Turn push notifications on/off with Google Home

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, Iā€™ve noticed that my Google Home app notices Iā€™m 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 canā€™t get added.

If youā€™re 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 youā€™re 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.

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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 doesnā€™t drain resources and just seems to work, unlike IFTTT which will occasionally decide to stop working altogether, which goes unnoticed until I realize I havenā€™t 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 doesnā€™t require buying more Wyze products, I would be interested. Iā€™ve been looking into Home Assistant and really trying to justify making the jump. I donā€™t need a lot, but it would be nice to add some logic into some basic automations. For instance, if I arrive home and itā€™s near dark, turn on the living room lights.

Thanks!

Youā€™re welcome. I think the smart plugs are a good investment because theyā€™re 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 youā€™re 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 Iā€™m a fan of that. (I donā€™t currently use subscriptions with any of my Wyze cameras, but each does have a microSD card set to continuous recording.)

Iā€™m not saying that a Plug will solve all of your problems, because I donā€™t know what else you might be using IFTTT to do. Iā€™ve 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 itā€™s good for a lot of different things, but I think a Plug will answer the question from your initial post.

Yes, because you donā€™t actually need the Plug (or one of the sockets if youā€™re using Plug Outdoor) to power anything. Youā€™re 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 youā€™re 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 ā€œwhen 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:

  1. :green_circle: Camera Notifications ON
    • IF
      • Notification Switch (Plug)
        • Turns on
    • DO
      • All devices
        • Turn on notifications
  2. :red_circle: 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.

Like Iā€™ve said, I like the Plug solution because itā€™s simple and solves some problems with my own Wyze/Google setup that isnā€™t otherwise possible with the native integration. For instance, Iā€™ve been using one for the better part of a year to trigger actions in Google Home whenever my Wyze Video Doorbell v2 button is pressed because Google Home doesnā€™t (yet) have a way to detect a button press from that doorbell and use that as a Household Routine Starter, but it can detect a Plug turning on or off.

Incidentally, if you live near a Home Depot, theyā€™re known to put Wyze products on unadvertised (in-store only) clearance at times, and Iā€™ve 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 didnā€™t find them and instead found Plug Outdoors at the same price.

I donā€™t have any experience with that at all, but if I was considering that platform Iā€™d 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. (Heā€™s actually the guy who clued me into using Wyze Plug as a bridge to Google Home.) The stuff Iā€™ve wanted to do (so far) has been simple enough that Iā€™ve 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. :man_shrugging:

I hope this helps!

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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 havenā€™t used the ā€œnotificationsā€ 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 werenā€™t working, but our Wyze Maven @IEatBeans actually submitted a fix for those and weā€™re hoping they get implemented in the next update, or itā€™s 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 itā€™s so powerful.

The Geofencing works really well with the default settings and doesnā€™t 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 doesnā€™t 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 ā€œAwayā€ 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 theyā€™re doing, and it makes integration with Google and Alexa really simple (those can also be integrated for free, though itā€™s 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 ā€œOpen Home Foundationā€ (which guarantees it will be open forever and can never sell out, etc) itā€™s 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 itā€™s going.

DOOOOOOOOO IIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTā€¦

If youā€™re 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 ā€œGuest modeā€ to have everything function differently when we have a guest sleeping over at the house (stop announcements, disable automated lighting at night where theyā€™re 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 thatā€™s 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 youā€™re 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 ChatGPTā€™s GPT Code Copilot several times a week to help me figure out how to do something, either with the Visual UI or sometimes Iā€™ll 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. :rofl: 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. Thatā€™s what I did. But Iā€™m telling you that a dedicated box like Home Assistant Green is so worth it. I have no regrets.

And donā€™t get me wrong, Iā€™ve 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, itā€™s not really for someone with technical challenges who struggles to use a computer. A person needs to be at least slightly technically capable. You donā€™t have to be advanced, or even intermediate for basic use, but you canā€™t 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.

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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. Iā€™ve been eying their ready-to-go boxes for a long time; not that I couldnā€™t do it myself, but my days of spending hours troubleshooting tech in my own home are behind me. Iā€™d 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, @Creaseā€™s solution is intriguing. I do have a Home Depot near me, so Iā€™ll stop by in the coming days to see what they have.

Iā€™m in the midst of a 3-day/32-hr work period, so forgive my brief response. Youā€™ll hear more from me within a few days.

Thanks again so much!

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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 itā€™s 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 ā€œready 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 itā€™s setup with full permissions. I once setup Home Assistant only to find out I couldnā€™t install some stuff like the Home Assistant Community Store because it wasnā€™t installed with ā€œSupervisor Modeā€ or something weird like that, so I couldnā€™t use the Wyze integration and had to start over. Frustrating. A ready to go box is just worth it IMO.

