Before retiring, I had access at my work to sheet metal and a brake. Made a bunch of brackets for Wyze camera mounting situations.
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Adding color info of vehicles seems to be more achievable without hardware upgrades. I personally would find it helpful, if I could specify a certain color vehicle when searching through events. Really hoped the AI search feature was capable of this.
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If Wyze marketed a camera that could record license plates at a distance of 70 to 100 feet, my guess is that they would sell like hotcakes. The challenge is in making it work the way it needs to.
I have my own custom LPR cameras, and I’ve experimented with Wyze cams for reading plates. In the daytime, a Wyze OG Telephoto 3X can record plates of vehicles traveling 35 mph at a distance of about 30 to 40 feet, All you have to do is get the camera close enough to the road. The main difficulty is having to step through the video frame by frame to be able to view the plate.
At night, the exposure and compression settings make that impossible. But this is due to the camera’s automatic behavior, not due to any limitations of the sensor. If Wyze sold a Telephoto 10X camera with the ability to manually adjust exposure and frame rate at night, all it would take would be an additional source of illumination (soft white LEDs) to record nighttime plates at 70 to 80 feet.
A Wyze LPC (license plate capture) camera would ideally incorporate two sensors and lenses in the same enclosure. One would provide a wide angle context view like the v4. The other would provide the zoomed in license plate image. Both are needed so that the user can associate the plate with the particular behavior of a certain vehicle. It would also help the user to realize that at night the LPC camera will only record the plate, and nothing else. The necessary exposure settings will not allow you to see much beyond the reflection from the plate.
Being able to read the license plate, as opposed to just recording it, would of course require some additional onboard processing. I assume that advances in AI technology have made it a possibility, else Wyze would not be tossing out this idea. However, just being able to record the plate, as opposed to automatically reading it, would still be an outstanding innovation at a lower price point.
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Interesting info! I’ve wondered about some of that. It’s nice to hear from someone with great experience. Thank you for sharing.
If Wyze is serious about LPR, they’ll want to solicit the advice of do-it-yourself LPR owners who also have some experience with Wyze hardware in order to get it done right. For example:
(1) It takes surprisingly little illumination to get good nighttime license plate capture with modern camera sensors. However, 850 nm LEDs are becoming increasingly useless for nightime LPC imaging due to more and more states transitioning to 3M’s printed plate technology, which uses inks that provide very poor contrast in 850 nm IR light. (Flock Safety has learned that lesson the hard way.) 720 / 730 nm, or white light LEDs, must be used. I would personally recommend a soft white LED light with the same color as typical porch lights.
(2) Wyze over-compresses and over-exposes the video image at night, which means far too much motion blur for LPC in low light. Even very high capacity SD cards are cheap nowadays, so a Wyze camera could store video at much lower compression (and higher quality) with little penalty. A camera with a constant 1/2000 second exposure and a frame rate of 30 fps could record plates 24/7.
(3) Unless Wyze plans to perform edge computation within the camera itself, true real-time LPR would probably require more bandwidth than WiFi alone can provide. Users have requested PoE (Power over Ethernet) interfaces in the past, but LPR / LPC may force the issue.
But I think that plenty of people would buy an LPC (or LPR) camera that was easy to install and use. How many people complain about door checkers, porch pirates, and mail thieves cruising past their homes or driving onto their property? What about hit-and-run incidents due to drunk drivers? Even a license plate image that could be provided to the police after the crime would be infinitely more useful than nothing at all.
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On the contrary, a Wyze OG Telephoto 3X can easily read plates from about 40 feet away in the daytime under good illumination. Here’s a sample video from YouTube: https://youtu.be/j67tnIqoiB0
The sensors are good enough. With 10X magnification, the optics would do the job. Onboard memory is cheap. It’s more a matter of illumination, bandwidth, and software to make LPR or LPC work.
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We have street sweeping twice a week in our neighborhood with a hefty fine if we are parked on the wrong side of the street. We have 4 drivers here with 6 vehicles. It would be nice to have Wyze recognize a vehicle parked on the wrong side of the street on a sweeping day and the notify the proper person to move it.
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What, no signs? 
Of course we have signs. We don’t use our vehicles every day and we don’t necessarily remember where we last parked. I am 81, so don’t expect a lot memory wize (wise).
The plates are completely readable in those images, but you’re right. Less compression would improve the quality, but it’s not a setting that the user can change. A Wyze camera uses high compression both to save memory and because of the wireless interface. You can only push so much bandwidth through a 2.4 GHz WiFi signal.
Wyze could tackle the bandwidth constraint in a few different ways. Video could be saved in low compression mode but broadcast in high compression mode, with the option for a user to download the low compression version. Alternatively, a wired PoE interface would provide all the bandwidth needed.
