
Itās seriously so awesome. I just spent some time this morning converting my dumb washer and dryer to be āsmartā appliances. I just attached a cheap zigbee vibration sensor from Aqara (bought off AliExpress for less than $10 each) and created routines that will message me when they start running, and let me know when they are finished running. I now get text messages and have an Alexa speaker automatically announce to tell me when itās time to change laundry, etc.
The only downside of home assistant, is itās extremely addicting and becomes a big time sink because itās so awesome
I have so much of my house automated. My in-laws have their kids tell them they need to have me come automate their home too. I mean, who doesnāt love to walk around their house and have it automatically do everything for you? And I have little smart buttons that can change what rules are in effect. My toddlers love their smart buttons in their rooms too. For example if they double click the smart button it will change all the lighting in their room to random colors. And single click toggles it back to normal or off. Long press does other custom stuff for them.
I just ordered the HA Green! Unfortunately, they have the following message for the ZBT-1:
Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 has been temporarily pulled from the market per Nabu Casaās request.
Itās also currently a whopping $80 on Amazon, but it looks like a generic/third-party branded adapter will work as well. I did a quick google search and found this post in the HA forums, which didnāt really help any. CloudFree recommends the Smartlight line of adapters. Thoughts? Should I just wait on Zigbee or is it worth jumping into?
In addition to what I originally posted here, if there was one more thing I would really love to do, it would be to put a few smart switches around the house. The catch is that there is no neutral wire at most of the switches.
The hardwired lights throughout the house are conventional dimmable LEDs (for now), but I want to control stand-alone lights that have Wyze smart bulbs using the switch. I am tired of pulling up an app to turn the lamps on/off or select a scene, and also tired of arguing with Google voice assistant. Iām a simple guy, I just need a wall switch that offers single/double presses and dimming. Iām excited at the prospect of programming in some logic to the action, say based on the time of day.
Finally (and most significantly), I have two Wyze Flood cams, which I bought since they enabled me to add a camera where there was already an outdoor light. Unfortunately, I have been fighting with them since the day they were installed. I especially miss being able to control the light with the switch, so I bought Wyze switches, but this is when I realized that some switches in my house have no neutral wire. On the one that does, I installed the Wyze switch, enabled smart device functionality, and it does indeed control the flood light independently. However, the light automatically turns off using the same timer setting as if the light had been triggered by motion. There is apparently no way to tell the light to stay on indefinitely until turned off (preferably by hitting the switch again), so I havenāt used that switch since they day I installed it.
Additionally, the flood cams are incredibly bad about motion detection. Iāve tried every combination of settings, but ultimately gave up (it does just fine picking up every bug that flies past all night long, though ). More times than not, I stumble around in the dark yelling at unnamed Wyze programmers for about 20 seconds before they turn on. I actually posted this issue here, and as a result ended up buying into the Wyze hub. I tried triggering the lights with the door sensor, so at least the light would automatically turn on when I leave the house, but this actually broke motion detection on the lights, so they wouldnāt turn on at all based on motion when I (or worse, someone who shouldnāt be there) returned! @SlabSlayer was great about helping me troubleshoot the issue, but I ended up disabling all rules and smart functionality so at least the motion detection would work some of the time.
I donāt know if any of this mess could be solved using HA but it sure would be nice. I had been moving toward replacing all Wyze hardware with a different brand, but my aggravation is with the software/rules, not the hardware, and I really donāt want to start over.
I even switched all of my Wyze rules (which ran through the cloud) to be controlled through Home Assistant, and it does everything FASTER because Home Assistant can actually connect to some Wyze devices locally, like the smart bulbs. So the automations are nearly instantaneous instead of having a few seconds delay when I do the same rules through Wyze.
Yes, I need this! Especially in light of the Wyze outages in recent history.
You can even bring your Wyze cameras into Home Assistant with Docker Wyze Bridge (or a number of other solutions) so you can do your own custom detections, or automations based on the cameras.
Also, yes! Facial detection? I live alone, but family members drop in to check on my animals, and I donāt need ongoing notifications while theyāre here; 1 initial notification would be fine until they leave.
Plus you have Android, so thatās even better. You can use programs like Macrodroid and Tasker to watch or intercept your Wyze notifications (or notifications from ANY APP) and have the action be a Home Assistant URL (AKA Webhook) that triggers a specific action or whatever. So you can literally make ANY notification into a trigger/action.
This sounds like pure magic. Are you living in the future?
Based on these initial projects, Zigbee or no? My next step will be to start researching solutions for these projects.
