No stand alone person detect for Cam V3?

Well sure it’s technically possible because technically the feature doesn’t take place IN the V3, or in the V2 for that matter. It’s entirely on the Wyze server (“cloud”) end. They’ve chosen to limit it to keep in rough approximation of their original free PD promise and not lose too much.

It’s why I’ll be selling my 6 cameras and moving to ubiquiti to pair with my networking. Cost be damned because wyze firmware and policies are just sad.

Would reconsider when they release a smart toothbrush.

Kidding.

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I thought it was a poor practice of the company (Wyze) to offer person detect initially and then they try to charge for it. Planning to switch to another solution - drop cam, nest, etc.

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Agree! I am not happy with the course Wyze is taking. Not the transparent company I fell in love with.

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No, I think it’s primarily in the firmware of the camera. Once the camera detects it, it sends it to the cloud. And I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a constant video feed going to Wyze either. So it is possible that the firmware they developed for the v2 may not work for the v3 because of hardware differences.

But either way, they obviously have the means to do it in the v3 since cam plus can do it. It’s really just a matter of Wyze deciding to allow for the same service as “legacy person detection”. All I want is person detection for one low price for all camera’s I own. I don’t need pet detection, or anything else that they are adding to cam plus.

No, you’re mistaken. None of Wyze’s current cameras do local person detection. They sense motion or sound only, and then submit a file to the Wyze cloud servers for analysis. The firmware is thus largely irrelevant as all it is controlling is the initial motion detection. The decision to exclude V3s from legacy person detection is entirely a business call on Wyze’s part. There is zero technical reason.

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"The obvious answer to this problem is to use AI to build a more sophisticated understanding of the visual environment that the camera sees and then to send notifications only when something really relevant is happening, for example, when a person is detected. This approach exists today on many smart home cameras, but almost all solutions are running the model and inference on a GPU in the cloud. These cloud-based solutions are slower, open to more privacy compromises, and typically require consumers to cover the cost via a cloud subscription fee.

Wyze was clear from the beginning that they wanted an on-device solution on their $20 camera that did not require them to charge customers an additional cloud-service fee."

This is what I remembered from back in the xnor.ai days. So it is an on-device solution.

But again, either way, there is no technical reason why they can’t do their “legacy person detection” on the v3. It’s a marketing choice Wyze has made.

(The rest of that article is an interesting read, btw)

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No. That is very old news. As I said, none of Wyze’s current cameras do local person detection. The XNor firmware was removed many months ago and is not supported in any way (technically or otherwise) by Wyze. It plays no part at all in Wyze person detection or in CamPlus. I should know, my cameras still have the XNor firmware.

Our only point of contention here is whether the firmware has anything to do with Wyze’s capability or decision about providing legacy person detection to V3 users. It does not.

I was sad when person detection was no longer free but I mean, CamPlus is $1.25/month. It literally can’t get much cheaper than that. You could be paying $6/month for Nest Aware after paying $300 for the camera…

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Have fun paying 15 times more per camera and almost 5 times more for person detection over at Nest! (aka Dropcam which was bought by Nest 6 years ago)

Ok, so based on this:

It seems that you may be correct.

But in the end, I don’t really care how any of this works. I want legacy person detection on all of my cameras, including the v3. I’m not even sure I understand why this conversation even matters anymore. v3 can run legacy person detection, whether it’s on-device or not. That’s all I care about. But if Wyze wises up and allows for Cam Plus to be for all cameras for one low price, and be able to select what I want to detect, that would be acceptable, as well. I’m not paying $15 a year per camera for my nearly a dozen camera’s. But $15 a year for all camera’s I own for JUST person detection, well, then I would be interested.

Yeah, this may make me reconsider my contribution. I just ordered two outside V3 cams for the purpose of watching my driveway. Not interested in deer or critters, just people.

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I have Nest and the price is really high for the camera and the video retention subscription. In all honesty, the Wyze Night Vision far exceeds that of the Nest camera but the false detections on the Wyze cam v2 and v3 drive me crazy.

