I am trying to create event in Alexa to turn various lights on if someone in backyard between 1am - 5am using an installed Cam V4 as the trigger.
When I check for Alexa triggers, it seems that only floodlight cam, battery cam pro and V3 Pro can identify person and take action.
Am I missing a config setup in Wyze or is the person identification limited to just these 3 cams in Alexa ?
The Wyze V4 has the person detection capability for a Wyze automation but I cannot access the person identification in Alexa like I can for V3 Pro??. I want to turn on some Hue spotlights so need Alexa. I prefer not to waste a Wyze plug to kludge it. or else kludge it.
Most of my V4’s allow me to use a Person Detection trigger, but I found one that didn’t give it to me as an option.
I didn’t play around with it a lot (I have a lot of work to do), but I did confirm V4’s should work with Person Detection as a trigger in Alexa, since lots of mine allow it. I also confirmed your issue since I had one that wasn’t showing it. I didn’t try to figure out why or troubleshoot and fix it. I wonder if you delete the cam and set it up again if it will load back into Alexa correctly. I know Alexa has been messing around with their system lately.
I just created an Alexa routine as a test, and it worked as expected. No Wyze Automation or Plug was involved. Two things:
I totally understand why you wouldn’t want to “waste” a Plug.
When I began reading this topic, I was thinking that the Plug work-around might be the solution.
The routine I created triggers off Cam v4 detecting a person (note that I’m currently using a Cam Unlimited subscription, so that might be a factor), and turns on a Sylvania smart Wi-Fi plug, which turns on a light during the schedule I set. I can write more specifics if needed, but in order to begin I navigated in the Alexa app to Routines, began creating a new routine, added an event, selected Smart Home, then my chosen Cam v4. Under “SELECT CAPABILITY” on that Cam v4’s screen was only one option: “Person / When human presence detection state changes”. That’s what I chose and then selected the rest of my Routine options accordingly.
Let me know if you need more detailed instructions and/or screenshots. Again, I wonder if the Cam Unlimited subscription is key (I would expect my “SELECT CAPABILITY” options to be only for generic motion without the subscription, but I’m not positive about that), and I don’t know what your subscription status might be.
2025-05-24T07:16:39Z Edit:
Nice work. I didn’t even think to do that and checked only the single camera to confirm that I could do it.
I can’t claim too much credit. The FIRST V4 I checked had person detection greyed out and wouldn’t work. So the only reason I checked other V4’s was to see if that was normal, or if maybe I was accidentally looking at an entity for the camera that got imported in through my Home Assistant API (instead of directly from Wyze…HAOS entity imports are different)…but all the other cameras I checked worked and then I forgot which camera I checked first that wasn’t working, so in order to figure it out and troubleshoot it, I’d have to check EVERY v4 camera a second time, and I don’t have the spare time for that tonight, but if tc10 can’t get it to work normally soon, then I will take the time later to check them all and troubleshoot the one that was greyed out and figure out how to get it working like the others.
I’m kidding, of course! I didn’t even think about Home Assistant. That seems like it could complicate things.
What might help shed some light is if @tc10 would share a screenshot of what shows in the Alexa app when a Cam v4 is selected. That middle image above (IMG_9558) doesn’t tell me what type of camera “Wyze Front” is, so I’m just guessing it’s one of the three models listed in the original post aside from Cam v4. Maybe it’s the same greyed-out option? Need more data!
I don’t know, I might be wrong but knowing that you are in Canada, are you using a Canadian address for your Amazon account? If you are then Alexa integration with Wyze and other brands (Kasa is my case) is severely handicapped. Getting a US Amazon accounts works fine.
I have only CamLite and V2, V3 and some early pan-cams. The Alexa app allows me to select and activate person detection on all of them and use them in automations.
Not too bad. For one thing, I can choose which entities I allow Home assistant to import into Alexa.. By default I import everything though (probably shouldn’t). And not everything imported gets full control in Alexa (but most entities only have a binary toggle of open/close). Example of extra entities I imported for a V4… In the screenshot below, All the ones that start with “South Pool” are for a V4, but allow me to toggle on or off: power, notifications, or motion detection for that camera through Alexa which I may not normally have access too. Thanks to IEatBeans, Home assistant also recently added spotlight and floodlight control entities too. So it adds a lot of useful stuff not otherwise available.
That’s cool that it’s relatively granular and not just an all-or-nothing access to features (if I’m interpreting your comment and image correctly).
Thanks everyone. I have cam unlimited pro on Wyze. Glad to see this is working for most everyone. My descriptions work fine. Person detection works fine in Wyze app automations.
I am in Canada and using Amazon.ca account. I do have an Amazon.com account as well so may try that as suggested.
Alexa support tried to help. Their suggestions did not fix it.
I have checked setup on Wyze. I have deleted snd reinstalled 3 of Wyze cams that do not work for person identification on Alexa. I have also deleted and re-added cams in Alexa.
Thanks @WildBill .. i checked and person detection announcement was not turned on for cam. I turned it on. So far it has not helped.
@carverofchoice
When you have time, I would appreciate if you could check on the cam that is not working.
I spent ~ hour will Alexa Support and ~ hour with Wyze support. Neither could fix it and not sure why.
I did turn on “Person Detection notification” (as suggested by @WildBill ) for 2 of my cams. Alexa person detection notifications came thru right away. But the triggers still are not available in routines …
My Wyze call was escalated by a Wyze support and Chris Rey, Wyze specialist, replied saying thanks for my testing and it would be given to product team. I provided him with a link to this forum chat.
I asked him to provide a follow-up though he said that they would take the info but not reply.
I countered with if others have this working, and I do not, I would appreciate a reply.
Good suggestion. I did follow up & asked Alexa Canada support about this when I was talking to them earlier today, they did not see this as a concern.
As mentioned my Wyze Cam Pro 3 and my 2 Wyze battery cam pros do work fine as triggers …
It is just the other 17 cams which include pan cam V2s & V3s as well as Wyze Cam V3s and V3s and my OGs that will provide person notifications, but can not be used as event triggers …. All cams are visible in Alexa.
Alright, I found the one that wasn’t working. It was my West Pool V4 cam. It was greyed out.
I went into Settings in the Wyze app and clicked on the “Reset Services” button. I then power cycled the camera.
When it came back up, I set my settings back up for that camera and checked Alexa and it was now enabled in Alexa.
It’s worth trying this in your case, but don’t get your hopes up too high. I did a bunch of research and it turns out that it may be intentionally restricted in Canada.
From what I can tell, it seems the issue likely has to do with Canadian data privacy laws. I didn’t research too deeply into the specific laws, but it seems Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and provincials laws may be partially involved here. Wyze uses the Cloud to process person detections, and it seems Amazon restricts some features to avoid risking noncompliance with privacy regulations, such as if there is a chance that cloud-based AI processing may involve transferring data outside Canadian servers. Now, it’s likely or possible that Wyze does some of their processing within Canada for the Canadian users, but it may be that the Alexa skill isn’t setup separately and may be running through the US servers, or something like that. Either way, I’m reading reports that Alexa is more likely to enable Edge AI detections for Canadian users and be more restrictive on 3rd parties who use cloud processing unless everything is demonstrably Canada only.
Also, it looks like this issue has been happening for a really long time. Here are some examples of people discussing it:
I hope that helps, but if it doesn’t work to click on “Reset Services” and restart the camera…I think it will require a workaround of some kind.