This was the issue I had before I moved a few years ago. At the time, I considered getting some Cync (formerly C by GE) switches, because that was the one major electrical product manufacturer I found that offered the style of switch I wanted without requiring a neutral wire (which I didnāt have) or a hub, and Iād already had good experience with their smart bulbs. Eventually I moved, though, and the newer house has the necessary wiring for most smart switches. I wouldāve bought Wyze but they hadnāt released any yet, so I ended up with Kasa and have been very pleased with those where Iāve installed them.
I can understand why someone would want to have both smart bulbs in a lighting fixture and a smart switch controlling that fixture, but thatās not what Iāve elected to do. In areas where Iāve installed Wyze Bulb Colors (including BR30), Iāve also installed switch guards over the toggle switch cover plates to prevent someone (including myself) from accidentally cutting power to the Wi-Fi bulbs. I think those kinds of things are handy and have used them in places where I want a switch to stay on all the time (the wiring in this garage even made an electrician grin when I pointed out some peculiarities to him) or when I want the use of that switch to be unquestionably intentional (like the one for the gas fireplace that is low enough where a pet could potentially toggle it).
I dig. The places where I have switches covered and bulbs installed are all within easy earshot of Google Home smart speakers or displays, so people usually just trigger the lights by talking to Assistant. Something to keep in mind when doing that is that smart devices in Google Home can have at least three different names even before you start getting into things like Routines, so giving some thought to your naming conventions can make your life easier.[1]
I donāt know if any of this would be useful for your application. Iām just tossing it out there for consideration.
Iām interested to learn vicariously from your experience because I still have some Z-Wave and Zigbee devices left over in this house from the previous owner, and Iāve thought itād be cool to repurpose those and be able to use them again at some point.
Thanks for the thoughts, @Crease! You definitely helped me to think some things through. Iāve been using a Nest Mini speaker for a while now, and although I love it in the kitchen for doing things hands-free - adding items to my groceries list, setting timers, or controlling music - I have struggled to enjoy the experience of turning lights on and off with my voice, even when I try to do so with the Google Assistant on my phone. So often, Iāve had to repeat myself several times, trying to emphasize different words. Occasionally, Iāve resorted to opening the Home app on my phone and manually controlling the lights. So, Iām going to dip my toes into the world of smart switches. Iām not convinced I need to replace every switch in the house, but rooms that has some kind of smart light will probably get a smart switch, and of course the two outdoor Flood Cams will.
I will continue to update here for now if youāre interested in my progress!
@carverofchoice Well, I got the Green setup and running last night. It was really straightforward, and it found many of my devices automatically, More than I expected it to. I was able to install the Wyze docker and see some of the feeds from my cameras, but not much more. I feel like Iām missing something. Iām about to do some searching around, but if thereās somewhere you can quickly point me to, it would be much appreciated!
Trying to figure out which smart switches I should be investing in. I havenāt decided on a protocol yet; there are so many options, and Iām feeling a bit overwhelmed. I do know that I want everything to be controlled locally and continue working seamlessly even if there is no internet connection (we can assume a working WiFi network, just no outside internet).
Recent experience underscored this need - I live in the Southeast and just went through Helene, where I lost power for 36 hours and internet for several days. My Wyze gear was completely crippled. With power but no internet, the floodcams were nearly useless (from what I can see, they default to PIR motion detection and stay on for about 5 seconds before turning right back off). Because everything needs an internet connection for control, I couldnāt even access the device settings, even though my WiFi was up.
I can definitely identify with this. When I first began using pre-Nest Google Home products (Mini and Hub) several years ago, I felt like it was forcing me to speak more clearly and use crisper diction, which was good, and I was surprised at how well it worked. Over time, I think Iāve gotten lazier again, and Iāve noticed that Assistant can struggle sometimes if other noise (such as a TV is present), so in the kitchen I often just use the touchscreen on the Hub to control devices.
Assistant has changed quite a bit over the time Iāve used it, too, in terms of the way it responds and how accurate those responses are (sometimes because Google apparently breaks things on the back end). Not long after I began using it, because it was such a new experience for me, I felt like maybe I should be polite when asking it to do things, so I would say something like, āHey, Google, will you please turn on the living room lamp?ā or āHey, Google, will you please set a 5-minute timer?ā Occasionally Assistant would both complete the request and respond with a pleasant chime sound and a message thanking me for being so polite or complimenting me on the way I asked it to do whatever the thing was, and I felt like somewhere deep inside Google maybe they were trying to promote good manners, which I liked. As I said, though, over time Iāve gotten more lazy and speak more in commands than requests, and I think Assistant doesnāt respond that way even when I do ask nicely and say āpleaseā, but it does respond with a āyouāre welcomeā if I thank it.
