Great idea
The Wyze Outdoor Smoking Pile of **** even is on my news-feeds…
Another not so good Wyze Outdoor Cam Review
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Happy with my WCO. But I understand the limitations of technology, battery life (2600 mAh is not small), and cost. I neverr thought of as anything beyond a hobby-grade camera.
Works perfectly, detects me every time, sends me an alert so I can review if necessary.
Wish the base station could be connected wirelessly, but I understood the limitations before I made my purchase.
Not a fan boy, thought Wyze broke away into too many different market segments too quickly and their overall value proposition suffered.
Anyway, this forum seems to be filled with entitled spoiled brats. This much whining over a $60 camera? C’mon, nobody ripped the cash out of your hand. Grow up and move on if you are not happy. Revenue is Wyze’s ultimate report card and time will tell.
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So is Indoor. They make cute iPhone-looking cameras, but they only work for people who wear white socks with Birkenstocks and drive Volvos. Even then, they only work on the weekends. They were a nice concept, but due diligence was not given the project by people who know what they’re doing… at least in the technical sense. Financially, they make a ton of sense to the Wyze company because so many people don’t bother to return the equipment.
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So let me get this strait, since you are having trouble with a product you start calling the community names?
I’m sorry your having trouble, but there is a huge community of people that aren’t having any problems at all. And we do not deserve to have you come on here talking down to us.
Now go take yourself to the support line and politely Ask for a refund. Then next time you want to make yourself feel better about life, try doing it in a way that doesn’t talk down to people.
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Is the distant building a metal building, to better capture the WiFi signal?
I also have played with this, installing a stub exterior WiFi antenna on the indoor camera inside a 3rd party cover, powered temporarily with a cell phone power pack and another day with a larger 12V battery, controller, 12V to 5V converter all in an ammo box plus a solar panel on a PVC pole. Worked great. If I included an extra cell phone in the box as a hotspot, I had live video anytime, from a remote spot in a back field.
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I was hoping that my initial impression of the WCO was wrong, and that some “secret sauce” would make it better than it sounded when it was released. Apparently not.
Anyone who is serious about security cameras would never touch a battery-powered device with a 10-foot pole. The power budget of a battery-powered camera makes it impossible to do much with it. And as WCO owners will soon learn, climbing up a ladder to pull down a camera for recharging every few weeks gets very old, very quickly.
I love my v2 cameras, and constantly recommend them to neighbors who are looking for a cheap security camera that is easy to install. How I wanted the WCO to be a worthy successor to the v2. Instead we got another imitation of the Blink. Here’s hoping that Wyze gets back on track with the next camera they release.
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Nice. I’ve played with the same but never thought of adding the hotspot. Just did mine to test effect of antenna on WiFi range.
Apologize for going Off-topic for this thread!
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Interesting. I thought I just was expecting too much. But no. It is truly not the cam they claimed it would be. What hurts the worst is the feeling of being ripped off. I can’t return it or I’ll lose almost as much money with shipping costs. The thing is they broke a sacred trust. I trusted them to deliver. And if they just cannot make it work out, I trusted them to deliver a remedy such as a credit to purchase a different Wyze product or to pay for shipping. But they’ve offered nothing to those of us who faithfully backed them believing in them. Trust once broken is very difficult to mend. Especially when your concerns go unanswered and ignored by the company. In my opinion, tomorrow salvage as Much reputation that can be saved, Wyze leadership would be wise to direct more funds towards direct customer service with a real human being to answer all the concerns and address problems. Divert the money they’re wasting making stupid masks, thermometers , and scales and use it to staff a call center. A good reputation as a brand is perhaps the greatest asset. A good CEO would protect anc defend it at all costs. But so far all I hear is crickets.
I haven’t tried myself, but have read people went threw the return process and had a return label provided for them.
Have you tried to return the cam?
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Have you set Motion Tagging ?
Absolutely the same issues here.
Bought 2 of the WCO, have been testing them prior to permanent placement, and have had zero success.
I have 1 WCV2, and 2 wco all placed next to each other, covering the same area for comparison.
All with the appropriate settings, all connected properly, with high connection signals.
Only the WCv2 detects, captures & records.
Beyond frustrating to say the least.
Let’s hope WYZE gets this fixed with some sort of patch update… Otherwise, back they go.
Good luck!
sorry to hear the issue. We have a dedicated post for such issue. Pl see if this helps and post question there.
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Waited almost a month to get this junk? We should all send them back to them. In fact I might throw all my WYSE junk in a box and send it back!
Don’t count on customer service either, they are worthless!
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definitely recommend what Doug is saying.
With that, I think you need to understand that the WCO and the V2 are very different products that use different technology, and are designed with different goals. You can’t expect them to behave the same.
If you haven’t already, try moving them around a bit. Maybe there is some conflict with other radiation in the area. Don’t know, just trying to help.
I understand your frustrated and agree with some of your points HOWEVER … I love these 2 WCO that I bought and will be buying more.
The best use of these is different and WYZE should have been wise and told us clearly earlier.
That said I love these for what they can do and only wish I could get a bit more distance from the base station and then I’d order a 1/2 dozen more.
I added two mesh extenders, one in the further truck garage and one in the chicken coup and that allowed me to extend the range some.
Lastly, I’d like to have seen instant out of the box Apple HomeKit integration was an initial desire FINALLY of the Wyze team. I can not stop suspecting the prior employment history of the founding staff has negatively impacted the HUGE market they are ignoring with each product release.
I fear my love relationship from the earliest days (before WYZE was a star) is slowing dying and I would be sad to see it turn into a full on hate relationship because they didn’t care about OUR large community feelings about using these products with our otherwise integrated Apple Homes!!!
My knowledge of the complexities are admittedly limited but I have heard much of these concerns would be addressed with a “HUB” as my Phillips’s Hue system uses and is not an unreasonable request for us to have as a new product that would FILL the WYZE coffers fast with $$$$$$
You make a fair point. I will say that after turning my WCO right side up and moving the base station closer( it had only been about 25 ft away from the cam) did improve the number of events captured but still misses a good number of them. I hate that I can’t use it mounted from the ceiling upside down anymore and I can’t understand how that improved the reception strength with the base station. Another big problem was that I I had to find a way to move my router closer to the base station too since it must be connected to it directly via cat 5 wire. This wasn’t easy bc it was installed with only so much wire to move it.
But that solution brings up a larger problem…, if they improve the WCO and it is worth the money and performs the way they claimed on the pre release videos, I will want to but 3 more to cover the corners of my house where intruders are most likely to go past to enter the backyard and break in. The problem there is that if the base station must be within 15-20 ft of the cam ( which in turn requires the router to be moved close to the base) then it isn’t possible to do this with each of the 4 cams. If it’s near one cam then that means it will be a further distance from the other cams and likely will experience the same issues. Just frustrating. Is there no way to improve the range of the base and/or cam??
Yes, it would appear that the outdoor cam is not the greatest thing since sliced bread regardless of all the hype to the contrary - more like burnt bread, some of it’s useful but most is garbage.
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I agree. Does not work as promoted. contacted tech support and got help in a few ours. Still not working as intended.
Opened ticket for ‘RMA’ and recd’ ack saying may take 24 to 72 hours. Sent a couple more messages, still no reply after a week.