We need your input and we have a GIVEAWAY - Wyze Home Monitoring Week 4

[WyzeSunnyW]

Hello Wyze Home Monitoring Service users,

We recall that the first time we heard about the demand for a “monitoring service with keypad, sensors, and 911 dispatch” was back in 2018. After that, we started designing and building this most complicated service product at Wyze from scratch and overcame countless challenges until we finally delivered it.

In the past weeks, we were excited to see families starting to use Wyze Home Monitoring, and we have heard many voices with feedback about issues or ideas that you have encountered. We treasure them all and we even set up daily meetings and work sessions for two weeks with the entire team to work together to support you and solve the problems you ran into.

To date, with the hotfix app and firmware release(Hub 4.32.2.141 is in Beta now), we have addressed the most critical issues in this period such as:

• Bug fixes
  • Fixed a bug that caused the camera to trigger false alarms
  • Fixed bugs that caused the user to get stuck during setup for Wyze Home Monitoring
  • Fixed a countdown issue when arming the system
  • Fixed a bug that caused the alarm to trigger incorrectly
  • Fixed a bug that prevented some users from canceling alarm from the keypad
• Improvements
  • Setup/Update instructions for Wyze Sense Keypad
  • Wyze Home Monitoring App loading experience
  • Arming/disarming experience through the App
  • Firmware update experience

We built Wyze Home Monitoring for you and your family, which is why we need your help to make it yours. To do so, we are asking you to share the most valuable/wanted features and the reasoning. The reasons could be why you think it is important to your family, or you had an experience with our competitor’s product and found it useful, etc.

You can just simply comment here.

We will carefully read and evaluate all the ideas and suggestions you have. By the end of June, we will randomly pick 5 comments and gift the poster with an extra year of Wyze Home Monitoring service.

If you encounter any bugs or issues with Wyze Home Monitoring, please let us know immediately by submitting a log:

1. Keypad: Account Wyze Support Submit a Log Wyze Sense Keypad
2. Hub log: Account Wyze Support Submit a Log Wyze Sense Hub
3. App log: Account Wyze Support Submit a Log Wyze App & Services Services

and then contacting Wyze Customer Support.

Thanks,
The Wyze Home Monitoring team

[carverofchoice]

FYI everyone, IMO it’s more than okay for everyone to repeat requests in comments already posted here (including repeating anything I suggest in this post of mine), this will help Wyze see what is the most popular and in demand, so don’t think your idea is taken and it’s not worth posting anything now cuz someone else said it already. Feel free to say the same thing is important to you and post your own reasons why, and you should be qualified for the “random” drawing. I personally totally don’t mind if someone else even copies my examples and they “win” the random selection prize and I don’t, so don’t worry about it if you share the same idea. The main idea for me is to help improve this thing, so let’s do this!

I use myself as an example in the following, but think of this as how many customers feel in general or how we might react to these situations.

In no particular order:

1) GEO-FENCING RULES (especially for everyone in the household).

• EXAMPLE: Wyze app gets constant Location permission to know when myself, my wife or my daughter are home. Anytime all of us are away from home (outside the geofence area), the HMS is automatically armed as “AWAY” within X minutes. Then, whenever any one of us enters back into that geofencing area, the HMS automatically disarms. Also, if we are all home and it is between the Hours of XX:XX PM and XX:XX AM, the HMS is automatically set to “Home” but after it hits the specific time in the morning I can choose to have the schedule automatically disarm everything.
• REASON: I will probably never get my family to remember to arm/disarm the alarm, and so chances of us actually using the HMS effectively will be slim to never except maybe when we go on vacation or something, unless it is automated and hassle free like this geofencing will make it. In a year from now when I have to consider whether to renew the subscription, I will likely think about how we rarely ever even arm the system, so why should we pay for it. On the other hand, if you set it up so that it is arming nearly every day in an automated way, I will remember how much it is actually used and how convenient it is and be more likely to keep paying the subscription, rather than decide to just cancel and do my own monitoring with push notification schedules.

