Wyze Floodlight Review

I decided to purchase the Wyze floodlight since I have several Wyze cameras and have been pleased with their performance for the most part. When Wyze introduced a camera/light combo I decided to give it a try.
I purchased my Wyze floodlight through Home Depot several weeks ago. Initially I planned on returning it due to an installation issue which I will describe later but then I decided to keep it. The following is my review based on a few weeks of use.

Installation
I looked at a couple of installation videos and the process looked very easy but I quickly ran into an issue. The base diameter of the Wyze floodlight is 5”. The diameter of the typical round electrical box is 4”. If your box is mounted flush and on a flat surface, the installation is quick and easy. However, if your box is a surface mount box like mine as shown in the photo, you are faced with a real issue. Also, if your box is flush and not on a flat surface, like beveled siding, you may have an issue if the lip of the siding is too close to the edge of the box. The Nest floodlight also has a 5” diameter base but Nest provides a base adapter which solves the overall mounting issue. Wyze does not include a similar adapter. My first thought was to return the light but I did want to use the Wyze camera so I decided to make my own adapter. I cut a 5 ¼”circle out of ¼” lexan and mounted it to the electrical box with screws and some sealant. I then mounted the light to the lexan. Probably took me an hour or so to make the adapter plate along with the necessary holes and custom length screws. The light is mounted above my garage doors and is facing the street.
Use
I live in a very suburban area. The houses on either side are about 100’ away from mine and my driveway is about 150’ long. I only mention this to illustrate that my installation is not close to anything which might create motion or activate the PIR sensor other than something in my driveway. I initially set the PIR sensor at max sensitivity. Based on what I read, that was supposed to be about 30’. I also set the small/large object setting to large. That is supposed to trigger only on large objects such as people and vehicles but not pets or other small objects. I set the light to auto mode so that it should only come on when the PIR sensor detects something large within 30’ or so of the sensor. By standing in the driveway I did verify that a 30-40’ range is about where the light triggered. Since that time I have steadily reduced the range, currently set at 50 percent, due to a lot of seemingly false triggering. I have the camera set to do continuous recording and I have reviewed the overnight footage for many nights. The camera does not reveal any objects, large or small, in its field of view which is at least as large as the PIR sensor but the PIR sensor triggers the light a large number of times during the night. The number varies but the light goes on from 5 to 12 times or more a night with no apparent object in view. I also have a camera in a different location which covers an even wider area and no moving objects are visible. I don’t know what is triggering the sensor but it definitely is not any large, or small, moving object. This false triggering may finally get me to remove the floodlight. If I could operate the lights manually through the wall switch, I would be happy but the wall switch also controls the power to the camera so that won’t work. I know I can control the light through the app but that is just too inconvenient.

Summary
The floodlights are nice and bright and I really like that the camera is powered by the light without having to run a power wire through the wall for the camera. The camera itself works well, just like my other V3 cameras. Other than that I am disappointed with the overall installation and use characteristics of floodlight part of this unit.

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I also have some disappointment with the floodlight but am hopeful that some can be improved with revised software. My key suggestions are (a) visibility on the floodlight motion sensor — it would be great to see what is triggered in the app (e.g. which sector of the motion sensor) and how that changes with the sensitivity adjustment; (b) I would be excellent if the sensitivity could be adjusted separately for each sector rather than the option of just turning a sector off. (C) it just seems wrong that the floodlight turning on doesn’t generate a trigger event.

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I’ll also add my 2 cents here. Some issues I noticed on the flood light I installed:

  1. Camera is looking out our driveway toward a road with moderate traffic at times. When I have the camera set to use “filter by pir” so it must use both the camera and pir sensor, it doesn’t get all the false trips from the traffic, but it misses many person sightings even much closer to the camera. If I uncheck the “filter by pir” settings and deal with the traffic trips, I’m able to get person trips much closer to the road, which is a prefered setup for me.
  2. However, if i set it that way (filter by pir off) I get nuisance trips of the floodlight at night. I thought the flood light used it’s own set of 3 pir sensors, so what’s up with this! The only way to cut the false trips out is to select “filter by pir” on with the camera, and deal with the fact that it misses most of the things that should trip the camera. FWIW, I also have to set the floodlight distance to no more than 60% or I get nuisance trips from changes in lighting from car lights.
  3. A minor issue but worth noting. The right and left pir sensors on the flood seem to be backwards from what is expected in the app. Facing the light, I need to turn off the one on the left to keep my neighbor’s dog from tripping the light. To accomplish this, I have to turn off the right one in the app (not the left as expected).

