This is just trivia about a word, oh , two words
Cool down or blackout or whatever you want to call it, has nothing to do with the cameras.
Together with the 12-sec limit, it’s all about limiting the cost to host the video files online. Wyze doesn’t own the servers, and even if they do, there’s a recurring operational cost to maintain those servers. Cool down is a way to make the hosting cost manageable for them.
Cam Plus is solution for people who don’t want to buy their own µSD cards and don’t want to be limited by both the 12-sec duration and 5-min rest intervals.
From a business expense standpoint I think a cloud event recording cooldown is fairly reasonable, but notifications should not have a limit/cooldown/blackout.
Wyze has unfortunately made all notifications tied to cloud events, so now cams can only get notifications if they qualify for a cloud event.
They should separate the two as different things: Limit Cloud events to 12 seconds every 5 minutes, but allow us to still create settings that will allow us to get notifications (without a cloud event) anytime there is motion (let us set our own cooldown period on notifications, maybe 1 minute or 30 seconds, or maybe longer like 10 minutes if we want). Then if it’s less than the cloud interval, we can still go check out that time on the SD card instead.
All they have to do is tell us how many hours of monthly storage is included free, let us decide how to use that, and then market additional subscriptions of 24-48-or 72 hour monthly upgrades. They just need to stop calling it a COOLDOWN…
Give it a rest, it’s just a name, an industry-standard name that was already in use by the other camera companies even before Wyze came to the scene.
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Keep in mind what triggers the notification. The Wyze servers must examine the video before it decides if there’s an event. That’s right, the video needs to be uploaded and saved to their servers. No video (because of cooldown), no way to determine if there’s an event.
This wasn’t the case when motion determination was processed by the camera itself. But they lost that software license. They shifted the processing to their servers.
All they have to do is tell us how many hours of monthly storage is included free, let us decide how to use that, and then market additional subscriptions of 24-48-or 72 hour monthly upgrades. They just need to stop calling it a COOL DOWN…
Good idea! Why don’t you start a camera company and do that?
I see they have rewritten history on their posts, so glad some of you quoted them so our posts don’t look irrelevant now, lol.
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This is actually not the case here. If that were true, then it would require every second of video to have to be uploaded to Wyze in order for them to even determine if there was motion. Wyze would go broke selling their cams at $30. They absolutely could not afford to have their servers evaluating every second of video of every one of millions of cams. The bandwidth costs would quickly bankrupt them. This is not what happens.
Instead, the camera locally detects from it’s RAM when there are enough pixel changes from the previous frame (whether color or brightness, any change of a pixel is all the same here), and if enough of them change (as determined by the motion sensitivity settings in the app, which is then applied to the firmware locally on the cam), then it tell the camera upload that clip to the cloud and send a notification. The camera LOCALLY determines whether something is motion and then the camera tells Wyze there was motion. The Camera Locally determines motion, then sends it to the Wyze Cloud and if you have Cam Plus then the Ai reviews that recording to determine if there was anything besides motion (person, pet vehicle, etc).
If you don’t have cam plus, then the camera is limited to doing this for 12 seconds every 5 minutes, otherwise it is unlocked to allow it to do this anytime there is any pixel change within the set threshold.
That is an unnecessary. What I am suggesting is a small tweak. They can leave the limit of 12 seconds every 5 minutes to be uploaded to server. I find that quite reasonable. But since the pixel change detection is ALREADY being done locally on the camera to determine when to upload motion detected videos, simply add a subroutine to that which says if another motion event (pixel change) is detected between 2 frames within that 5 minute interval, then skip the cloud event upload and instead just send a push notification, preferably including a link of the date and time of the event to the same date and time location on the SD Card instead. Now Wyze has suddenly become extremely useful and functional with a lot of flexibility. Eufy cams work in a similar way to what I just described (only without the cloud storage).
Regardless, it is a misunderstanding that motion is detected purely through the Wyze servers. This is absolutely not the case. Motion is determined locally on the cam, and when the cam detects this, then it uploads that small clip, and only that small clip. Wyze servers never, ever see or process the majority of video captured by the cams.
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Detection of a pixel change is only half the story. A changed pixel doesn’t necessarily mean there’s an event. There’s a detection zone, and the camera isn’t aware of it. There are other considerations also, like rules that the camera has no access to.
I do want to be clear, I am not trying to be contentious…none of this is personal or intended to be argumentative. It is hard to find a way to explain when something is different or explain that it is the opposite of what is being said in a way that does not naturally cause defensive feelings to arise. So I want to preface this to be clear, My disagreement is absolutely not personal and not emotionally involved. I am just trying to help clarify. I hope that can be clear here. I am seriously just trying to help provide information based on what I have learned from people such as Wyze Employees explaining how these things work.
