My name is Hongfei and I am a Product Manager at Wyze. I have a few questions about camera motion detection notifications and tagging with AI smart detection and would like to hear your thoughts on them.
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I am guessing that the majority of people marked that they only want to be notified of “Moving” AI objects.
The benefit of this is that we will no longer get false person detections for things like a mailbox, fire-hydrant, chair, etc. The downside is that we might not get person detection alerts for real people who mostly sitting or standing, but might have a little bit of movement with their arms, or moving their head around. Now the events might just say Motion/no person when there is clearly a person there. We don’t know what the motion threshold will be, but there will be some kind of threshold and the perceived motion on pixels will decrease significantly with distance. People will start to complain that there was clearly a person in the picture and that the person was moving, but the AI says there is no person because they aren’t affecting enough pixels for it to hit the motion/pixel-change threshold.
I would prefer to have the option for BOTH kinds of situations, at least for sorting the events later:
Notifications for only moving AI detections
Sorting events with only moving AI detections
Sorting events with ALL AI detections (moving or stationary)
If it is possible to have the AI do a separate distinguishable label for moving detections vs ALL detections (including stationary) for labeling/sorting purposes, that would be preferable. If you have to pick just one, then the moving detections will be more useful overall. However, there will be people complaining that the AI isn’t detecting people/cars when they are clearly in view and assuming it is because the AI sucks, when the truth is that the object just didn’t meet the threshold for enough pixel changes to count as motion.
But again, what will the motion threshold be? What percentage of the AI object needs to be moving? Will the whole person have to be moving or just enough pixels on the attached object (like an arm moving around)? How close/far (how many pixels need to be moving)?
These are actually difficult decisions that have to be made. I’m glad I am not the one who has to make them. But I believe any decision will be better than the current method of 100% stationary objects being repeatedly notified about with every gust of wind, and having a lot of false detections from things like mailboxes, firehydrants, statues, gnomes, lamp posts, etc. Best of luck to @WyzeHongfei and the other devs helping figure this out! We appreciate your efforts and that you took the time to ask the actual users for our thoughts.
If there will be smart AI detection for moving and stationary objects, I would prefer notifications to be more granular, such that we can choose whether to be notified of moving vs stationary object detections.
For example, I have a camera in the garage. I would like notifications for when I have a moving Vehicle, but not a stationary Vehicle.
Yeah, that makes sense. If they can make it one way or the other for event labels then they could allow the same thing with notifications too. I was just trying to avoid overwhelming them and having them just discard the entire idea altogether as too difficult.
In fact, your point is somewhat related to a thought I had late tonight while I was sitting in front of a FLPro on my patio…I was thinking how even IF Wyze changes the AI to only detect moving AI objects, I hope they don’t do that to the Floodlight Pro lighting triggers. I was just sitting fairly still, using my phone, but there was some movement going on, and it wasn’t always coming from me. In those cases, even if I am sitting fairly still on my patio, I still want the Floodlight Pro to keep the lights on while I am in view, not to only do it if I am pacing around. I want light anytime a person is detected on my floodlight, not just when someone is walking. That might be a tough thing though…if someone has a statue or a gnome or some other humanoid-ish thing in view, then that could cause the floodlights to stay on all night when they didn’t want the lights on.
IDK the best answer since any decision is unlikely to fit everyone’s preference/need, but hopefully they figure out something reasonable, or do like you said, IL1, and somehow make it so we can choose. I don’t know how feasible that would be for them to do, but it sure would be nice!
That’s true. I never thought of the use case of anytime a person is in frame, the floodlight should stay on. In this case stationary AI detection is definitely useful.
WYZE cameras suck!! They go off for shadows, headlights passing by and you shine a flashlight and it records motion, then a 5 minute wait to record again. Enough time for a thief to get in and out unnoticed. Cant wait for a crime to happen, your cameraa miss it and your company to get sued!!
What alternative do you prefer that is as affordable, doesn’t require a subscription, has no cooldown, isn’t triggered by light/shadows (doesn’t use pixel change to determine motion), etc? (sincere question)
There are some PIR cameras that will resolve some of this, and Wyze also has PIR-triggered cameras if that is something anyone prefers.
I have had cameras from several other companies, and still use some as redundancy, including from some affordable options and some high-priced ones, but I have found the grass isn’t really greener anywhere else either. All companies have some kind of balance between pixel change motion detection, high prices, require expensive hubs, require subscriptions, use PIR sensors which also often miss a lot, or many other issues that are big trade-offs. It just depends what someone decides is the most important thing for them.
The Wyze AI has worked as good or better than every other company I have tried (including big ones), but there are always improvements to make, I think having it limit detection notifications to moving objects would be a big improvement here.
I enjoyed filling out this survey. It brought up survey questions for things I’ve found annoying and I’m happy that you’re (Wyze) is taking the time to evaluate changes to improve the user experience. I’ve implemented rule changes and turned off notifications because I had expectations that the AI objects were moving. I’ve found it annoying to get tags for my own vehicle, that’s been sitting in the driveway for some time, when a different AI motion event was detected. I’ve received notification for stationary objects (my car) that’s been sitting for some time without any indication was cause the actual event. I’ve turned off notifications, due to all the false positives and often felt “what’s the point of this thing anyway” other than the ability to look at live feeds when I feel like it. Thank you for asking for additional input.
I did your survey and it doesn’t address the dozens of false motion detection because of wind, leaves, birds, It also cannot tell the difference between a human and other warm blooded creatures bigger than a dog. Personally, I want to specifically know if there is a deer, moose, bear, or wolf near enough to trigger a camera and not just call them all persons.
I am also hoping for better discrimination on sound alerts. The vast majority are wind or traffic. Maybe there is some way to associate the sound with a vehicle or person?
Not your area I suppose, but I really want a PC interface, not just a phone app, and a local storage ability as well. A lot have asked for both of these. You need to do both to be a serious company.
But I believe any decision will be better than the current method of 100% stationary objects being repeatedly notified about with every gust of wind, and having a lot of false detections from things like mailboxes, firehydrants, statues, gnomes, lamp posts, etc. Best of luck to 
