Audio Recording was enabled by the app without user permission. No easy way for the user to tell unless the user checks that area of the app, per camera. It’s also unknown for how long this was enabled without the user permission.
It was discovered when the feedback (echo) from other devices [tablets/laptops/phones] starting building up to a sharp pulsing sound. Another tell was that the Wyze logo setting was re-enabled. These features were disabled on day one of all devices being setup.
I assume you are talking about the “Show Wyze Logo” and “Record Sound” settings for each camera on the Advanced Setting page. I would hazard a guess that some app or camera firmware changed it - but that is only a guess. I would not know in part because I intentionally have “Record Sound” and the “Show Wyze Logo” turned on for all 31 of my cameras. I do have one V2 camera that has the microphone physically removed because that was needed for a specific application a while back.
I would however speculate that your determining that the Record Sound setting had changed based on getting feedback is incorrect. The setting for recording sound has no effect on receiving sound while watching live.
Of course the Wyze Logo is obvious any time you watch a camera either live or recorded (if the log was enabled at the time of the recording).
Yeah similar things happen to me sometimes such as when I install new firmware that sometimes resets some settings back to default, or when I clear the data from the app and reload it, it’s often removed my personalized settings back to defaults, so I have to check things sometimes.
I’d recommend checking occassionally after big firmware updates or if your app data is cleared or reset for some reason. I don’t think it’s Wyze being nefarious in any way, but this is good feedback for them to take extra effort to try to always maintain all personalized settings unless a device is purposely flashed back to factory settings. I’ll also try to pay closer attention to these things the next time something similar happens to any of my devices during beta tests and pass this on to the dev teams when I see it. It’s best to figure out and prevent any of these issues before they go public.
For now, I would recommend submitting a log for the camera it happened on so they can figure out why this happened to you. Logs go to the devs, but this forum is mostly a community driven thing where a lot of the posts won’t be addressed by employees (especially here in the “tips and tricks” section.
When we did the firmware update it went back to default mic on,no problem we check our cams settings on every Friday mornings
Sending logs is where the concern is. When audio recording is enabled does it get collected by Wyze when submitting logs and/or submissions for AI analysis?
Correct, The microphones were turned On in the surveillance view for several mobile-devices/tablets, but it was when I interacted with Wyze on the FireTV is when the audio feedback/echo was revealed on all those devices/tablets (known for FireTV). That’s the audio feedback I was referring to which compelled me to check the other settings to discover Recording Audio and other settings were enabled.
We should not have to check these things regularly. I agree with carverofchoice about not sending out firmware with this issue of settings going back to default.
Imagine this, no one expects their settings to be altered do to firmware updates, but for those that do get their setttings set back to default (audio recording, resolution, etc.) only a subset are aware of the changes because either they go in and check settings or, like myself, had the microphones turned On in the surveillance view (which is when I checked my settings to discover Recording Audio and other settings were enabled).