2) MULTIPLE EMERGENCY CONTACT NUMBERS

• EXAMPLE: Noonlight has my phone number as the contact number. An alarm goes off, but I’m sleeping (so my phone is on DoNotDisturb) or in a meeting or somewhere where I had to turn in my phone until I leave (yes I do go places where I am not allowed to have my phone, or have it on) or where there is no signal. When the alarm trips, Noonlight texts me and calls me but I do not and cannot respond. So Noonlight calls the cops. When they show up, they find my daughter tripped the alarm and it was a false alarm. I get a big fine. I get mad at Wyze/Noonlight and decide to cancel the whole system to prevent this from happening every again. On the other hand, you could give me an option to ask Noonlight to try contacting me first and if I don’t answer, then contact my wife’s cell before immediately calling law enforcement and getting me a fine and a lot of frustration.
• REASON: I am not awake, alert, available, and able to access my phone 24/7, but I don’t want to risk a fine either. This makes me decide to leave the HMS is test mode and basically rarely to never actually use it because I don’t want to risk a fine. I definitely don’t use it while I sleep because I would sleep through any texts or calls even if I didn’t have DoNotDisturb on because I sleep deeply. When I recognize that I am too afraid to use it, I might stop paying for it. If you provided some other safeguards like contacting me first, then my wife, I would feel a lot better about turning on the HMS fully and continuing paying for it next year.

3) ALLOW THE HUB TO MAKE OTHER SOUNDS

• EXAMPLE: The hub has a regular speaker. Allow me play other sounds from it like a Chime. I can set up rules to have the hub ding-dong when someone presses the Video Doorbell. Make it chirp or ding when someone opens the Frontdoor sensor or a different chime for the backdoor, or when someone walks down the hallway toward my office. Let me make it chime or announce “Person Detected” when a certain cam with Cam Plus detects a person. There is a lot that the Hub speaker could do besides just a siren. It shouldn’t be too hard to allow that.
• REASON: This would make the HMS hub incredibly useful. Lots of other security companies allow chimes for their sensors already and Wyze’s Hub is already capable of doing it. Plus, then we could have the Hub on one floor of the house and put the VDB chime on the other floor of the house and make sure the whole house is covered with hearing a chime. when someone comes to the door.

4) ALLOW EXTENDED PIN (Like the Wyze Lock allows entry of numbers before and after the real pin)

• EXAMPLE: Say my PIN is 1234, but my daughter comes home after school with some friends, and she goes to disarm the alarm. Her friends can all see her enter the numbers 1234 and know how to break into our house and disarm everything when they know we leave town because my daughter broadcasts her location on Snapchat (and teenagers commit a disproportionate amount of theft type of crimes). That’s terrible. Instead, she can enter in 964751234135876 and her friends will never be able to remember that. Furthermore, if all you ever touch are the numbers included in the pin, a professional can either just see which buttons are worn or even blow certain chemicals on the keypad to see which buttons have the most skin oil, and be able to fairly easily guess the pin by ignoring all the untouched buttons. If any of those numbers are used more than once, that narrows the possibilities down even more.
• REASON: Allowing us to use pins with fake numbers before and after the real pin like we can with the Lock makes the product much more secure when we come home with guests who we don’t want to know the real code.

5) ALLOW THE HMS KEYPAD AND WYZE LOCK KEYPAD TO WORK FOR BOTH DEVICES (even if they are interacting like a rule through the internet or Wyze App instead of locally through their respective devices).

• EXAMPLE: I come home and unlock the Wyze lock and it automatically disarms my HMS too so I am not redundantly entering a ton of PINS in different devices. Furthermore, I could buy more keypads of either device and be able to use them for the other product too.
• REASON: It would be convenient and less redundant and annoying.

6) SELF MONITORING MODE - EVEN IF IT’S WITH A SUBSCRIPTION

(though there are lots of people who want this free &/or without Noonlight too, I personally don’t care about the subscription, so consider both kinds of self-monitoring. Also, I know you already said you’re working on this feature, but I still wanted to include it in this section)

• EXAMPLE: Allow us the ability and flexibility to do EVERYTHING without involving Noonlight and accidental False dispatches of law enforcement. In Self-monitoring mode, I will get all alerts sent directly to me. Alarms go off, panic buttons trigger the alarm, everything works exactly as it normally would with the HMS subscription not in test mode, except that Noonlight is not contacted without my express permission. I am contacted, and I get a push notification that asks me if I want to contact Noonlight or not. If I click no, that’s it, Noonlight never hears about the situation. If it is a real emergency, I can click yes, and Noonlight is alerted. You can still pay Noonlight for all I care, just enable all the features to work correctly with that one exception. Just switch it to a manual activation of them instead, like an emergency call button only, but no automatic alarms to them.
• REASON: Obviously a lot of people don’t want to pay a subscription, but want more functionality. Others like me are okay with paying a subscription but want ALL the features to work right without risking false dispatch fines. Currently, test mode disables some stuff and has annoying cards and stuff.