Memory is really not an issue anymore. You can buy a 128 GB class 10 SD card for less than $20. It requires 2.8 GB to store an hour of video from my LPR camera system, operating at 60 fps with H265 encoding at 1920 x 1080 resolution. That comes to ~45 hours of saved video for a 128 GB SD card. You could halve that frame rate at residential road speeds, and still use less memory even at 2.5 K resolution.
The sensor and the optics can do the job, provided Wyze is willing to make the other changes needed. It would probably mean moving away from the under-$50 price point of their other cameras, but they’d be offering a product that their cloud camera competitors couldn’t touch.
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We can agree to disagree 
That’s why I said: “None of your present line of cameras can properly “see” licence plates especially on a moving vehicle.”
They have to come up with a totally different camera. From my understanding and I might be wrong, I was under the impression that they’re trying to add this feature to the existing line up and subscription model. 
I’d say no. You’re just going to be asked by law enforcement around the world for a searchable database of license plates, location and time.
Or you’ll be asked to provide the information (if you haven’t been already )
If Wyze only intends to add this as a subscription option to the current camera line, then I would agree with you. Without control of the shutter speed or compression settings, at best a camera like the v4 could be used for reading the plates of nearby parked cars. The plates of moving vehicles would be out of the question.
My assumption (perhaps optimistic) was that Wyze planned to incorporate this feature into improved hardware. I will keep my fingers crossed on that one.
Have studied, followed LPR, crime reduction stats for 6 years. Several meeting with city staff, police depts about alpr at subdivision entrances. Followed, corresponded with Flock ALPR very closely.
Subdivisions with LPR cameras suffer 35-47% average lower crime losses after installation.
Why. 75% of major crime happens with a home casing run and then crime run in the same stolen vehicle. Criminals know which cameras are LPR capable and avoid them.
LPR capability on Wyze cameras would be a game changer if the lic plate number data was stored as part of the sent event. LPR would double the deterrence of Wyze cams.
Worth tons on a few strategically placed cameras. Worth zero on most as the locations and angles would not be correct for ALPR.
IDeal: A 60 frames per second, HDR, f 1.2 with an OG3 telephoto camera that does not use visible light. Only records every third frame, ( recorded only 20 of those 60 frames per second) with LPR would be ideal. An OG3 that uses visible light would be OK 12 hours per day. If you could sell that F1.2, 60 FPS, WDR, non visible light telephoto camera for $200 camera and only charge $20 per month, Or charge $ 5 / mo for an OG3 with LPR, it would be a must, 2 cameras at every HOA entrance. Most businesses would buy them for their parking lots. A LPR camera at a restaurant parking lot saved me $5000 last year after a hit and run. Currently Flock charges $200/ month per camera, 3 yr commitment, 2 per entrance. It’s your camera so your property to do with as you wish. Most states require the LPR data to be overwritten or erased every 30 days. For cameras with the Native LPR software the software just erases everything over 30 days old. LPR cameras are of tremendous value to give police instant leads. Because it’s your camera, only you decide to give it. If not give out that information. Limitless value if a child or spouse is kidnapped, raped, a home is burglarized or car stolen. Chances of recovery triple with LPR. Subdivisions with LPRs at each entrance lower crime by 35-47% and insurance cost. Even if they were only visible light OG3s with LPR, would buy 2 for every HOA entrance immediately, even though they would only be effective 12 hrs per day due to headlight blindingthe other 12 hrs. (Why most LPRs are specialty cameras that don’t use visible light spectrum)
I have never been able to read a license plate on any of my cameras, and I have several V4s out front overlooking the driveway.
What would really be helpful is if every time a fly goes by and there happens to be a car in the frame, it stops saying “vehicle detected”. That is not helpful.
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2.4 GHz Wi-Fi can’t handle 2.5 K video? I believe we could step that up a little bit without losing the ability to stream. Besides, couldn’t it possibly just record a less compressed video onto the SD cards? That would be great!!
I am afraid you have a problem that a camera is not going to fix. For instance: How are we going to get someone to look at the camera where the car is on the wrong side of the street?
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My own LPR cameras resulted in the arrest of two felons, one of whom attempted to kidnap my neighbor’s daughter. They also resulted in the arrest of two guys who stole the catalytic coverters from dozens of cars in my area over the course of several weeks. That doesn’t include various other burglaries and hit-and-runs along my street.
It has been many months since we’ve had so much as a door checker along my block, much less any other major crime. The last attempt was a burglar who tried to rob a construction site across the street, and drove off when my neighbor’s own Wyze cam alerted him to a human figure on his property. The police later caught him, in part due to my cameras.
Like you, I’m a major advocate for LPR cameras. I can’t prove any direct correlation in the drop in crime since I deployed my cameras, but my neighbors are convinced. It would be a game changer if Wyze deployed an inexpensive LPR-capable camera.
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I asked the local cops if they wanted to see this video which was suspect to me. These guys do not live around here, They said no but asked me if I wanted to register my cameras with them. I said in 
sign language 