The only smart switches Iāve installed so far have been Kasa HS200s (which require the neutral wire), and Iāve done half a dozen of those. Theyāve been reliable, but I believe they do depend on an Internet connection, especially since most of the automations Iām doing with them are via Google Home. One exception to that is a switch I installed in a bathroom to control an exhaust fan, and that one uses an automation in the Kasa app because Google Home doesnāt allow Routines to be self-referential (i.e., if a device turning on is a Routine Starter, then that device is excluded from Actions in that same Routine), at least not in the Google Home app (I havenāt yet tried this with scripting in Google Home for web, so I donāt know if it enforces the same limitation). In the Kasa app, I can tell it to turn that same switch off in 10 minutes if the switch turns on.
Iāve been curious about Wyze Switches myself because of the way they integrate into Wyzeās ecosystem and have the multi-tap options. I still might try some of those at some point.
Lately my thing has been messing with Alexa. I found another brand of color Wi-Fi smart bulbs at a good price recently, so I set up some more of those (and installed another plastic switch guard to train myself ) and took the additional step of linking that app to Alexaāand then I finally decided to also do that with the Wyze appāso now I have a choice of voice assistants to talk to for controlling things, which is going to be super useful for things like every-other-week recycling reminders that I can do in Alexa but not Google Home and also for rooms where I have Echo devices but not Google Home smart speakers or hubs. I really shouldāve done this a long time ago but was hesitant because I thought it might something up. So far it seems my concerns were unfounded.
Thatās what interests me about Thread and Matter, but so far my only Matter-enabled devices are a couple of Echo devices and a couple of smart bulbs, so those are operating over Wi-Fi and not taking advantage of Thread at all.
Yeah, my understanding is that the cameras have to authenticate with Wyze servers over the Internet in order to do maintain some of their functions, and itās documented that Cam OG, for instance, if set to do continuous recording to microSD, will shift its recordings to a different location on the card if an Internet outage lasts more than 30 minutes (some other Wyze cameras with certain firmware versions will reportedly do this, too). Others here on the Forum can speak to that in greater detail, Iām sure, but thatās definitely one of the limitations with these products, and Iām sure itās not exclusive to Wyze.
Definitely! Iām here to learn as much as (if not more than) to help.
Iām glad you made it safely through Helene. That situation looks miserable and brutal.
Yep, you can do your own face detection. A lot of people use Frigate for this, but there are lots of options. Facebox, TensorFlow Add-ons, Microsoft Face Detect integration, etc. You just copy the RTSP stream into these integrations and they will watch your camera stream to detect any object or face you train it to look for and then trigger based on that (the more examples and the more pixels the object uses up, the better, of course).
Feels like it sometimes. It is certainly heavenly.
I have about 50 Zigbee devices currently running, and some I havenāt set up yet, and will probably get more.
Yeah, the docker will just get you the RTSP stream. Then you can copy that into OTHER integrations to do more stuff. As I mentioned above, a common program people love to use with Wyze RTSP feeds and integrate into Home Assistant for detections and triggers/automations is āFrigateāā¦though there are a ton of things you can use. The Docker Wyze Bridge is basically a āBRIDGEā between Wyze and the other cool integrations that need an RTSP stream. So now you want to look for other integrations that can do fancy stuff with RTSP streams and the Docker Bridge will allow you to use your Wyze stuff with all of those.
This is something Iām in the middle ofā¦itās hard for me because Iām dealing non-neutral wiring that is also done really poorly. I just experimented with relays, but I donāt like it, so now looking at other options. I told my wife I NEED Neutral wiring at the next house we buy or build.
That makes things so much easier to install and opens up your options. Iām sure there mightāve been others I couldāve looked at where I lived before and didnāt have neutral wiring, but I did strongly consider the Cync switches for a couple of applications in the previous house (and then ended up moving and not buying or installing them).
Honestly, itās so critical for me at this point that at the next house I would even consider tearing down half the drywall and redoing all the electrical before moving in, even if I have to do half of it myself (I did that for my Kitchen at my current house and kind of wish I did it for the entire house now). Iām sick of non-neutral, ancient less safe aluminum wiring that trips breakers too often/easily. My automation desires and sanity canāt take it anymore.
I also want a dedicated āserver roomā to have a whole home-lab section with multiple mini-PCās, cooling system, etc. I want to run a bunch of dockers, virtual machines, etc. even if half of them are just for play.