7) MULTIPLE USER ACCESS / PERMISSIONS (ROLE BASED SHARING) OR LIMITED ACCESS

I know you are already working on this one, but it still needs to be said in here. We need better permissions, especially for the HMS or it is too annoying for the rest of my family. Please fix this ASAP.

• EXAMPLE: I am the only one who can access the HMS from the app. I need to be able to share access to my wife and daughter. However, this can be tricky. I don’t want my daughter to be able to do all the same things my wife & I can. It would especially be great if it was impossible for my daughter to disarm the system in “Home” state between the hours of like 12AM and 6AM or something. I may want her windows armed all night and not let her be able to disarm them and sneak out with friends. I would like to be alerted if something like this happens…but during the day, she needs to be able to come home and disarm things.
• REASON: It would make the system a lot more useful to be able to share with family, or a person we pay to come over and take care of our pets while we’re on vacation, or a babysitter, or something without them having full access 24/7 to our whole system.

8) OPTION TO DISABLE THE ENTRY & EXIT DELAY BEEPING (&/or change the volume of that beep to lower than the siren volume)

• EXAMPLE: When I arm the system it is extremely irritating to hear that loud beeping. It makes me never want to use the system, or only arm it after I’m in the car or away from home, and then I am likely to forget to do it, and then I rarely use the system, and then why am I paying for it?
• REASON: Let US choose if we want the reminder beeping. I understand why it is there, and it is definitely needed for some people, but I hate it, at least while I’m leaving. I kind of like it for entry so that my wife and daughter will realize they should disarm it, but it’s really, really annoying and makes me use the HMS a lot less than I otherwise would because it’s like I get punished everytime I arm my system.

9) FIX THE ALEXA TRIGGERS ISSUE FOR THE V2 CONTACT SENSOR

• EXAMPLE: Right now, V2 contact sensors aren’t working to trigger routines in Alexa. V1 sensors work fine, but for some reason V2 contact sensors won’t trigger any routines. We can set them up as a trigger, but they will never execute the action. PLEASE FIX THIS ASAP.
• REASON: Lots of us use Alexa for routines. We know it is supposed to work, and Alexa recognizes the device and that it can be used as a trigger, but right now it isn’t working and nobody is responding to the issue as far as I know.

10) A SEPARATE ADD-ON FOR CELLUAR BACKUP

• EXAMPLE: Some people want Cellular backup, but lots of people don’t, so it’s not fair to force everyone to have that more expensive equipment. Get a partnership with some company that will allow a really cheap cellular backup add-on for those who want it, but not force it on the rest of us who don’t.
• REASON: There are really cheap options out there that provide a few GB of cellular hotspot nearly for free or very little. I am sure you could get a partnership with some of those and figure out a way to power that system up to work only when either the power goes out or the main internet SSID goes out. That would be an awesome failsafe, and I am confident Wyze could find a good partner that could enable this as a cheap backup (not the primary internet alert system, just failsafe).

11) CAM PLUS AI PANIC PHRASE RECOGNITION TO TRIGGER HMS

• EXAMPLE: Someone comes into my house during the day when the system isn’t armed. I can’t pull out my phone and call 911 or run to the panic button. But I say some weird phrase to the Wyze AI and it triggers a panic alert to alert the police.
• REASON: This will make the HMS always useful, even when it’s the middle of the day when the system is not armed. This will encourage me to have Cam Plus lots of places inside my house too to just to make sure the AI can hear me anywhere. I know AI isn’t perfect with recognition and I can sign a confirmation acknowledging that this isn’t fool-proof, but I could say the phrase multiple times and hope it works one of those times. It’s better than not having any options in a situation like that.

