I haven’t seen any indication or discussion about discontinuing Cam Plus Lite. My impression is that it will remain to be a legacy plan on currently compatible cams. But, it seems as though you aren’t really looking for a reason, just something to justify the decision you have already made.
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I am not sure if the lite service really needs to be chopped. 12 seconds evert 5 minutes is not what is causing high costs here. I think the main problem is people having the plus on a high traffic camera, essentially using the cloud as a 24/7 storage device.
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Hi Wyze team.
At first I freaked out, but then reread it and this is very reasonable. We need Wyze to be a success and invest money in new features. As long as the unlimited cams matches the Ring’s $10/m and the annual is still $1.66/m then perfect.
A couple of suggestions:
For the users who care to help Wyze:
- Allow us to set a) a recording limit PER CAMERA. I have SD cards in all my cams, so I can really go there when I need to. 12 seconds is too short, but being being able to limit it to 30 seconds woudl suffice in most cases. It would avoid the issue where you happening to be working in your driveway for 2 hours and it just records everything.
- Allow us to set a ‘cloud retention policy’. I have 2 main cams that hit the exits where I would keep the 2 weeks (maybe(, but then I have other cameras that could recycle after 4 days. Essentially the way I can choose to put in a 4GB to 128GB SD card depending on how long I want to keep the recordings.
For the users who don’t mind paying $20-$50 up front, but would like some flexibility.
- Allow us to buy camera months, with 12 monthly slots each. So for example I could pay $60 which is my 3 subs, or 36 monthly slots. Now say halfway through I am going on vacation, let me switch on all 12 cameras, and that way I use up 12 month slots (do it monthly as a minimum). Maybe allow this switch only once or twice. This would add some complicated accounting tho.
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There certainly is a vast amount of data being stored on those types of cams, however they are paying for it and it is a recurring profit center for Wyze. They have the metrics on how much server space a single average cam of the millions on CP consumes in 14 days. So it is not difficult for them to project the need and negotiate for annual storage contracts with AWS. Where the projection estimate gets difficult is when there are high volumes of CP customers who will not commit to a 12 month term. Those can’t be guaranteed so they can’t be considered when estimating annual block storage requirements. Magazine and Newspaper publishers figured that out many decades ago when print media was still in its hayday before the internet. Managing overhead requires long term income projections so that materials and services can be secured over that term at lower cost. Try to get the best rate with a cable or sattelite provider on a month to month basis. It doesn’t exist.
Video lengths have already been managed tighter and users have already been given the option to upload and save only AI video in order to cut down on server storage space. Where CPL is concerned, I would think that the majority of subscribers chose the “free” option since it was introduced as a bridge solution from the original legacy model in order for Wyze to recover some of the rising AWS costs in a post-Covid economy. It most likely evolved into a cost center and not a revenue center. And, Wyze can’t operate in a break even wash. We don’t get any upgrades of features, apps, integrations, or hardware unless Wyze stays in the black. I agree, we need them to invest in future development if we want better IoT.
BTW… Some great suggestions! 
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It’s been a long day I guess, because I work for a company that sells software on the cloud for clients, so yes, minimum contracts are 1 year because of AWS pricing, so I totally get that. So scrap my ideas of month slots that we can adjust…that will not work. 
When the free was created I set up a ‘donation’ that I paid on behalf of each of the 4 households in my family where I setup the Wyze cams, but I am sure a lot of people went for the free ride. Now I am paying for plus for 1-3 cameras at each household/account (all annual since day one).
But despite paying, I still do not feel like I should be using the storage and bandwidth when not needed. The features you mention would works except if someone parks the car in the driveway and then the shade of the tree leaves do a motion/vehicle. :-). Then there is a camera that I would love to get a hit of motion not every 5 mins, but anytime, but only need 5-10 secs to ‘mark’ the spot. Different scenarios and I am sure people could come up with dozens more which is why I think the ‘limit recording time’ setting like Blink has (per camera) is a good idea,
Anyway, thanks for the correction on the AWS pricing…
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I agree with Iraj, currently Cam Plus is pretty useless. I have two cameras in my office looking outside and when the mailman comes and goes, I check the “events” and Cam Plus failed to record this. Happens more often than not.
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Are you sure your setting are correct? I have had my cams for the last 4 years, I have a V2 and V3 pointed on the door/driveway from different directions. Fedex/UPS/Amazon come by, I got a person recording on all 3, and I Alexa announces it when they reach the door (which is based on one of the Wyze cams). This works on both Cam Plus and Cam Lite.
The only time they would miss it is if was on lite and the 5 minutes have not passed since something set it off…
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I agree. I have Cam Plus on all my cams. Amazon driver delivered my new cam today and passed 6 cams. I got Person notifications on the first three and was able to open the app and live stream cam #4 before he ever made it to the door. The remaining 3 alerted as I was watching. All 6 (V3, VDBv1, PanV3, V3Pro) alerted to him leaving within seconds of the tag.