(Weāre currently mildly shopping for a new property/house to move into within the next couple of years or soā¦I kind of want to just build my own)
Thanks, @Crease - I will be sure to check these out. A lot of people seem to like the Shelly relays but Iām having a hard time wrapping my mind around where to begin. I plan to look for some beginnerās tutorials and make a decision from there. My thinking is, if I have to do a ton of work to save $10 per switch, is it worth it? At that point itās probably worth the $10 extra to just swap the whole switch out. @carverofchoice, what didnāt you like about them?
As work on compiling a list of the switches Iām considering to post here. Off the top of my head (Iām about to head out for the day), the Inovelli switches look really cool, but I donāt know if I need all that functionality. Basically, I need a Wyze switch that works with no neutral (after all, thereās a reason I settled on Wyze in the first place). Lutron and Leviton are well-established brands and at least one, if not both, have non-neutral options.
The Docker Wyze Bridge is basically a āBRIDGEā between Wyze and the other cool integrations that need an RTSP stream. So now you want to look for other integrations that can do fancy stuff with RTSP streams and the Docker Bridge will allow you to use your Wyze stuff with all of those.
OK, this makes sense - I knew I was missing something. Iāll do some searching around and see what I can find. Itās a bit frustrating that the pro Wyze subscription doesnāt include even a basic form of facial detection, so Iād like to play around with this. Although, itās not necessarily my first priority.
So, can I control Wyze devices using HA other than viewing the RTSP stream? What about turning cam notifications on/off? Were you thinking that I would stop using Wyze notifications altogether and use implementations in HA instead?
Also, Iāve found a tutorial that shows how to connect Wyze Sense devices into HA, however it is for the old generation and seems to require plugging a USB receiver into the HA host. I have the second generation with the Sense Hubā¦ have you seen anyone have success with that?
Iām thinking back to my original question. Using geofencing, how can I do a bunch of stuff with the devices that I already have - which are all Wyze devices - as I come and go? Another great automation would be to essentially āextendā the range of the FloodCamās detection during certain hours using a Wyze Sense motion sensor to trigger the floodlight when significant movement is detected in the driveway.
Iāll leave you with one last story for context. A week or two, I sat in my living room at night watching TV, and the porch light was being triggered by some unknown movement for an hour. Iād turn the light off manually, itād turn right back on. So I decided to take the time and play with the detection settings, and turned it down to the point where it wasnāt triggering randomly anymore. The last few nights coming home in the dark, I was jumping up and down in front of it and it still didnāt trigger the light. I had to use my phone camera to find my key and get in the house. Itās so very frustrating to invest in an ecosystem and have it constantly not work. Itās bad enough that Iāve considered ripping the whole thing out and putting back an old, dumb floodlight in its place. I often wish I could break the firmware open and tweak it to my own needs, and Iām hoping thatās essentially what I can do with HA, because I do like Wyzeās hardware.
The summary is, it's probably mostly frustration unique to my terribly wired house.
In my situation it was just really difficult to figure out the wiring for the 3-way switches. Thatās the main issue. I thought I figured it out, but my stairs lightswitch isnāt stable.
I did get a single switch to work okay until there was a power outage, then it reset the relay and Iāve been too lazy to go fix it because I donāt want to have to turn off all the power in order to unscrew everythingā¦so Iād have to turn off the kitchen breaker to get to that light, but the pantry wiring overlaps it and will shock me if I try to unscrew the light switch cover, so I have to turn the pantry off [too], Then Iād have to unscrew everything, then turn power back on, then reset the relay, then turn off the power again to screw the cover back on, then hope it comes back up when I restore power, which it might cause the same issue the initial power outage didā¦so, I am just frustrated.
I think Iām going to switch to some kind of non-neutral light switch that I can access externally instead even though theyāre more expensive. I just want to find a way to do it without getting one that stores offline power (like a battery or capacitor or something that needs to be recharged) because that will be frustrating too when the power dies and it stops working.
Ugh, just frustrated with no-neutral. The Relays were supposed to be foolproof by staying constantly powered, but I canāt figure out my wiring on the 3-ways, and the lousy single switch reset on a power outageā¦but until then I LOVED ITā¦other than dealing with the messy sticky black stuff the previous home owner slimed all over the wires on the original switches (they also did weird wiring like not cutting wires, but would strip them in the middle of the wire to wrap around the switch screw and continue on to the next outlet or light switch and all sorts of weird stuff with my wiring just being a plain abnormal nightmare. In some cases, the wiring from 1 room will be connected a totally separate room a few rooms away. Just unique abnormalities.
