Is Wyze under the typical business policy of offer then take away as it develops and needs more money to fund overheads?
Gone from free viewing options and notifications to pay only. Blink has done this and lost a lot of customers just like Arlo. Now a simple web view option and that is another subscribe option.
Pretty soon this will come to dump Wyze products option as subscription offers are expensive and with those plans hardware comes free, so where is the free Wyze hardware?
Welcome to the community. I don’t work for, speak for, nor represent Wyze, but I do know a lot about them and can answer some of your questions.
That has not been taken away. Every camera can live stream for free for unlimited time, while other big companies charge you to view a live stream or limit you to something like 5 minutes max. Wyze does not do this. Wyze also doesn’t charge for notifications. Every camera supports getting free motion and sound detection notifications (minimum of at least once every 5 minutes, sometimes more often depending on the camera model, etc), as well as options for various rules. No subscription required. Additionally, Wyze allows people to save all events or continuous recording to the SD card and notifications will bring you to a spot that will link you to the recording on the SD card if you select the playback or SD card (what it is called depends on the camera model. All of that has been available on nearly every camera the entire time. Even when Wyze moved away from their free cloud storage, they only did so on newer cameras. All the previous cameras that used to have that, still have that as an option for anyone. You have to enable Cam Plus Lite for $0/month, and you still get free 12-second cloud event videos, just as has always been possible on those cameras. They also provide free person detection notifications, including on some of those earlier camera models that never had it before.
They have stopped offering free cloud storage on new cameras, but that was not “taking it away” since those cameras never had it in the first place. And to be honest, it doesn’t really hurt their functionality. Even though I have Cam Plus Unlimited, I actually have some cameras that I don’t use cam plus with for various reasons, but the SD cards capture anything I need anyway and without any cooldown, etc. Honestly, I kind of wish Wyze would start doing more local AI detections like they started implementing in their Floodlight Pros so that detections aren’t so cloud dependent and we could rely more on the SD cards without taxing our routers/bandwidth (of course I have over 40 Wyze cams and 300+ total Wyze devices, so I definitely tax my routers more than most people).
Webview has never been free. It’s always required Cam Plus. There was a promotion for like 2 weeks last year where they told everyone they were going to allow them to try it out for like 1-2 weeks without the subscription, but that’s not the same thing. They were very clear it was just a promotion for their celebration so people could see what it was like. But other than that, it’s always been included with Cam Plus and Cam Protect. It didn’t start free and get taken away.
Incidentally, webview is getting some upgrades and improvements with a huge overhaul. It is currently accessible here:
It’s now called the web portal. They’re actively working on making it even better. Maybe it’s just a misunderstanding and you didn’t get the notices that it moved? They tried to inform everyone. I’m guessing you missed that in the email, etc. Hopefully the above link helps you get back into webview as you were apparently able to do before? I’m hoping that’s the case.
I would prefer Wyze not do this. The only companies that do this, do so because they are ripping you off in the long term with high profit margins. I would prefer Wyze continue to offer hardware at near cost with low profit margins as they already do. Did you know they actually sell the OG cam in the red? They already sell the OG cam for less than it costs them to make it. Negative profit margins on that model. But it fits their overall value of making great tech affordable to everyone and is their entry level camera that gets other people interested in Wyze.
Still, Wyze does do giveaways and such occasionally with some of their events. So there is free hardware to be had. Some happen on their website during big promotions. Some happen on Discord during “Fireside” events, some happen on their TikTok Live events. The really big raffles are mostly on their website a few times per year though.
If I am misunderstanding something, I’d love to hear specifically what functionality you feel they publicly launched and provided everyone and then reversed ask you to pay for now that they didn’t before.
I can think of some beta testing things that they allowed a small group of people to help them test out and then officially launched some of it to Cam Protect to start with, but even most of those things are still available to the small groups of people who were initially allowed accessed to them, so most of those were never taken away either. I know Wyze initially offered local person detection on V2 cams, but then Apple bought out the company that owned the rights to that local AI detection and ordered Wyze to stop using it. So that wasn’t Wyze’s fault, and in response Wyze built their own cloud AI and now offers free person detection to everyone with those cameras, so nothing was lost there either, even for something that wasn’t initially their fault.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am not afraid to give Wyze criticism and even harsh feedback where it is deserved and warranted. See this post and discussion for example., so if you have an example in mind where they gave you something for free then took it away, I’d like to know about it.
Short cloud storage was free, I had it for a long time, it was taken away and not grandfathered.
Notifications for people detection was free. It was taken away.
Live viewing on the web should be free if it is on the app free.
My newer cameras have less features and more annoyances than my older cameras.
The constant reminders on the new cameras to upgrade your plan when you log in to view SD card is getting annoying. The only reason to buy Wyze cams is to save wiring issues vs the hardwire packages and a beneficial price point. This is starting to fade and it does start to make Wyze less beneficial especially with feature removals. Wyze must offer more than standalone systems for a competitive or cheaper price otherwise people will go and buy standalone out of the worry of corporate policies removing features they had 3 yrs ago which devalue their investment.
As I mentioned above, both of these are still free for any camera that was ever able to get them, they’re still grandfathered…actually, not even grandfathered since ANYONE can still get them even if they’re brand new…but they’re grandfathered for all the devices that ever had them, and Wyze added a bunch of new devices that didn’t previously have free person detections (V3 cams, etc). Here’s how to fix it so you can get free cloud and free person detections on any and all cameras that this has ever been possible on before:
That includes all the following cameras:
So, they’ve taken nothing away. All those cams that used to have cloud recordings still get them for free AND they now all get person detection added for free, when most of them never had it before.
