Beware updates

Updates don’t improve hardware. They disable existing features. Greed!!!

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What are you talking about?

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Heck of a statement to make without giving any idea what you’re talking about.

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What feature was disabled?

I have not seen updates disable features. Sometimes features have to be removed for a short time because of a bug or other conflict, this doesn’t happen a lot.

This is extremely rare, and the reason is pretty much never related to “greed” from Wyze as far as I’ve investigated.

Example 1: XNOR.ai Local Person Detection used to be on the V2’s and was later removed from the cameras. Wyze did not WANT to remove this feature. It had nothing to do with their greed. The company they partnered with, XNOR.ai, to provide a string of code they developed to detect people all just from using the camera’s local hardware. It was an amazing feat in the small amount of concise code. It was so good that Apple bought the company and then told Wyze they are no longer allowed to use the feature. Wyze had to stop including it in any of their future firmware. This had nothing to do with Wyze’s “greed”…they wanted to keep offering this feature. They were legally forced to remove it due to the “greed” of other companies: XNOR.ai (for selling their company at a huge profit) and Apple (for paying millions of dollars for the company and then banning everyone else from using it). If there is greed blame to throw around for Wyze removing that feature, then blame XNOR, or Apple, or capitalism, the government and legal system for making Wyze legally obligated to disable that existing feature. -What followed was Wyze trying to find a solution to make up for the loss, but they were unable to find or create an adequate local detection solution that would fit within the memory limits or processor limits of the cam. The XNOR code was very advanced (which is obviously why it grabbed Apple’s interest to spend millions for it). Instead, Wyze had to turn to a cloud solution. They tried to offer it for free for a long time, but their profit margins were too slim to make it work without raising prices somehow to subsidize the extra cost, so they had to make it subscription-only. Sucks for all those (including myself) who originally hoped to free local Person Detection forever, but it’s just what happens sometimes. I’m not saying Wyze couldn’t have done things differently (you can read my own strong criticisms in that announcement thread), but in the end, they got stuck with a lot of crappy choices and still had to make some choices. For what it’s worth, they did announce in the AMA they were trying to see if they could offer local/edge PD in the V3 or a future camera model that had enough memory and processor power to support new edge detection again, and even had job positions open specifically to develop this over time. Who knows if it will pan out. They tried once before, but they were unable to replicate the efficiency of XNOR, and if they do allow it, it will take away options for other features as there will always be a limited amount of data/processor useon any device.

Example 2: Test features, especially those in Beta. Wyze tries out new features all the time. Sometimes some features have to be rescinded for various reasons. For example, they allowed a lot of people to test the facial recognition, then after a few months they wanted to upgrade it to a new level, so they removed it from public testing and made it a closed test for the level 2 feature. That feature is expected to return new and improved, and technically hasn’t even officially launched. These kinds of things are fairly normal for tech companies testing out features and improvements. I professionally do QA testing, and I can attest that this is all very common.

Example 3: Another one is VDB Alexa integration. Originally, Wyze told us the VDB would never work on Alexa because of the aspect ratio not being supported. I was pleasantly surprised when I found I was able to stream it after all, albeit turned on it’s side, at least I had the capability. Unfortunately a lot of people filed tickets and complaints about it being side-ways (landscape), and Wyze said they may be forced to remove the capability entirely from Alexa now (as they originally said they wouldn’t support it) to prevent people from filing so many tickets to Amazon (and Wyze) about it being sideways when it apparently has to be sideways to even stream on that platform. They haven’t removed this capability yet, but they have warned it is likely due to all the complaints. I don’t think it would be accurate to call this “greed” though. Similar with the Google compatibility, which is more of a debugging issue they’ve been working on. WyzeFrederik has been giving some interesting updates with that. Last one I read said their in house testing with Google with a fix involving WebRTC was basically complete and they were just waiting for Google to sanction the completion and go mainstream. Bugs happen, and sometimes the fix isn’t 100% up to you and has to be approved by other partner companies too.

Overwhelmingly, I see hundreds to thousands of constant add ons and improvements over the last year (see firmware and app logs, and beta forum version tests, let along alpha feature tests), which attests that Wyze adds way more features than they ever remove, often more than most companies. I have some other camera companies, and in the last year, do you know how many feature additions I’ve gotten on those cams? Few to none, period. Wyze slaughters them all on constant additions by a landslide. I never see anything new. One of them has not done a single firmware update in over a year, despite there being a crapload of really annoying and critical level bugs I have clearly demonstrated to them that need immediate fixing. They just don’t care.

Wyze isn’t perfect, and I’ve criticized the way they have handled things in many cases, but I’ve never seen “removing features” be about their “greed” as much as it was either a legal obligation or for testing, or for reasons involving consideration of other partner companies.

In general, if a company was all about “greed” then they would ADD more features, not take them away, so the premise is a little confusing that way.

Also, it can be hard to justify calling a company operating at average profit margins below 10% (sometimes even just 3% profit margins) as decisions being all about greed. One need only look at auction or resell sites like eBay to see that they are underpricing almost all their products. V3’s regularly sell for around $40. Sometimes their products sell for as much as 4-5 times the cost Wyze sold them for, indicating the market demand for the quality of the product is far above what Wyze lists. Wyze could almost certainly double their costs on most of their products and still make a ton of money, maybe more money, at least that’s what the market indicates. All indications show that Wyze offers way more value for way less cost than almost any other option based on demand and market reseller comparisons, particularly when there are supply limits where Wyze direct isn’t an option. The economics of it are strongly indicative [at least to me] it’s really not about greed…definitely not more than any other company in the industry. It would be hard to compare Wyze to another similar for-profit company in a matching industry and convince anyone that Wyze is the greedy one…

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Can you elaborate at all on this. As you can see most of us are a bit perplexed as to what you are talking about. I have yet had any features removed from updates provided by Wyze.