I can see how this can seem logical based on how we input this through the app, but I found that the opposite of this is true. The detection zone is actually loaded on the camera, and it is the AI on the Wyze servers that have not had access to the detection zone for years…this was confirmed to us in this forum directly by Wyze employees who are part of the Wyze AI team and told us recently this year that they are actually looking to change that (allow the AI to finally have access to the detection zone). They have just recently started tested having the camera send the parameters for our set detection zones to the AI, so that they can start training it to stop scanning the entire video. I am quite excited about this. Basically before now, if there is any motion at all in the detection zone (say a leaf blow by across your driveway, the only thing in the detection zone), then the camera says there was motion, and uploads the entire video to the AI, now the AI scans the ENTIRE video (not just the driveway) and sees a person walking on the sidewalk on the other side of the street in a non-detection-zone area…the AI will alert you that it sees a person. This has frustrated many people. This is caused BECAUSE the Wyze Servers/Wyze AI has not known the detection zone or taken it into account at all. So what they told me is that they are now trying to train it to receive the detection zone parameters from the camera, and only scan that area for a person, pet, vehicle, package, etc. and ignore all the greyed out areas. I am extremely excited about this work they testing and doing.
As you suggest, rules are an excellent workaround for the cooldown issue. I have done this many times. For example, before I had Cam Plus, I put a motion sensor on my front porch and created a rule so that said anytime the motion sensor detects motion, upload a 12 second video to the cloud. Then I could get cloud uploads WAY more than once every 5 minutes…in some cases it could be as often as every 30 seconds I believe. I liked that and like to suggest that to people who really need something in the cloud more often without cam plus. This is a really good point for you to have made for people who are looking for something to help bypass the 5-minute cooldown. I have also used Contact sensors to do this too (when a certain door opens, the camera uploads a 12 second clip no matter when it last uploaded a clip).
Those are great workarounds that can be done with rules. Thanks for bringing it up here where people are looking for such alternatives or ideas.
Best wishes.
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I tried watching “as much video as I wanted on from the SD Card for free” on one of my WOCs, after my the power was inadvertently cut from my WOC base station. While it was nice that all the video I wanted to view, was on that WOC (I have it set to Continuous record to the SD Card), there was no means to speed up (1x, 2x, 4x) the video. I was a pain review the video in an efficient manner.
If I was sending the video stream to Blue Iris, or other RTSP compliant software, I might be able to ‘consume’ my video data in a much more efficient, and less frustration manner.
SJ
That’s cool moving to another method, although I don’t think RTSP exists for the WOC? Also, I wasn’t speaking of the WOC – I was speaking of the V2 & V3. The WOC doesn’t record 24/7 because it is a battery-powered camera. You can “schedule” a recording to fake it, but it is temporary because it is a battery-powered camera. It isn’t meant to run 24/7.
To me, WOCs are a camera that should be rarely used (“battery power only” situations), so I often forget to include it. I have 1 WOC out of 8 or so active cameras, and although it is a WOC, it is close enough to the house and on a back patio fence line attached to the house where I probably could have just as easily used a V3.
I agree we need a way to watch the video in a faster manner, but I’ve never actually found a use for that. Let’s say I want to see when a package appeared at my door (I’ve never actually had that happen, as my cameras and sensors always alert me). I would just coarsely drag the time line back until it disappeared, then expand the timeline and move it forward until it appeared. Takes no more than a minute.
In the meantime, until they add that functionality (it is on the wishlist if you want to vote for it), the card can be ejected, and something like VLC will give you that fast forward capability.
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Replying to myself… I think I confused myself… I have a couple of V3’s and a WOC in the same area of my back yard… I did lose power to the WOC base station… so no reviewing anything on the WOC’s that night. I have the V3’s set to continuous record, and must of reviewed that video instead. (sorry for my self confusing statement…)
Nothing to see here… move along… 
SJ
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If it’s the cost of cloud storage that’s an issue, then offer a BYOS (Bring Your Own Storage) option…
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They do that. The SD card.
Nope. Does not work the same way. If that were the case, then there would be no reason for the cool down as described…
It records 24 hours a day, just like a Bring Your Own Storage option would. There will always be a cooldown on the free cloud storage.
Right, so let me BYOS. Bring Your Own (cloud) Storage. Which, technically, the SD card constitutes since you can access it via the internet.
Thanks.