I am interested in buying a sense hub from Home Depot, but will not be subscribing to the wyze home monitoring service. Will that prevent me from adding the hub and sensors to my account? I’d like to avoid sending it back to Home Depot if a subscription is required at all, even if it can be cancelled immediately. My time and effort are worth more than Wyze thinks they are.
I purchased the Kit a while back. Never fully activated the setup. Still in test Mode and not having any issues.
You should be able to add the Hub and sensors without issue.
@carverofchoice . @Omgitstony , @Seapup - am I correct in this? Wanted to be 100% sure.
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As @spamoni says, you can add the hub and sensors without any subscription, just don’t follow the standard installation process. If you do, it will prompt you to setup the Home Monitoring Service and enter the subscription data. You can add the hub and sensors via the “add device” process without all the HMS stuff. However, I think you may end up with the contact sensors always playing the “tune” from the hub when they are opened. Tune settings are only accessible under the Monitoring settings.
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Thanks for the validation.
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Thanks for the replies. When I look into the “Add device” section and select one of the V2 or climate or leak sensors, it says “your sense hub or cam with bridge must be online to connect to your new Sensor.” Is this a mistake, or am I interpreting this wrong, that it should be able to connect with my old V2 Cam with bridge? The button beneath that text states “begin sense hub setup”.
No…you need the new hub.
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Correct, you will need to setup the Sense Hub first as this is required for the Motion and Contact Sensors. The Hub is the back bone for HMS.
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I do want to be careful about making any promises about the monitoring subscription right now. It seems they may have made some adjustments since back when most of us activated our devices. For example, I read this discussion on Discord:
Thus I’m inferring from this that Wyze might now be automatically activating the subscriptions (which wasn’t happening earlier in the year). Jimmy said he’d look into it, but I don’t know what the result will be.
So, based on the current request, if you are going to buy it from Home Depot, make sure it says it only includes the Monthly subscription. If it does activate, and you don’t like it or want to keep it, you can cancel it, and the worst case scenario is that it only cost $5 (which I’m guessing you probably already paid for in the initial cost when you bought the hardware since I believe it is included…at least it used to be), and once you cancel it definitely continue working without the subscription.
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The Home Depot special is 6mos HMS and the starter kit for $49.95.
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Is there any update to the Wyze hub information mess? Looking through previous posts, I see everything from you need to subscribe to HMS to purchase the hub, you can subscribe for only one month to purchase the hub and then cancel the subscription, to you can purchase the hub at Home Depot without a subscription and use motion sensors with it, without a subscription.
However nowhere in the wise app does it show anything about buying the hub or any information about the hub, except for the beginner kit. The sensors that are available for purchasing separately have a warning at the bottom that says, requires sense hub. But they do not tell you how to get the sense hub.
Why is there no information about a piece of hardware that is required in order to use all the other pieces of hardware?
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I cannot say why Wyze has been slow to provide any real information on this or to make the hub readily available for purchase. The facts are: you must have the new HMS hub in order to use any of the new sensors. You don’t need a subscription but Wyze hasn’t really provided anyway to buy one without a subscription. If you can find the starter kit at Home Depot, you can purchase it and use it without the trial HMS subscription, but only if you don’t follow the instructions for setup. To use the hub and sensors without the HMS service you need to follow the basics for adding a device to the app.
I purchased the starter kit from Home Depot for the $49.95 sale price at the time, and never activated the Home Monitoring system, and all is well with my sensors that came in the box, and the additional sensors I have purchase sense then. When I purchased and activated, it also wasn’t crystal clear as to how things would pan out once I had the starter kit.
It worked out well for me without activating for any time period for HMS.
Just checked home depot and amazon, and both have that starter kit currently going for $99
SJ
If you don’t object to Ebay, Overstock/Customer return item. for $58:
Thank you. I’m guessing they are more interested in making a few extra bucks than in selling the hub. But that also translates into frustrated customers.
Couldn’t agree more. What’s frustrating to me is that the hub is listed as a separate item, but when you select it, the website takes you to the whole configure your HMS page and won’t let you just buy the hub.
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They’d make more money selling multiple sensors… if the Wyze Sense Hub were marketed a bit better than the way it is now. After purchasing the 5 piece Starter Kit, I have purchased additional motion sensors and entry sensors, and am considering more in the future.
Perhaps Wyze thinks they don’t have enough Starter Kits in the pipeline to meet the needs of both those who sign up for HMS (equals additional ongoing revenue stream) vs those that purchase the Starter Kit as I did just to get into the game of using sensors without HMS.
I personally would never have need for the HMS services. And if I did have need for alarm system, there’s a good chance it would be other than a Wyze Security System.
SJ
Which I interpret as: “We don’t want you do buy this product unless you sign up for the Home Monitoring Services”
SJ
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I don’t know. Unfortunately, my experience with their motion sensors was with their original gen, which were garbage due to the issue with dead batteries that killed the sensors. If I were running the company, I’d want to regain my customers trust.
I just want their motion sensors to do things like turn on lights and trigger routines. I have no need for their monitoring services, so I’ve been looking into motion sensors from their competition.
Lee Bosset
That’s how I use them. There are plenty of other vendors for automation. The Wyze ones work fine for that, mostly. There can be problems with the Wyze servers. I have a mix-&-match setup for my stuff. Using Wyze, YoLink, SmartThings for my automations. YoLink has the advantage of long distance (1/4 mile) and direct connections between devices to control lights and plugs even when your internet connection is down.
Control with Internet down… novel concept…
I see YoLink has a Smart Power Strip and Smart Power Plug, both have Power Monitoring… that’s something I can’t get from a Wyze Product, so that might be my gateway drug over to the YoLink ecosystem
SJ