I’m not super familiar with home automation and am looking for suggestions on how to use the cameras and sensors to set something up if possible. Our dog door opens from our kitchen to our pool deck. Our backyard has 4 pairs of floodlights on two Kasa smart switches. I can tell my Google Home via my hub to turn on/off the lights and it will control all 4 lights at once. I’d like to use the motion or contact sensors or even just the camera to automatically turn on the lights if my dog goes through the dog door to the outside at night so that she can easily see the pool and doesn’t get too close, then turn them back off when she comes back into the house. The lights are very bright so I don’t want them left on all night or triggering if my dog isn’t actually outside so that we don’t irritate our neighbors. Would love to know the arrangements if anyone has already made this type of setup work for them.
A different approach, if you aren’t aware already, is to purchase a smart doggy door. A smart doggy door only let’s your dog control the door by reading a tag on the dog’s collar. I found one on Amazon.
I have seen those but other critters haven’t been a problem. We have had visitors, a ferret one time and a raccoon another, they were more entertaining than concerning. I’m just looking for a way to add on triggering of the lights if possible with the Wyze hardware I’ve just purchased. I know I could probably get it via trial and error, heavy on the error side I’m sure. I was hoping some other Wyze user had the same desire and would share their steps for me to copy or adapt. Thank you for the suggestion though, I do appreciate it.
Probably your easiest solution would be to purchase a Kasa compatible PIR (motion) sensor, put it over the dog door, and using the Kasa app, have the lights come on when the dog is detected.
You can probably add a something in the Kasa app to start a timer when the PIR sensor is triggered to turn the lights back off again after so many minutes.
Do a Google search for Kasa PIR to find TP-Link compatible devices.
Thank you, seems so obvious now but I didn’t even consider looking for something to work with the lights directly in Kasa. We don’t even have the cameras mounted yet so no rush to figure it out. I’ll start a new search. I appreciate your help!
Have you checked whether your Kasa switches can be controlled via IFTTT? If they can, it may be possible to use Wyze sensors to control them. Wyze sensors can definitely be used as a trigger, but it depends what actions are available in IFTTT for Kasa. I’m sure there’s a simple “turn on switch” action, but you probably don’t want the lights to STAY on, and I’m not sure how that would work. Maybe there’s a “turn on switch for 5 minutes” action?
Maybe there’s a “toggle switch” action? In theory, that should work with a contact sensor, although if the doggy door swings back and forth and makes a connection then disconnects while the dog is still outside, you might get some funky behavior.
I hadn’t responded yet nerdland, but only because I’ve been trying to work this out. You put me on the right track. This doesn’t seem like it would be a complicated setup, but it is. WrecksO was exactly right about being able to use Kasa with the Wyze motion detector but you were right that there is some funky behavior in that I haven’t been able to limit it to at night or just when the dog goes through the door. I’m on a mission now to figure out this puzzle. IFTTT will work with Wyze and Kasa but there is no option to add a second “then that” like a timer. Seems like I should be able to daisy chain two sequences together but haven’t been able to get it to work. Kasa works with SmartThings which it seemed like may be a solution but I’m not there yet either. Looks like I can use an applet like apilio or possibly a virtual switch in SmartThings but it’s straining my understanding so far to make it work, but I’m still at it. Thank for the point in the right direction. If I’m able to get it working I’ll post back so maybe someone else can adapt the steps to their needs.
You could put a PIR sensor above the doggy door on the outside to turn the light on and another one above the doggy door on the inside to turn the light off again.
what about training the dog to turn the lights on? 
She’s a bit too small to reach the switches, but now I guess we could try to get her to learn to bark to turn them on? Before we had a doggy door installed we had trained our previous dogs to ring jingle bells hung near the door to let us know they wanted out. It was actually really simple.
So after quite a bit of trial and error I have my solution and it is working very well. I had to move the motion sensor outside as the doggy door is in the kitchen and it kept triggering any time anyone went to the fridge. I should probably rig some sort of protector but it is working great so far. I’m wondering if maybe I should post it as a separate message to make it easier to find in case someone wants to adapt the instructions to do something similar.
What I wanted: motion sensor detecting my dog going outside through the doggy door to turn on all my backyard flood lights (only between sunset and sunrise) then to automatically turn off after 6 minutes.
What I’m using: Wyze motion sensor to detect her going outside, Four pairs of flood lights controlled via two Kasa/TP-Link smart switches, app IFTTT, app SmartThings (Samsung)
What I had to do: I could already control the lights using the smart switches either via the Kasa app or Google Assistant. The lights are all linked in the Kasa app as Backyard Lights so they will work in unison, although I can control them individually at the switches. Wyze and Kasa won’t play together so I got IFTTT involved but IFTTT doesn’t allow for multiple steps so it couldn’t do what I needed either. SmartThings plays nicely with IFTTT and with Kasa but not with Wyze. But I could make Wyze trigger IFTTT which in turn could trigger SmartThings which could in turn trigger Kasa. All of this happens pretty much instantaneously.
Wyze motion sensor settings don’t really matter for this to work but it is set to send me notifications and to record smart video whenever it is triggered and this sensor is named Dog Door.
Kasa was already set up with the two switches being paired so I didn’t need to change anything there either.
IFTTT recipe Trigger=Dog Door=Wyze motion sensor, Action=Switch on, Device=Backyard Virtual Switch
SmartThings is the tricky one. I set up two virtual switches in SmartThings in the Virtual Device Creator. One is called Backyard Virtual Switch, the other is Virtual Lights Off Timer. Then I set up two Automations in the Smart Lighting section of SmartThings. The first automation (Turn On Pool Flood lights, etc…) triggers the Kasa switches to turn on as well as the Lights Off Timer to start, but only if it is between sunset and sunrise. The second automation (Turn Off Pool Flood Lights, etc…) turns the Kasa switches off after the Power Allowance trigger has been on for 6 minutes.
So, it happens like this.
- Wyze motion sensor (Dog Door) gets triggered by my dog going through the door,
- IFTTT receives trigger notice from Wyze
- IFTTT switches on SmartThings device called Backyard Virtual Switch
- Backyard Virtual Switch turns on Pool Flood Lights and Screen Room flood lights and Virtual Lights Off Timer
- Virtual Lights Off Timer starts a 6 minutes counter then turns off Pool Flood Lights and Screen Room Flood Lights.
- Our dog can see while she explores to find the perfect spot to water the grass without wandering to close to the pool.
It was pretty interesting and puzzling to work it all out, but it’s really pretty cool and now has me looking for ideas for other things to automate. Hope this helps someone else. Everyone responding here to my initial post got me on the right path. I truly appreciate it!
Very cool! I’ve seen a lot of people asking about SmartThings integrations. I know this isn’t exactly an integration, but it shows how you can do it with a little ingenuity. 
I’ll be sure to point people here if I see them asking about this.