Another addition to my post above:

After a night of no false light trips and thinking I had all the settings about right, the floodlight came on at about 5 am and stayed on. Turning it off via the app didn’t keep it from coming back on again and staying on. I also noticed that traffic was causing the camera to set new events even though camera was set to “filter by pir” and this normally would not be happening. Turning the camera off and back on did not reset it and the same issues kept happening.

The only fix was to go out and power cycle the camera by turning breakers off in the garage. Now it’s ok again.

I hope someone at Wyze reads these comments because really, I’m about ready to take the thing back to HD. I have multiple Wyze cameras and bulbs set up at my house, cabin and boat and set up several at my daugher’s house. I love Wyze products, but this floodlight setup is driving me nuts. A power cycle is not an acceptable fix when you’re out of town.

I’m going to try calling support today, and will happily report back if there’s a defective product issue, a fix, or some obscure setting that I’m doing wrong. I love the “idea” of this floodlight, but the glitches aren’t acceptable.

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Update:
I was able to easily get a human on the line at Wyze this morning. That’s the good. She had me submit a log from the camera to forward to their tech team. A short time later I got this email reply:

" Thank you for submitting a log! This greatly helps our engineering team as they work to better improve our products and the Wyze app.

My team here in support does not review your log or follow the progress. We’re working on developing a process so that we can track these logs on our end, but it’s still very much in progress. We hope to have the ability to receive more details from your log submissions sometime in the future.

  • This request will be closed because we don’t have anything further we can do at this point.
  • This request will not be re-opened later.
  • Please keep an eye out for firmware and app updates. If the problem persists, please continue to submit logs with the new app and firmware versions."

WTF Wyze !! My support for this product is waning. So now I don’t know if I have a defective unit, or just a product with glitchy software. I suspect the latter. Time will tell. I’ll keep an eye on it a couple of weeks as I have 30 days to return it.

Update:

All major issues resolved by restarting the camera from within the app. Don’t know what initially caused the light to come on by itself and some repeated issues where the camera wouldn’t log an event even if you walked right up to it, but have had none of these things happen since I restarted the camera from within the app. Suspect bad things may happen with a power cycle alone, so a restart from within the app afterwards is probably a good idea.

The only question that remains is why the floodlight triggering behaves differently if you have camera set to “filter by pir” checked on or off. One would think that setting should only effect how the camera triggers (it does), but not how the flood light triggers. Regardless, I have the thing set up in a way that works fine for me, and have had no false triggers of the light now.

There’s also the question of why the Wyze tech support person I got on the line didn’t seem to know how this product works. A simple explanation to me could have resolved my issues without me having to experiment with the product for the last few days.

Just about all of the things reported here in January 2022 are still happening with my floodlights with cameras I just installed in January 2023. I installed the Wyze Cam Floodlights in two existing locations that already had the older traditional, wired double floodlights. One is a wall mount and the other an overhang mount. The lights and camera closest to traffic are about 120’ from the road and 16’ up underneath the garage peak and the other back corner of the house, overhang mount, 16’ +/- up. My driveway has a slight upslope to the road.

I adjusted the camera angles so they would pick up what I wanted covered. The installation wasn’t too bad but hanging off a ladder to hook the rear one up wasn’t fun. I’ve played with several settings for both cameras and the front one is still giving me trouble. At night it picks up numerous light flashes from cars or trucks going by and turns on the lights frequently. It also shows numerous flashes at night that looks like I have a meteor shower in front of my garage. I’ve adjusted the detection area closer to the house but the lights still goes on sporadically all night. I don’t get any pictures, just lights going on. The light will turn on when I drive in, coming on when my car is about 60’ from the garage. The camera normally triggers when I come out of the garage and when I’m going into the garage. When I walk up to the garage at night the lights don’t come on sometimes.

My rear light and camera doesn’t always turn on at night when I walk up to it or take a picture until I’m about 10’ or so from the lights. I have an area dusk to dawn light that is about 30 feet behind the Wyze that I suspect may be affecting its sensors. I’m still trying to decide if these cameras are worth keeping or I should go for better cameras. I can read my license plate at about 30’ as long as the camera is on HD setting. I was hoping it would read plates out to 60’ or so. I’m not a techy whiz and these are my first cameras so I don’t know if the Wyze are representative of all home systems. I was also wondering if I could swap the cameras to see if I put the camera closest one to the road to the back of the house if I still get the meteor show I mentioned. I can’t remember is the camera itself can be taken off and moved easily. This is winter time so I see no reason for the continuous streaks of light on the front camera. It’s not bugs, birds, or bats this time of year.