Bypassing Wyze servers

For privacy and security reasons, I prefer to avoid having my camera output going to outside servers, including to Wyze servers.

So, with the camera connected to my home wlan, but [ul]without the wyze app[/ul], can I
—save directly to the camera’s sdcard?
—view the image on an android app that can access ip cameras (like ‘IP Cam Viewer Pro’) without the intermediary of outside servers?
Thanks

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Welcome to the community! If privacy is a big issue for you, you might want to consider using RTSP & VLC. If you search the forum you may find other ideas that will work for your specific use case. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I was about to write a similar post but given that they are trying to fix Android hardware decoding I was holding on.

But since we are here… I, for privacy issues too, would like to disable any cloud service and keep the video strictly in the SD cards. I know some functionality would be lost but privacy is more important to me.

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Thank you both. That is exactly what I was looking for. You guys are great!

Does this mean the Wyze app can then be firewalled so it has no access to wifi or data?

Will motion activation still work on the camera?

What about zooming capability in the Wyzecam Pan camera?

You’re welcome! You can find many answers to your questions in the RTSP guide. :slightly_smiling_face:

https://support.wyzecam.com/hc/en-us/articles/360031187371-Wyze-Cam-RTSP

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I’ve not yet made the move to RTSP but while ‘exploring’ I discovered the following.

After setting up a Wyze account and connecting the camera I used my vpn firewall to prevent the Wyze app from communicating with the outside world, Yet, the app still shows the live image.

So, is any info or images going out? If not why would RTSP be safer?

The image is also now in B/w. Was in color.

A VPN firewall? My VPN has split tunnel and the phone can communicate to the open internet and to my company.

Maybe you could share your configuration.

My concern is that the cameras themselves upload video to the cloud without any phone intervention. If they use a particular port or a separate URL that could be blocked in the router. But I would expect a lot of things to brake :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

Static IP on the cams with RTSP already enabled and setup in VLC or BI and then blocked egress at the firewall. Use VLC or BI but you will lose camera functionality without app access. For the PTZ cams, that means no PTZ.

Thanks guys. You’re very helpful but some of this is over my head as I’m new to this stuff.

I’m on an android phone and the vpn firewall I’m using is NetGuard. It lets me block internet and/or data access to any app on the phone (in this case the Wyze app) or just to specific urls, but of course it cannot control the camera itself. So I too worry the camera itself could be phoning home because of its access to my home wlan. I suppose I could block its access to the outside using the router if I can figure out how to do that.

Essentially, what I want to do is have wifi cameras at home connected to my home wlan and to see their images on a phone app like ‘IP Cam Viewer Pro’
https://hit-mob.com/ip-cam-viewer-android/
that can directly capture multiple cameras on one screen. I already use ip cam viewer for 4 older Zmodo cameras. It captures the images by accesding their ip addresses. (The new Zmodo models won’t let me capture their images without using their app that sends the images first to them).

I prefer the ip capture app to be on my android phone because that is more convenient to me than a windows laptop. But it needs to stay on my home wlan and not on outside servers. I don’t know if that means RTSP or not. Getting very confused.

I hope I’m not writing nonsense.