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I have the same problem with detection zones, they are literally 100% ineffective. Everything that moves in the greyed out areas still triggers event recordings, burning through battery life in just 2-3 weeks and clogging my phone with notifications. Meanwhile, it sometimes fails to recognize movement until it is right in front of the camera and by the time the recording triggers, the person has already moved past the camera and can’t be identified. On top of that, it’s often only recording very short clips when there is someone moving in the frame, sometimes just 7 second clips. I have Maximum Video Length set at 2 minutes, yet it often stops recording at 7 seconds while someone is still moving. It pointless to even have recordings when it’s not capturing all the action and potentially dangerous activity on my property.
Also, my Wyze Cam Outdoor goes offline every 3-4 weeks, usually I have to turn it on and off and charge it and that gets it back online, but this time the base station was offline so I had to unplug it and plug it back in, which brought it back online. Can you create a feature in the app that notifies you when the base station is offline? I need to know when my cameras are not working, otherwise I would never know if something has happened on my property or my family is in danger. This camera has been offline for 15 hours before I discovered the problem.
In addition, the audio on both of my cameras are almost always muffled and unintelligible unless someone is speaking very loudly right into the camera from a short distance away.
I’ve had nothing but problems with my cameras (2 have been replaced by Wyze, which I appreciate, but still so many issues) and hilariously, as I’m typing this there’s a message saying “This topic has been solved” but I’m not seeing any solutions to my problem or to the many problems the original poster is dealing with.
I refuse to pay a higher price for a trash product… All my cloud videos are very choppy during playback… The video on the memory card is good… I’ve had this problem for a few months now on my v3 pro. I had this same issue on my 2 v2 cams back last year and I took them down and boxed then up and a few weeks later something told me to try them again and I did and they started to work properly… I tried this on my v3 pro and left it unplugged for 3 days but the issue is still there…ive done all the trouble shooting steps such as updating the camera and rebooting… Even deleted it and added it back and also deleted the app and reinstalled… Nothing helps… I used to reccomend wyze to people bit not anymore because of the trash product they have… Ill no longer pay for cam plus and I’m seriously thinking about replacing the cameras with a diffrent brand all together.
When viewing the V3Pro cloud event videos in the Events tab, do you have the Hardware Decoder enabled?
I’ve tried it both ways with and without nothing helps…the play back from the memory card is flawless though which leads me to believe it’s a cloud issue
Interesting. I have a V3Pro that records all events to the cloud daily and the videos are the same smooth quality as all my other cams. I have had it since it was initially released and have never had any issues watching the uploaded videos. I keep the Hardware Decoder on though. But, I am also streaming on an old Android 11 phone. I know that the changes Android made to the newer releases are causing all sorts of issues.
I’m using android 12… It happens on Android 13 also… What I find weird is it happened to my v2 cameras a few months ago and all I did was unplug them for about a week and they started working properly again
In hopes of helping someone on either end of this,
I’d just like to respectfully point out that I’m also having sudden double billing issues that I’m lucky to have caught, thought I’d successfully subscribed to unlimited,
first time I caught it recently it was resolved and refunded for one month after quite a bit of back and forth and screenshot sending, after finding a few more today, and a lot more back and forth,
ticket (3080509), I’m left with
“On our end, we only have 1 charges for each month, amounting to $7.99 every 27th of the month. Kindly check with your bank to confirm these charges as we are receiving only charge charge completed.” (sic) the typo
this after original customer rep said (after another half hour of verifying w screenshots);
“(5:45:32 PM) Kirstine: We have clarified that the double charged happen directly from us and instead of the unlimited one, you have the single cam plus.”
also, I’ll just point out that my currently not renewed subscription (because I changed the CC) when I go into the detail screen currently shows total to be billed as…
99x$199=
Current monthly total: $197.01
Hopefully, all this can help someone on your end or the right department chase down the bug,
also I’ll note that I just yesterday saw the unlimited plan had a known issue (billing?) but I cannot find that same message today…
Boo! Looks like im out also. Nothing but problem after problem. Always disconnecting and failing! more headaches than all other dozen plus brands put together. Now more money after bad? How about cleaning up your act before expecting more money?! Fighting another disconnect. Six networks I run and this wont connect to any of then now! What a heap! …rumbling… more money, ha!
Aaaand why I avoid subscription based products whenever possible, like a digital plague. When I decide on a product, I buy the best I can afford and live with my choice until it dies or it’s time to replace it. I decide if the price is appropriate to its value to me. With a subscription, the vendor decides on the value of the price to them. Sometimes this is unavoidable, I get it, but if I can record locally or to a NAS and get the value and features I need from the original price - I Buy Right and Pay Once. Thanks for sharing.
I would agree with the increase if Live Cam Plus worked all the time.
Everytime I log in one cam works and the other remains frozen. Tried 3 different systems all with the same result.
Grrrrrrr
I currently have cam plus and a v3 camera. Terrible service. I have issues daily. No pet detection, vehicle detection when not selected, missing events, failed connections (even when i know my internet in 100% working). This has become the most unreliable camera ever. I had the first and second edition and they worked great. What it up Wyze? Now you want to charge more for below sub-par service. You should decrease the price at this point. After years of using Wyze, i think i need to move to a different brand. It’s a shame, but my god this thing causes me too much stress trying to get it to work as it should.
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Yep, the whole system is a joke. Im replacing my cameras with a different brand. Enough is enough.
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