12) ADD MORE KINDS OF SENSORS

• EXAMPLE: The certificate we get shows the only thing covered by Wyze is Burglary/trespass. All the other options are unchecked. Add all those other things as add-on options. Get us Smoke/fire; Carbon monoxide; Water leak; Freeze; Communication Loss.
• REASON: You can provide all these at more reasonable prices than anyone else if you work on them. I would buy most of those and get a better discount from my insurance, which means that in the long run, my insurance basically will pay me to get Wyze devices! This is a no-brainer. Please work on these faster.

13) BETTER SENSOR LOGS WITH PRECISE TIMES (not rounded off time intervals)

• EXAMPLE: Right now the sensor logs are horrible! Rather showing the Time it opened and the time it closed, we get one time (Opened I think) and then an imprecise rounded-off time interval of the highest interval type. For example, if the sensor was open for 1 hour 23 minutes and 52 seconds, the log will just round it off and say it was open for 1 hour and not ever tell me exactly when the sensor closed. Well, what if I need to go find that event on the camera playback? Now I have to watch an entire HOUR of video footage to narrow down when that sensor finally closed. I have to watch from the 0:30:00 mark all the way to the 1:30:00 mark because it could’ve closed anytime in that entire time window and the sensor would just round it off to 1 hour. That’s ridiculously imprecise for any kind of “security” product. What if that happened in a high traffic situation or store, and narrowing things down by “person detection” is not an option for example. I ran into this problem over and over again with the V1 sensors and it hated it. When I asked this question at launch of the HMS, I was told this issue would be fixed with the new HMS sensors:

@UserCustomerGwen

• Will the new sensors actually show the exact time open and closed? (the V1’s only show HH:MM opened and then a rounded time open (so it if was open for 1hr 25 min it will round off and say 1 hour, so you never know exactly when it actually closed, or if open for many hours, it will round off at 1 day and you then have no idea what time it closed) which makes it hard to find that time on video).

Yes, the new sensors will show this in the Monitoring tab.

• (continued) But this issue is still not resolved. The sensor logs still round off to the biggest time interval. If it was under 30 seconds it rounds off in seconds. If it between 30 seconds to 30 minutes it rounds off in minutes (but won’t give seconds). If it is 30 minutes to X hours it rounds off in hours (but won’t give minutes or seconds), otherwise it rounds off in DAYS, which means I’d have to search through an entire day of video footage to find a sensor closing event. That is ridiculously imprecise. Please give some way for us to find the exact open and close times of sensors.
• REASON: This is being touted for security, make it secure, give us precise times or SOME way to get access to them. Maybe allow us to export the actual logs/time stamps to a .csv or something. I have some sensors where “open” is the default state of the sensor, and “closed” is the event I need to go look at, but you make it impossible for me to find out when the exact time of the “Closed” sensor happened unless it was last closed less than 30 seconds before. PLEASE fix this somehow.

Okay, those are all off the top of my head of things I’ve noticed and felt would be helpful changes or additions.

[kboggs1]

GEOFENCING! For sure!

[refisk]

I want to be able to install the hardware and test it thoroughly BEFORE activating an account. I’ve had my system for a month now and haven’t installed it yet because you want me to activate the account, set up payment method, etc. and I don’t even know if it’s going to work for me. The fact that I can’t set it up without activating the account is unacceptable. I have already paid for a year’s subscription and having to go through the whole process of activating an account before I can even turn the hardware on ain’t happening.

I already have a Wyze account with multiple cameras and many other Wyze devices.

[jjacc]

So far I am generally happy with the system however of course there is always room for improvement.

1. Notification settings.
   There should be notification settings that are tied to disarmed, home and away. For example, by just selecting away, then one should automatically trigger notification of selected device and when it is disrmed, it should turn off notification.

2. Phone numbers
   One should be able to to have at least two numbers with the account. Mororever it will be great if it have a setting that allows one to be the primary contact at certain time. So say you have two phone numbers X and Y. You may want X to be the primary contact from 6am-6pm and the other phone number for the other time.

3. This is not on the actual system. But ability to purchase additional sensors will be great.

4. Entry and Exit Delay. This one should be easy. Can you change the increment to 10 or 15s instead of 30s?

[Irish-IT]

I think it would be fair to the customer to not start the subscription until the system is setup and activated. My renewal date is 12/10/21 and yet I still haven’t received my system. I thought this was a year subscription!