Iā€™m practically excited for you even though I donā€™t even know you. :joy: Itā€™s just that good. You should convince yourself to get one no later than Black Friday / Cyber Monday, since itā€™s unlikely theyā€™ll be any cheaper after that anyway, even if you sit on it for a bit longer.

OK, @carverofchoice, Iā€™m convinced. :joy: Looking at purchasing the HA Green from CloudFree at $108 with shipping as itā€™s $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 Iā€™m 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?

Thatā€™s 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 havenā€™t really bought anything for it.

Yep. Thatā€™s 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 wonā€™t 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 youā€™ll also want walkthroughs if youā€™re 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.

Itā€™s seriously so awesome. I just spent some time this morning converting my dumb washer and dryer to be ā€œsmartā€ 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 itā€™s time to change laundry, etc.

The only downside of home assistant, is itā€™s extremely addicting and becomes a big time sink because itā€™s so awesome :rofl:

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. :joy: I mean, who doesnā€™t 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.

Iā€™m excited for your journey!

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 Casaā€™s request.

Itā€™s 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 didnā€™t really help any. :upside_down_face: 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. Iā€™m a simple guy, I just need a wall switch that offers single/double presses and dimming. Iā€™m 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 havenā€™t used that switch since they day I installed it.

Additionally, the flood cams are incredibly bad about motion detection. Iā€™ve tried every combination of settings, but ultimately gave up (it does just fine picking up every bug that flies past all night long, though :roll_eyes:). 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 wouldnā€™t turn on at all based on motion when I (or worse, someone who shouldnā€™t 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 donā€™t 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 donā€™t 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 donā€™t need ongoing notifications while theyā€™re here; 1 initial notification would be fine until they leave.

Plus you have Android, so thatā€™s 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.

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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 didnā€™t have) or a hub, and Iā€™d 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 wouldā€™ve bought Wyze but they hadnā€™t released any yet, so I ended up with Kasa and have been very pleased with those where Iā€™ve 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 thatā€™s not what Iā€™ve elected to do. In areas where Iā€™ve installed Wyze Bulb Colors (including BR30), Iā€™ve 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 donā€™t know if any of this would be useful for your application. Iā€™m just tossing it out there for consideration.

Iā€™m 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 Iā€™ve thought itā€™d be cool to repurpose those and be able to use them again at some point.


  1. Iā€™ll spare you the rant about what some family members have done with their smart devices that frequently frustrate me and instead just take a few deep breaths for myself. ā†©ļøŽ

Thanks for the thoughts, @Crease! You definitely helped me to think some things through. Iā€™ve 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, Iā€™ve had to repeat myself several times, trying to emphasize different words. Occasionally, Iā€™ve resorted to opening the Home app on my phone and manually controlling the lights. So, Iā€™m going to dip my toes into the world of smart switches. Iā€™m 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 youā€™re 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 Iā€™m missing something. Iā€™m about to do some searching around, but if thereā€™s 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 havenā€™t decided on a protocol yet; there are so many options, and Iā€™m 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 couldnā€™t even access the device settings, even though my WiFi was up.

I appreciate the continued feedback!

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 Iā€™ve gotten lazier again, and Iā€™ve 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 Iā€™ve 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, ā€œHey, Google, will you please turn on the living room lamp?ā€ or ā€œHey, 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 Iā€™ve gotten more lazy and speak more in commands than requests, and I think Assistant doesnā€™t respond that way even when I do ask nicely and say ā€œpleaseā€, but it does respond with a ā€œyouā€™re welcomeā€ if I thank it. :man_shrugging:

The only smart switches Iā€™ve installed so far have been Kasa HS200s (which require the neutral wire), and Iā€™ve done half a dozen of those. Theyā€™ve been reliable, but I believe they do depend on an Internet connection, especially since most of the automations Iā€™m 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 doesnā€™t 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 havenā€™t yet tried this with scripting in Google Home for web, so I donā€™t 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.

Iā€™ve been curious about Wyze Switches myself because of the way they integrate into Wyzeā€™s 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 :roll_eyes:) and took the additional step of linking that app to Alexaā€”and then I finally decided to also do that with the Wyze appā€”so 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 shouldā€™ve done this a long time ago but was hesitant because I thought it might :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: something up. So far it seems my concerns were unfounded.

Thatā€™s 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 itā€™s 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, Iā€™m sure, but thatā€™s definitely one of the limitations with these products, and Iā€™m sure itā€™s not exclusive to Wyze.