There are a few exceptions as explained by @carverofchoice .

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Simple. Software fails overtime. Hardware works fine till software timers run down. What did function fine. Now does not. I’m done with their products.

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I do not know of any ‘software timers’ in any of their products. I have used everything but the v1 camera and I know people still using the v1 just fine.

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I have not run into the issue you are mentioning. I have V1 Sensors, Bulbs, Outlets, Camera’s, etc. They seem to work for me, yes there are some issues, but nothing I cannot deal with. All Major appliances have built in obsolescence, I have not encountered that with any Wyze Product as of yet. Been with them for 3+ years.

Are there issues, yes. However, they are being resolved, but there has never been anything scheduled to fail or any software timers. There are a number of other companies and products that also have their share of issues.

You are allowed your opinions, but I don’t have the same experience you have.

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The only timed obsolescence I could possibly see someone claiming is the V1 contact sensor locking up when the battery dies.

Wyze did not create this problem, it was the chip maker, Texas Instruments as I recall. They specifically mentioned it was a weakness of the chipset they created, and it can technically be fixed, though it too complicated for most people:
image

That again, wasn’t Wyze being greedy, in fact Wyze worked to make push notifications and other things to help prevent that Texas Insturments issue from affecting their customers.

That’s about the only possible case for obsolescence I can think of. They ditched the V1 sensors for newer sensors that wouldn’t have that issue anymore, but still support all their old equipment instead of forcing people to upgrade. In contrast, most of my old cell phones aren’t allowed to activate anywhere.

Still, I empathize when hardware breaks down and doesn’t function the way we wish it would. It’s a problem with electronics in general. They do wear out. Not much that can be done for that. Understandable to be frustrated. The way I see it though, I’d much rather keep replacing at the costs Wyze offers me, than replacing at the costs the mainstream mega-corps charge for replacement devices.

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You’re giving very vague answers. What, specifically, has stopped working? I’ve not had any issues with my cameras, and haven’t experienced any features that were removed.

What specific software issue are you encountering?

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Hes talking about trigger times i think… i have the same issue. For example, over a week ago I noticed that my counter light in the kitchen wasn’t turning on any more when motion is detected… turns out all the rules that have a time or day condition no longer work. If you clear all of the time and day parameters, it works… if you add them back and save… nothing works… go back in to see the days you selected and you will find them all to be clear again… seems like a server glitch not a firmware or app problem

I never enabled rules. From dusk till dawn. V3 outdoor camera no longer functions. Hardware still works if live view is enabled.

Uhhhh… That description of the XNOR.ai Local Person Detection is cute, but those of us that purchased the version 2 camera we’re told that we would have this feature. It’s printed on the freaking box.

Also, the Draconian style of removing this feature from all cameras was extremely heavy-handed. People that purchased their cameras with this feature in mind should have been grandfathered and allowed to keep the feature in those specific cameras. If the camera fails, then the feature goes away, but we paid for that feature and it should remain as part of my purchased product.

Is this going to turn into another Replay TV where they went inside of purchased lifetime Replay TV systems and removed the ability of skipping commercials? That was a huge lawsuit. Are we going to do that again?

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Yes, I bought wyze cameras bc of the features they offered free like motion and person detection. I don’t mind charging for features that were not “included” when I bought them but I feel it is not right to charge now for something that when I bought the camera was free. Jmho

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I agree. Which is why I’ll never purchase a wyze product again. They have turned into a baby apple, Or for those who remember the old IBM.

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This Is absurd, you obviously don’t know what the legal terms were of the software, one company develops it, a much larger company buys the developing company, the larger company now has the rights to said property to do with as they see fit, Wyze did not develop the software, they licensed it. that basically means they “rented” it for what ever terms were agreed to. they don’t own the rights to it. so here comes apple, a massive company with very expensive lawyers, who have the money and the time to make things very difficult for wyze in the courts, wyze who has a much smaller budget and not nearly the power of apple could not possibly fight apple without putting themselves out of business, i don’t understand what the issue here is, you say that this stopped working.

  1. you need to elaborate on what.
  2. stop being vague in what appears to be trolling.
  3. research and understand the topic in what you want to complain about before complaining about it…(you get mad about features that get removed but don’t understand simple business practices).
  4. we (the community) would absolutely love to help you with the issue you’re having with the camera, but we’d need you to be more specific and note what issue you’re experiencing and the things that you’ve already tired to do to remedy it.
    be a sport and play ball…
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Really? R u paid a consulting fee? This is like social media. You have no idea who I am but you somehow assume you have a higher iq superior training and the ability to use the.

So elaborate on your apple theory with some links.

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Not paid for anything, I have many wyze devices in my home, cameras, their scale, I’m waiting for the new smart watch to drop, wireless plugs. I do understand tech and the companies that produce it and the legalities their bound by.
Here’s some links since you asked so politely…

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