Well, sadly I just changed my VOLUNTARY monthly payment to $0.00. I wanted to support Wyze in helping to offset their costs to keep person detection free for early adaptors.
BUT, when Wyze violated their own promise to “keep it free in all cameras” by not allowing it in Cam V3 cameras they lost my support. Sad, I thought better of them…

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Wyze should move person detection (and pets and etc.) back to the edge. Back into the camera that is. Hardware keeps getting more powerful (look at the v3 camera!). Surely Wyze can scare up some programmers who could replicate what Xnor accomplished. I’m scrapping by on a very small retirement income… I have 8 cameras and I absolutely cannot afford the monthly cloud-based person detection subscription costs.

And without person detection the value of the cameras drops to the level of “toy.”

Pointed outdoors, without person detection all sorts of false motion events flood the notifications (or history). Plus, the long cool down period means that a non-event (a bird flies by) can block a real person event.

And… person detection is not very accurate. People are detected as “motion” and, for example, a light going on in an empty room (by a timer) is flagged as a person being detected.

It all moved from pretty great to pretty mediocre.

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I actually have had to turn off person detection on my v.2 camera because lights flickering, bushes moving in the breeze, and even tree branches set it off. I set up detection areas to eliminate the items causing the movement and even tried turning on movement tracking… to no avail. My v.3 camera is awesome for clarity… but identifies my parked car over and over again as a vehicle spotted and alarms me AND face recognition identifies… repeatedly… the wheels and wheel rims as being someone’s face! The technology needs some work and until it’s figured out with constant false alerts, they should not be charging for it. I had to turn off the Echo Alexa alarms for motion because it became almost constant with false alarms… even with sensitivity reduced to 20%-30%!

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Thanks for this thread which helped me figure out why I couldn’t get person detection working on my new V3 cameras. I’d upgraded a few existing wyzecams to V3s. I just put back my V2s and changed my monthly donation to $0 since I’m now stuck with a few V3s that I’ll need to find different purposes or homes for. I still had the xnor.ai on camera detection working on a few of the older cams that I kept back from the firmware updates. Now I have to look at reinstalling that older firmware image to get the on camera person xnor.ai working again which still works better than the current Wyze AI algorithm at least for my use cases.
I’ve been an early backer or most Wyze products but now I feel burned on the V3s.

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Yup. I’m also a early back and also feel burned by the lack of person detection on v3 cameras. Wyze is quickly moving to the Standard Corporate Model. It’s sad to see the decline happen so soon.

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I refuse to complain about missing features… Yes, person detection is a nice thing to have, but it isnt perfect either with its fair share of capturing something that isnt a person but thinking it was. Regardless, i rarely ever use notifications and if theres ever something i find fishy i just look at the logs/recordings…

With that said, for those of you annoyed at the detection picking up things that arent people, have you configured a Zone so only something that moves in THAT area gets recorded? You could easily zone AWAY from a tree or whatever so i hope you at least tried that before complaining.

All that aside, PLEASE keep in mind that you guys are buying whats essentially a $20 product and getting everything else for free OR cheaply. IoT infrastructure in the end can cost A LOT and while Wyze may be selling a lot of Products the cost of products themselves and additional costs like servers and man power can EASILY surpass the income they get from these cheap yet decently built products.

While some of you have legit concerns/complaints i fear you are only looking at a small portion of a bigger picture. Thats my opinion anyway…

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You bring up valid points, except that even refining the detection zones does not always alleviate false notifications. Besides, there’s not a lot of point to eliminate areas where people are detected in order to stop false detections if person detection is exactly what the feature should be doing. Mine was also picking up wheels of parked cars as faces and parked cars as people moving… when the cars were parked. There’s also the issue of 17 second delays of motion detection. The person is gone by the time the camera alerts. No, it’s not my WiFi speed. I have an IFTTT trigger that alerts me instantly when the cams detect motion by pop up on my phone and Echo Spots. My Wyze Cams alert me 15-17 seconds later. My WiFi speed is WiFi Fiber so speed is no issue. My Nest Cam triggers instantly.

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