Definitely! Iā€™m here to learn as much as (if not more than) to help.

Iā€™m glad you made it safely through Helene. That situation looks miserable and brutal. :frowning_face:

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 havenā€™t 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 ā€œFrigateā€ā€¦though there are a ton of things you can use. The Docker Wyze Bridge is basically a ā€œBRIDGEā€ 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 Iā€™m in the middle ofā€¦itā€™s hard for me because Iā€™m dealing non-neutral wiring that is also done really poorly. I just experimented with relays, but I donā€™t like it, so now looking at other options. I told my wife I NEED Neutral wiring at the next house we buy or build.

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:+1:

That makes things so much easier to install and opens up your options. Iā€™m sure there mightā€™ve been others I couldā€™ve looked at where I lived before and didnā€™t 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, itā€™s 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). Iā€™m sick of non-neutral, ancient less safe aluminum wiring that trips breakers too often/easily. My automation desires and sanity canā€™t take it anymore. :sweat_smile:

I also want a dedicated ā€œserver roomā€ to have a whole home-lab section with multiple mini-PCā€™s, cooling system, etc. I want to run a bunch of dockers, virtual machines, etc. even if half of them are just for play.

(Weā€™re 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)

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Thanks, @Crease - I will be sure to check these out. A lot of people seem to like the Shelly relays but Iā€™m having a hard time wrapping my mind around where to begin. I plan to look for some beginnerā€™s 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 itā€™s probably worth the $10 extra to just swap the whole switch out. @carverofchoice, what didnā€™t you like about them?

As work on compiling a list of the switches Iā€™m considering to post here. Off the top of my head (Iā€™m about to head out for the day), the Inovelli switches look really cool, but I donā€™t know if I need all that functionality. Basically, I need a Wyze switch that works with no neutral (after all, thereā€™s 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 ā€œBRIDGEā€ 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. Iā€™ll do some searching around and see what I can find. Itā€™s a bit frustrating that the pro Wyze subscription doesnā€™t include even a basic form of facial detection, so Iā€™d like to play around with this. Although, itā€™s 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, Iā€™ve 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?

Iā€™m 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 ā€œextendā€ the range of the FloodCamā€™s detection during certain hours using a Wyze Sense motion sensor to trigger the floodlight when significant movement is detected in the driveway.


Iā€™ll 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. Iā€™d turn the light off manually, itā€™d 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 wasnā€™t 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 didnā€™t trigger the light. I had to use my phone camera to find my key and get in the house. Itā€™s so very frustrating to invest in an ecosystem and have it constantly not work. Itā€™s bad enough that Iā€™ve 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 Iā€™m hoping thatā€™s essentially what I can do with HA, because I do like Wyzeā€™s hardware.

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Well, you askedā€¦

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. Thatā€™s the main issue. I thought I figured it out, but my stairs lightswitch isnā€™t stable.

I did get a single switch to work okay until there was a power outage, then it reset the relay and Iā€™ve been too lazy to go fix it because I donā€™t want to have to turn off all the power in order to unscrew everythingā€¦so Iā€™d 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 Iā€™d 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 Iā€™m going to switch to some kind of non-neutral light switch that I can access externally instead even though theyā€™re 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 canā€™t 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 Iā€™m in the market, and I have a dozen no-neutral relays I already bought but am hesitating to install now.

For this, youā€™ll want to install the Home Assistant Community Store (HACS) And then the Wyze Integration on there. I recommend following Youtube video walkthroughs for these. Thatā€™s 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 buddyā€™s notes about it here:

So install that and youā€™ll 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 havenā€™t implemented it yet. The downside of this integration is that it makes it so your sensors donā€™t 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 ā€œVIRTUALā€ 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. Thatā€™s the best way to go IMO.

Again, install the HACS Wyze integration and youā€™ll 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 ā€œCompanion Appā€ settings and go through all those options to make sure you have location turned on and maybe review the ā€œManage Sensorsā€ area, particularly turning on all the geolocation sensors.

I hope that helps get you to your next steps.

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). Heā€™d 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 hadnā€™t messed with 3-way circuits before, I found this to be a helpful resource (it links to other pages in the set):

Tutorial: 3-Way Switches and 4-Way Switches

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 itā€™s 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! :roll_eyes:

And I thought some of the wiring choices in this home were weird. Even if some of the circuit pathways arenā€™t what I wouldā€™ve expected, at least I havenā€™t discovered any blatant code violations.

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I heard good reviews for the Lutron Caseta that require no neutral wire, but it requires their own hub and itā€™s 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 didnā€™t 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 donā€™t know if this is possible anymore with their latest hardware revision.

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