Just follow the instructions in the video: go sign up for Cam Plus Lite and select $0 and you’re still grandfathered into it, having not lost anything you used to have with any of those cameras.
For all the new cameras, it wasn’t something that was taken away from them since those cameras never included it in the first place. If anyone mistakenly assumed otherwise, Wyze offers a reasonable return policy to ensure satisfaction. But, as I said, I think the new cameras work reasonably well with notifications and linking to the event on the SD card. I have cameras from a few other companies and it works as good as or better than they do without cloud events. the main thing I really wish Wyze would do differently is add more cameras that have free local person detection like they did with the newer Floodlight Pro and V3Pro cameras. I remind them of this often. I think they will eventually have to work on this more as more companies work toward doing it.
I would normally agree with this, except there is a huge difference…when you use the app, the camera stream is a direct peer to peer connection that does not cost Wyze any money (besides the small initial authentication to approve the connection). If you’re on the same local network, the video stream never even uses the internet. It stays locally on the router. Even if your phone is away from home, the connection is still directly between your phone and the camera, and is not using up bandwidth that costs Wyze money. That is not the case for the Webview though. Wyze is using Amazon Kinesis to make the webview work, and they are being charged for every stream customers use to view it. So if they made it free to everyone without Cam Plus, and lots of people used it all at once, it could incur a TON of costs. Something that costs them money can’t be given away for free, they’d have to subsidize that cost somewhere else by raising prices on something to compensate for the ongoing costs. If something costs them money, it’s reasonable they only give it to people who pay for it, rather than making EVERYONE pay for it, including force the people who don’t want it to subsidize the cost for the people who do. I’d prefer to only pay for things I want and use, not pay for things other people want and use.
Regardless, you can still stream your cameras for unlimited time for free through the app because there are no significant costs to Wyze for that. Can’t say that for companies like Blink and Ring. They don’t even allow unlimited streaming through app without a subscription.
This is certainly a legitimate preference. I do like a lot of things about many of the newer cameras.
I know this is something we’ve been telling Wyze about a lot lately and WyzeMatt has been very receptive to working on reducing ads/notifications for people who don’t want them. I hope he is able to get some of that implemented.
I do like the price point of Wyze cameras and I feel I get a lot of value for the money, but I also wish they had some better integration options. I have installed Docker Wyze Bridge, for example to force most of my 40+ Wyze cams to give me an RTSP stream that I can integrate into Home Assistant and save recordings locally to my NAS. So I can totally relate to people who wish we had more flexibility in those ways. I do as well and have taken steps to create a good workaround for it. I agree that Wyze should offer more than standalone systems to be competitive. I have been pushing them for this too.
There are lots of small features Wyze can do that would be a good feature but understandably, some customers would get overwhelmed with options.
Viewing over the web can be done via the home server software, doesn’t need Wyze servers.
Options to possibly add:
Add alarm sound to camera if motion is detected to the Wyze cams. It does it for smoke alarms so the feature is there. Create a Wyze alarm system where a user can push a button or schedule it to trigger alarm from the cameras if desired. Or even better, add a separate alarm speaker outdoors for a motion trigger. Add notification for alarm only. Motion would not send alarm unless the away button hit and alarm goes off.
Somehow allow motion detection areas with varying sensitivity. That way cats don’t set it off and cats further away can still be detected.
Change the recent events button on the pan cam to go to sd card instead of asking you to sign up to see. It is on the sd card anyways.
They already have this in 2 different ways. I already do it with my Wyze cams:
You can use the rules engine to have a trigger be motion detected (or person detected) and the action can be set to turn on the siren. You can even have that only happen during a certain schedule.
Alternatively, several of the newer cams have a new feature called “Motion Warning” which will play a verbal warning or chime when a person is detected.
This also already exists. You can set up a shortcut, where, when you press the button it triggers a siren on any cameras you told it to.
I even set this up to have a certain contact sensor act as a button/switch to do this.
If you have the HMS you can have one of the buttons on the keypad do this. Maybe you keep the home button to arm the system and the away button can automatically set off sirens everywhere…I use the away button for other stuff on that keypad.
There are ways to have smart buttons from other companies trigger the Wyze sirens too if desired.
You can do this with an Alexa echo speaker. I bought one of the old refurbished ones off Woot for $5 and put it outside to trigger announcements and sounds based on my Wyze cams detections. Wyze also offers Floodlight cameras with stronger outdoor rated speakers built in for those who want this.
This is also possible in multiple ways, but it is what they created “Cam Protect” to address, specifically. There are also free ways to do this without a subscription, at least with Android.
Someone recently asked one of the founders about this, and they indicated it might be something they consider in the future. I think it would be cool. For now, there is a workaround to do it yourself by getting the rtsp stream for the camera, and running it through another docker container which supports this. But it would be cool if Wyze supported this natively. I don’t think they will be able to do so with most of their current camera models though. Being able to process several different zones with different sensitivity levels would likely require a more expensive processor and RAM than most of the cameras have inside them, but they could possibly add it for some of the pro cameras or future cameras.
Lots of good ideas. Many of them are currently possible right now. 