Initial Thoughts on Wyze Home Monitoring (or why the product manager forgot to finish the job)

So I decided to jump on the Home Monitoring bandwagon. I didn’t want to spend a lot on a bad security system, so figured why not spend a little and do-it-myself. The sensors are inexpensive enough to proliferate and the setup was easy enough. But there are some no-brainer features that seem missing.

First of all, there’s standard equipment that’s missing. Things like glass break sensors (though in fairness, from reading reviews, it doesn’t seem like anybody’s glass break sensor works that well), panic buttons and keyfobs to interface with the system would be nice additions. Additionally, a way to arm/disarm the system from the Wyze Watch would be a nice feature.

Second, there are basic features that are missing, and likely not that complicated to implement. Most glaringly, is the lack of multiple (or temporary) pins. It would be nice to have a pin that only works for certain days or certain times for somebody watching the house while on vacation or a dog walker, etc. Sure, I could manually change the pin and then change it back, but that seems a little overboard for a feature like this. I will say that the setup was relatively easy and straight forward, so that went well, I connected and installed sixteen sensors in under two hours.

But during setup, I found some other glaring holes. First of all, you can only set up one phone number, and there is no ability to specify a backup number. While it would be nice to have the home phone number (which will always be near the system) as a primary, and our cell phones as backup, we could live with one number (after all, if the system is alarming, it’s most important to contact the house).

EXCEPT, you can only set up a phone number by confirming a code that must be texted to you, removing the possibility of a landline being used as the phone number. Given that there are multiple people in our household who would all use the system, this is a major oversight. Either commit to a single phone number (in which case you should support a landline - yes, they still exist, especially as VoIP lines) or if you require a cell phone, you should be able to have multiple numbers programmed since the cell phone is carried by a single person and not readily accessible by anybody that would use the system. To me, this is a major oversight and indication that the system as a whole was not well thought out. I worked around it by using a phone number that can forward to both our home phone and my cell phone, but I don’t know how many people would do that, and it certainly shouldn’t be required in a scenario like this.

So in summary, it’s a fine product that does the job. I can understand the missing hardware options, but for a home monitoring service, I don’t think Wyze considered appropriate use cases. Hopefully these can be remedied by updates to the system (or it’s user error and I’m just missing something).

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All suggestions sound great to me…

I’d still like a glass break sensor.

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I still want to be able to hear the base when I am upstairs.

When oh when is Wyze going to add multiple user PINS to home monitoring and secondary numbers for the monitory servicing to call? I think I saw a post from Wyze that the PIN issue was being fixed in an upcoming upgrade, but I’ve seen nothing more. I continue to tell people not to go with Wyze because of this flaw,