[PE1]

Yes, ability to select which sensors and which cameras should be active in each HMS Mode. Some Modes I want some cameras on and some off. Same for sensors. Can’t do as HMS is now.

Right now, I have the HMS Modes AND set up my Wyze app with same Modes: Disarmed, Home, and Away. Each time I want to change the current Mode, I select My mode and then the HMS mode to get cameras (and sensors and notifications) on and off as desired, for each mode.

I have set up so that Disarmed means nothing is on because I am at home, except my front door cam (so I get notified of visitors and packages).

The Home mode (for evenings) activates all Sensors and notifications to outside entryways and outside viewing cameras. No inside cams are on.

The Away mode turns everything on, inside and out, so I get full coverage.

Adjust yours as desired, but it would be nice to only hit one button to accomplish it all.

[nswint]

What the others have said, including:

• Wyze Watch Integration

1. Auto-arm with geofencing

2. Auto-disarm with presence detection

• Google Assistant Integration

• Proper Amazon Alexa Smart Home Security Skill Implementation

1. This could resolve other lock, doorbell, and camera issues

2. Sense Hub could be listed as a Security Panel Controller

• Future Works With Alexa (WWA) Integration- > You would need to integrate Zigbee in there somewhere

• Possible Alexa Guard Integration for self-monitoring

[carverofchoice]

FACIAL RECOGNITION DISARMING.

• REASON: Wyze AI is already working on Cam Plus doing Facial Recognition. Make an option to where if certain cams detect my face (or my family or whoever I set up), it automatically disarms the HMS. Face recognition is as good as a PIN to me. Some people won’t want this, but lots of us would. When set to AWAY I would set my outside and inside cams to disarm the HMS when it recognizes an approved face. When set to Home, I might not use this feature at all, or would only allow outside cams to disarm the system (ie: a family member who would be coming home late, but wouldn’t want inside cams seeing us and disarming the system when they shouldn’t). I know it could be tricky and would require a delay (would hate to arm the system, walk out the door and have the cam recognize my face and disarm it on my way out). A Delay of X minutes would ensure the facial recognition doesn’t accidently disarm the system too soon. Still, it would be convenient and give people a reason to add more Cam Plus subscriptions (and even if they don’t, everyone has at least one Cam Plus subscription included with the HMS anyway, so it would be useful for everyone).

I’m excited for the facial recognition. You might as well put it to good use, especially since security is the best possible use for it.

[Cubs10]

Since you are already partnered with NOONLIGHT, why not include some of NOONLIGHTS personal security AP featues to the HMS system? For those that dont know NOONLIGHT began as a safety ap which you can use in any situation you feel unsafe. You open the AP and there is a button you press and hold if you let go of the button and DONT enter a PIN CODE, NOONLIGHT will send help to you.

Reason: it allows HMS users to have another safety option without downloading the noonlight ap and learning another code. It is totally software driven no hardware to design and mfg. No delivery expense. Virtually no logistics of shipping and warehousing. All it would take is a change to the licensing agreement.

[Cubs10]

+1 to allow custom settings. You should be able to set the motion sensors to a bedtime mode so that you can turn on ones in areas you wont enter but have ones off in areas you will enter. For example, in a two story home, a person might want all first floor motion sensors to be on when they go to bed but the second floor group to be on. In a one story home you might have the living room and sparebedroom motion detectors on but the kitchen and those on a path to the bathroom off.
Reason: using motion detectors to monitor a room is cheaper than placing Point of entry detectors on every door or window in a room. My typical post war ranch has 4 windows and an exterior door needing 5 entry detectors where 1 motion sensor would cover the entire room. Fewer devices, fewer batteries, less setup less error potential.

[CherGal]

We love our cameras!! But we would like to see an app on Amazon Apps. I have app on my phone and on my Walmart Onn pad, but why not on our Kindles? And I have never gotten it to connect to our Echo Show 8, I have searched and searched and tried and tried to connect them but the Echo always tells me it does not recognize any cameras. But other than those two things, these cams are absolutely amazing! Thank you greatly.

