Night Vision Setting On Without LEDs On

The infrared light reflects off of glass. If night vision could be enabled with the choice to turn the IR LEDs on, people could point their Wyze Cams out windows and use external IR illuminators.

Best,

WyzeGwendolyn

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The lights are definitely bright in a dark room. I have the camera hidden inside an old box camera for stealth and had to turn off the night vision mode to keep it from being noticed. It would be nice to have true infrared lights which were not detectable.

I have to buy Yi cameras to get this night mode ON LEDs OFF feature after installing 10 v2s and 2 pans. Also Yi cam’s LEDs are invisible. They also have PC app to view 4 cams at a time. Though wifi range is worse than Wyze cams and v1/2 form factors are much better.
Don’t know why it takes so long for Wyze to implement this night mode ON LEDs OFF feature ?? My guess is this feature may hurt sale of outdoor models coming soon ??

People have been asking for this for awhile. Please consider implementing ASAP.

We need the option to turn off the IR LEDS when Night Mode is active.

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I have an external IR light that I could use with the Wzyecam night vision out a window but can’t because the IR lights on the camera turn on also so it reflects back and is unusable.

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Not sure I’m following. Can’t you just turn off the night vision feature? I’ve been thinking about doing this, but the IR illuminator that I bought wasn’t powerful enough. What IR light do you use?

I have my camera pointing out the window. You can’t use the night vision that way because the built in IR lights reflect back. I have another more powerful IR light that I purchased awhile back for another camera I was using. (can’t remember where I bought it) If I could turn on the camera night vision without the built in IR light, I could use the external IR light. It wouldn’t reflect back because I could have it in shining out in another place in the window or even another window that points the same direction.

Make sense?

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I thought the Night Vision feature simply meant that the IR lights automatically come on when it gets dark. Maybe that’s what I’m missing. I didn’t realize the camera actually goes into a night vision mode? And…maybe that’s why my little experiment with an IR illuminator didn’t work out.

This might “illuminate” the situation:

Hint: Do you notice the fairly loud click when the night vision mode engages?

This would provide a decent workaround until an outdoor version is available. I may try the masking off the leds with some tape

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You can use black electrical tape as shown in the Reddit post and can even cover the large round bottom sensor with tape for much better IR light blockage. I’m not sure what the bottom sensor is used for but I covered it and didn’t see any difference in camera functionality. This hack works best if you get complete tape coverage of everything except the camera lens and top light sensor. It’s rather ugly but it’s functional. The best solution would be for Wyze to update their app to provide a switch that allows users to disable their IR lights without disabling night vision. The current app only allows you to disable both night vision and IR lights at the same time.

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“On” and “Off” mean that you, the user, are manually controlling when the camera is in night vision mode. “Auto” allows to camera to enter night vision mode when the light sensor detects low light conditions.

As of firmware 3.9.1.102, the IR emitters and IR cut filter work together, not independently. In other words, “night vision” means IR emitters are on and the IR cut filter is open. You cannot turn off the IR emitters while the IR cut filter is open. If you turn night vision “On,” the IR emitters are on, and the IR cut filter allows IR to pass to the CMOS sensor. If you turn night vision “Off,” the IR emitters are off, and the IR cut filter moves in front of the CMOS and blocks IR. “Auto” means the camera can switch between these two modes on its own.

A popular feature request for a future firmware version is to allow users to turn the IR emitters on or off when the IR cut filter is open.

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Just came here looking for this feature request, old as it may be. I only set up mine to face out the window the other day and it’s totally useless at night with the IR LEDs shining, hopefully it’s on their list!

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I too would like this feature. The sensitivity is so low with night vision off that the cameras are all but useless at night but, without the ability to turn off the IR emitters independently of night mode I probably won’t be buying more of these cameras.

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This camera really needs the ability to turn off the IR lights, like you can with other cameras. As others have already said, through a window night vision with this camera is useless due to the IR reflection, unless you have lights on outside.

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Yes, I would love to have this feature. It would make thousands of WyzeCam users very happy if this were available. Many users are not aware that this simple feature would solve their nighttime window glare problem for window-mounted cameras. PLEASE put this on the priority list for upcoming changes.

The only downside is that making this feature available might cause most of the companies that sell black electrical tape to go out of business. :slight_smile:

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Agreed. This would be a useful option. I wonder if they (leds/filter) are possibly hardware connected.

I have a similar need to disable the built-in IR lights for use inside a window. I have a separate IR Illuminator. Seems like a simple firmware update where they add a checkbox in the settings. Has anyone spoken to the dev team?

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Yes, the dev team has stated that this is possible to accomplish in firmware. (Until they said that, we didn’t know if the LEDs and IR filter were hardwired together.) Its is also a very frequent request, so we hope that Wyze is planning on implementing it soon.

I will forward this to the keeper of the request list to count up one more vote.

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Add me to that vote count too, for IR cut filter out but LED’s off…

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