Feel free to let me know if you find a great solution because Iām in the market, and I have a dozen no-neutral relays I already bought but am hesitating to install now.
For this, youāll want to install the Home Assistant Community Store (HACS) And then the Wyze Integration on there. I recommend following Youtube video walkthroughs for these. Thatās how I set mine up.
This will give you access to turn the camera notifications on or off. I do know that a couple of them have pending updates before they are operable and should be enabled in the next update. I just got a notification that the main dev approved it and pushed the commit for all these. I think there are some camera models that already work with the notification toggles, and the next update should enable the rest of them as far as I see in my buddyās notes about it here:
So install that and youāll get access to the notification toggles and other things.
I actually use this integration, but I have to say that a recent home assistant update broke the integration. People posted a fix for it, but I havenāt implemented it yet. The downside of this integration is that it makes it so your sensors donāt work on Wyze at all anymore. The plus side is that they are completely local and fast, and it was awesome that way.
What most people do instead is they will integrate Alexa into Home Assistant (there is a free way which takes some work to do it, and an easy way which comes with the Nabu Casa subscription), and then they will create a āVIRTUALā switch in Home Assistant that is integrated into Alexa, then integrate Wyze with Alexa and just tell Alexa that when the Wyze Sensor opens, make the Home Assistant sensor open to match it. When the Wyze sensor closes, then close the home assistant sensor. Now everyone has their Wyze sensors in Home Assistant while also still working through Wyze. Thatās the best way to go IMO.
Again, install the HACS Wyze integration and youāll get a lot more options including being able to use all your lights. Then you load the home assistant app on your phone and go down to the āCompanion Appā settings and go through all those options to make sure you have location turned on and maybe review the āManage Sensorsā area, particularly turning on all the geolocation sensors.
I don't want to get too off-topic, but when I read thisā¦
ā¦it reminded me of when I installed a smart switch for my brother-in-law last summer (where the home has neutral wiring, so it was easier). Heād bought this switch with the intention of putting it in his basement hallway so that he could set a routine in Google Home to turn it off at a certain time every night (the kids always leave it on) but then never got around to installing it, so I made it one of my projects while I was house- and pet-sitting.
Since I hadnāt messed with 3-way circuits before, I found this to be a helpful resource (it links to other pages in the set):
Using a non-contact voltage tester, I was able to determine which of the three switches was the 3-way on the line side, which was the 3-way on the load side, and which was the 4-way in the middle, so I was able to swap out the line side 3-way with the smart switch, and itās worked as intended.
Not being an electrician myself, I wondered if figuring out the line/load orientation of the circuit might be your problem, but thenā¦
Eep! No wonder trying to figure all of that out has been such a chore!
And I thought some of the wiring choices in this home were weird. Even if some of the circuit pathways arenāt what I wouldāve expected, at least I havenāt discovered any blatant code violations.
I heard good reviews for the Lutron Caseta that require no neutral wire, but it requires their own hub and itās very expensive (especially in Canada). Inovelli is another brand I heard good reviews, but very expensive and always go out of stock back then.
When I had my home renovation done 6 years ago I specifically requested my electrician to install neutral wire for most of my switches. Afterwards, I installed 16 Kasa light switches (HS200, HS210, HS220) and 1 Leviton (DW6HD). It was not fun installing them especially trying to fit them in a 3-gang and 4-gang box. The 3-way and 4-way wiring drove me a bit crazy in the beginning especially dealing in those 3-gang / 4-gang boxes.
At the time TP-Link Kasa were relatively cheaper than the other known brands and I just wanted some smart functionality for my lights so I didnāt really care having local control (Hubitat / Home Assistant).
I did save a little money because Kasa HS210 (version 1) 3-way switches allowed me to use one smart switch on one side and a regular dumb switch on another. I did the same thing for my 4-way lights setup (1 Kasa HS210 smart + 2 dumb). I donāt know if this is possible anymore with their latest hardware revision.
Camera Notifications ON
Camera Notifications OFF
It does it all for me when I think of something really complex I want to do.
Itās just that good. You should convince yourself to get one no later than Black Friday / Cyber Monday, since itās unlikely theyāll be any cheaper after that anyway, even if you sit on it for a bit longer.
CloudFree recommends the 
). More times than not, I stumble around in the dark yelling at unnamed Wyze programmers for about 20 seconds before they turn on. I actually posted this issue 
something up. So far it seems my concerns were unfounded.