[ashdee]

We have the Wyze app on our Amazon Fires. I think we installed it by first installing the Google Play Store as described here: Install the Google Play Store on your Amazon Fire Tablet (Updated Aug 2022)

[ashdee]

I’ve had the system for less than a week and my biggest complaints so far are:

1. The dinging before it goes from Disarmed to Home is extremely annoying. Some people have suggested setting the entry delay to 0 sec, but this won’t work because the same setting is used to determine the amount of time before the alarm is triggered when in a home state. Having these two features share the same setting is terrible design. Is there any chance this feature will be fixed in the short term ? Because if not I will have to return this system.

2. It needs a cellular backup for when the wifi and power fail.

[ashdee]

I’m also worried about the reliability of the system. I had some issues when setting it up initially: it initially connected and then a couple of the devices disconnected themselves. Since then, I deleted and reconnected them and they’ve not misbehaved since, but it suggests that their system might be buggy — not reassuring.

[Cubs10]

I’ve read sugestions of the need for Cellular backup
Wouldnt an inexpensive Uninteruptable Power Supply serve the same purpose with the modem, router wifi and base unit plugged in? Seems like the simpler solution.

[ashdee]

A UPS won’t work if somebody cuts the wired internet connection to your house

[Katmack528]

I agree with EVERYTHING in this Post of caverofchoice!! Basically its “what he said!”

[carverofchoice]

IMPROVE CAM EVENTS IN THE HMS TAB

Here are some suggestions or explanations related to issues or suggestions for improving the Cam Events in the Monitoring Tab:

• Clicking “LIVE” on the VDB in the HMS tab does not work. When I click it, it’s showing me a screenshot from DAYS AGO and the time is not moving like it does on the others.
  
  
  
  I took this screenshot 5/7/21 at 3:24AM and it says I’m live frozen in time in the past on 4/24/21 at 1:04PM. Furthermore, it is showing the “Live” screenshot in a totally different orientation as it shows events (see the next screenshot for what other events look like on the VDB when maximized)
• Clicking Full screen on the VDB In the HMS Tab events area is weird. Some things are portrait view and some things are landscape view. But if I don’t hold my phone in landscape view it pulls out of fullscreen. Can’t you make it so everything stays portrait view when we’re viewing the VDB? It would be so much more enjoyable.
  
  
  (It’s a little messy all over the sidewalk because we were just doing some weeding and threw them there so they were obvious to pick up and throw away all at once)
• We can’t sort to only see Person Detection Videos in the HMS Tab. You should allow filtering to see only Person events. It shows every single motion event, and 99% of them are worthless to me. I pay for Cam Plus so I don’t have to watch shadows, bugs, light changes, etc…but the HMS won’t let me filter out motion events, so there is no point in using the cams in the HMS tab.
• Also, add Facial detection filters as soon as it’s available. Allow a reverse filter for face profiles where we can tell it to only show us events of people where it didn’t identify the face (it couldn’t tell if it was the face of one of the people from our household) and show all those unidentified people events (I don’t need to see the tons of events where it recognized the face as my wife or daughter, I need to see any event it couldn’t identify as me, my wife or my daughter).
• Add more features in the HMS tab events area. If I switch to Live view, let me turn on or off the night vision to see better.
• We also can’t do any zooming in (Double-tap or reverse-pinch to zoom in) like we can everywhere else we view playback. Please enable this.
• It can be frustrating to quickly swipe right through all the pointless motion detection videos, looking to see if there were any “Person Detection” Events in the whole list for the day on that cam, and at the end of that list is this big black “All Monitoring Events” card:
  
  
  
  And when I scroll to the end of the video list, it sends me to this screen:
  
  
  
  I am not sure why it sends me there while scrolling through events (most of which are filled with motion events I don’t care about and thus only let me look at the last 15-20 events, so most of the day’s events don’t even show up in there if it is a high motion area). But if I wanted to view the Monitoring events, I would’ve clicked on that section from the main Monitoring tab. Maybe remove that card that keeps kicking me out of Cam Events accidentally, and put a link to monitoring events on the top or bottom of the cam events page or something instead. It is a little annoying to be swiping through all my events to make sure there weren’t person detections I missed only to be booted out of the cam events page. Granted I can just hit the back swipe and it takes me right back, but I’d still prefer not to get booted so easily.

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EDIT: Some people say they have trouble getting the VDB listed as a security cam at all, both in Production version and in the BETA versions. I am just posting this here to show it sometimes works for some people (I have it), but apparently not for everyone…and everyone would like it as an option: