Now they just need to allow doorbells to be added to a camera group.
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It seems the doorbell orientation is kind of fixed so now they should work on chime integration with google/alexa as advertised
Is the orientation fixed for showing via Alexa? That was the more common complaint I saw.
@Customer No, my Alexa Show still streams the VDB sideways/landscape (I just verified), but Wyze said they’re probably just going to disable streaming to Alexa soon instead, so I don’t expect it to get fixed anyway 
@davidnestico2001 The doorbell is already integrated with Alexa. Open the Alexa App (make sure you have the Wyze skill activated), click on the Wyze VDB name, enable Doorbell Press Announcements, select doorbell sound and which devices you want it to sound on. It works fine.
Google still needs some work though…but google is much more complicated in general for smart home integrations and options (compared to Alexa), but they were supposed to have recently made it a little easier for doorbell integration, so hopefully this happens soon now.
No way. They would make a lot of people furious if they disable Alexa streaming. That was a huge selling point and one of my MUSTS when picking a VDB. Glad I held on to my Eufy just in case.
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Thanks but i’m a google user, I hope Wyze takes advantage of google releasing/allowing third party companies to integrate just like nest. I’m sure it’s on their future list.
Yeah, here is what they said on the issue:
I agree that Wyze should keep it streaming to Alexa, even if it is rotated weird, though it should have never been a selling point for people…if it was, it was a misunderstanding because when they launched the VDB, I read that Wyze clarified that they probably would never be able to stream the VDB video to Google or Alexa because the Video dimensions didn’t fit into what Google and Alexa allowed (therefore Google and Alexa wouldn’t allow it video stream to their devices), but explained that it would still integrate with Google and Alexa for chimes/sounds, so anytime someone pressed the doorbell button, it could [eventually] sound a chime/alert on any Google or Alexa device, whether it had a smartscreen or was just a speaker. That’s all they were talking about.
I remember being disappointed about this, but decided to buy one anyway. Then I was shocked to find that the VDB was suddenly streaming to Alexa anyway, and apparently Wyze has worked around Amazon’s restrictions by rotating the stream. So to me, it was a very welcome bonus for something I read Wyze say from the very beginning (at launch) would likely never happen…then I read Wyze say too many people were filing tickets about it being rotated, so now it will likely be removed as they’d originally said.
I assume Wyze is removing it because people keep sending tickets to Amazon, and Amazon complains to Wyze that people are complaining to them and wasting their tech support’s time and money, so they need to remove it so people will stop wasting Amazon’s time about it. That’s understandable. It is costing Amazon money having to deal with everyone complaining that it is rotated…and since Amazon won’t support it being streamed in portrait view, there aren’t a lot of choices.
I suggested that Wyze should instead try to put a disclaimer overlay on the stream, or before the stream that tells people not to contact support about the video being rotated or some similar disclaimer about the necessity of it being in landscape mode.
Maybe they’ll come up with some ingenious solution though. Sometimes it happens. I mean, it’s been a month since they said they might have to remove support for it, and yet it’s still up there, so hopefully that’s good news they didn’t just remove it immediately. Let’s hope they figure something out.
Sorry, it’s ridiculous that (a) they entirely missed it in testing and (b) decided that the solution was to remove an important feature. Seems to be a trend? They said they would remove CamPlus support from RTSP to address questionable anecdotal issues.
The Wyze engineers who’ve posted here seem smarter than that. Disappointing.
It probably wasn’t missed but it’s also possible there’s no reasonable solution for this. From the sound of it Amazon doesn’t have any way to set video rotation which means the video has to be rotated prior to it getting there. If the video is going straight to the echo from the doorbell, there’s no server to go through to rotate the video and if the doorbell is as low powered as it sounds, there’s no way to rotate the feed from the doorbell without causing other issues.
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Yes I know all that. My point was that if they had adequately test this was all foreseeable. They could have disabled that part of the skill from the beginning. Existing customers enjoying the sideways feed wouldn’t have to miss it after it gets yanked.
Hm. Maybe I misunderstood what “compatible with Alexa” meant. Sounds like it was just for the bell ring alert. I assumed, given that it was a video doorbell, that it meant it’d be compatible with the video feed as all my other Wyze cams are. Still disappointing.
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Dunno. I could see the reasoning behind having it, even rotated, would be useful to some folks vs not having it at all.
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Yeah that’s what we’re saying. They are planning to remove it entirely while most people would prefer sideways something over nothing.
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I really hope this is a quick fix. When viewing the doorbell video live on my echo shows the video is sideways. This really seems like something that should have been caught with basic QA.
We use a routine that opens the live feed when the button is pressed, but it’s really hard to see with it being on its side.
I see I’m not the first person to the party. Video orientation should be easily fixable on the Amazon side if not by the device it’s self. If they are rotating it for the app view, Amazon should be able to do the same.
Is anyone having the issue where your camera connects but is frozen and you have to restart the camera to get it to start streaming again?
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Yes! Thank you! I thought I was experiencing this due to something I was fiddling around with on my network, I am glad to hear that it was probably not my recent experiment that caused the issue. Been driving me crazy trying to figure out why this was happening to me since Sunday.
When this happens, check the Kbps, it will be at 0. Then look at the Events Menu and see if you have any live events being recorded at the time. I experience this or not being able to connect to the stream until the Event process is done.
I have also found that a poor network also causes the issues. I upgraded my network to something more powerful and most of these issues stopped. I would check to see if there is any conflicts on your network and check to see if there is network congestion. there are tools which will tell you if you are on the best channel for your 2.4Ghz network.
Finally, I found a corrupt or large Cache also causes some of this, so you can try clearing the cache from the app, then shut the app down. If you are using Android, long press the app icon, force stop , the go to storage and Cache and clear the cache there as well. Then start the app again ans see if your camera’s stream correctly.
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Oh interesting I haven’t check to see if there is an event being recorded. I do notice the kbps drop to zero which makes me assume something is up so I usually restart. I would say my network is pretty robust compared to the normal household in my area.
So you can’t watch the stream while an event is being recorded?
You are supposed to be able to stream while an event is being recorded, but something to look at incase you have the same issue I do. I use the TPLink Deco x60 Mesh system with a gigabit up and down.
I actually have a ticket opened with Wyze now. Here is my thread:
I have a Camera in the backyard which does not seem to have an issue but need to verify this tomorrow. In front I have 2 Camera’s and a doorbell. When all of them are triggered, streaming has issues.
So I am trying different options at this time. Clearing the Cache seems to worn more for me. But I am getting closer to a potential solution or narrowing what the issue is.
I have also set a higher priority to the Wyze Cams on my network. I thought this would provide more bandwidth to the camera’s and therefore resolve this issue. Not yet.
I am planning on doing more exhaustive testing this weekend.