I bought 4 of them expecting them to work on their own as Smart light plugs for existing lights which is exactly what your webpage insinuates. What it does not say is that it exclusively works with Wyze Cam v3 or that it is an “EXCLUSIVE” accessory for the Wyze Cam v3. It is also in the section for Lighting, not Cams. It does say “Only compatible with Wyze Cam v3”. This leads to conclude that it won’t work with the other Wyze cams. But the logical assumption is that it works to make lights smart as does the Wyze Plug. *** What is the deal here guys? ***
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The lamp socket is used to power a camera and make lights smart. You MUST have one plugged into a v3 camera somewhere, and then you can pair more of them wirelessly WITHOUT a camera. I believe its a limit of 10 lamp sockets paired, bot for any of them to work at least ONE of them NEEDS a v3 cam plugged into it. The cam is the sockets bridge to the internet
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Understood, My point is that your webpage does not clearly specify that. Also, when they are linked, they will all turn on/off simultaneously. I needed them to turn on independently.
Sorry, I’m a community volunteer and do not work for Wyze.
The device doesn’t have a motion sensor, so it would need a camera to know when to turn on and off if it were independent…
Welcome to the community.
This kind of feedback is helpful. I know Wyze intended to make this clear to people, but since there are still some misunderstandings happening then it is good for them to know.
They intended the following to help people realize they don’t work alone:
But perhaps they can update the wording to say “V3 required for smart capabilities” or something like that at the front or on the box in the future. There are employees who browse through the forums to gather feedback to pass on to the rest of the company.
Wyze does also have a really good return policy, so if anyone does misunderstand how these work, they can always return them within that 30-day window for any reason for a full refund.
I don’t think these are planned to be made to work without the V3, though it’s not impossible. The Wyze VP recently said they are working on a “Universal Chime/hub” that would allow non-WiFi devices to connect to it to get WiFi that way. So it’s quite possible that these may be able to connect wirelessly to that for the smart functions instead of a V3 cam in the future…but I don’t believe they will ever work all by themselves because they require something to let it connect to the Wyze servers to get the necessary rules, etc of what time to turn on and off, etc (even just when it is sunset or sunrise or whatever).
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All this conversation about needing a camera to connect to the wifi network doesn’t make much sense to me. The Wyze Plug can connect directly to my wifi network with no issues. The Wyze plug looks smaller, or at least similar in size, than the Wyze Lamp Socket. So help me understand why they can’t just put the wifi circuitry in the Wyze Lamp Socket. If they do that AND have the ability to power a CAM if you want, that would be a home run, I think.
I’m sure it’s possible to put WiFi components in the lamp socket, but Wyze chose not to because its always going to be connected to a camera, so there is no need to have duplicate components.
I do not however understand why they didn’t include the firmware to allow other cameras to control it. I see no reason why they wouldn’t have the hardware, but I’m not sure.