Robbery no video

Our Wyze cams catch everything, which is cool: lightning strikes, movement blocks away, little bunnies chomping on our grass late at night, all of us as we go in and out of our house and garage, and everything else … EXCEPT the person(s) who BROKE INTO OUR GARAGE AND STOLE AND DAMAGED ABOUT $3,000 worth of property. It’s as if they wore invisible suits or something. HOW IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE our Wyze cams missed this? I’ve gone through our recordings so many times, believing I missed the footage. We have cam-plus. I’m just extremely disappointed that it seems to catch everything in existence, including the rain, and our tiny dog, but didn’t catch the one thing I really, really needed it for. WTF!!!

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Not saying this is what happened but an internet or WiFi failure, power to camera failure, could cause this. Or the camera and Cam Plus just failed you.

Do you have a SD card installed, if so you may want to check that for video too…

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Yes … it’s within the realm of possibility that we lost power or the Wi-Fi at that moment went bad-- during the exact moment we were robbed. Perhaps because power went out in the neighborhood, knowing suspects took advantage. We don’t use the SD card. We rely on the cloud storage. I don’t have any evidence of a power loss, though (e.g., no recent time during which we had to reset clocks, or noticed other tell-tale signs of power loss). So, that leaves a wi-fi outage. That seems like a one in a billion coincidence, though.

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I have the SD cards in all my cameras as a backup if CamPlus fails. CamPlus has failed me in the past and the SD card had the video.

CamPlus is dependent on the internet, and any glitch between your internet service and the Wyze servers internet could happen as there are likely multiple hops between your camera and Wyze servers.

I only use 32 Gb SD cards as that is what is supported by Wyze. I use a good SD card made for video also, and NOT the ones Wyze sells as I have found theirs to be easily corrupted.

Below is a link to the cards I use

SanDisk 32GB High Endurance Video MicroSDHC Card with Adapter for Dash Cam and Home Monitoring Systems - C10, U3, V30, 4K UHD, Micro SD Card

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Got it. Thanks. I think you’ve persuaded me to get SD cards for backup.

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No idea and just a possibility, but it could also theoretically be an inside job if someone temporarily turned off or disabled the cameras. Sorry for your trouble.

Hmm. Well, my heroin-addicted brother did show up unexpectedly for a few days around that time. Makes me wonder. Seriously though, while within the realm of fictional possibility, that’s not a possible scenario in my real-life situation. I’ll say this: It’s more likely someone at Wyze, who, obviously because I store my videos on their cloud, knows I possess what’s been stolen. So, maybe it was an inside job at Wyze, wherein someone disabled my cameras and worked with someone in my town to break my garage door and steal my stuff. And why? I already pay for Cam-Plus! And I ordered those new nightlights in May that I still haven’t gotten yet! But there’s no one more than me who wants to know what really happened.

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Welcome to the forums! Bummer this occured! I am curious, what would the camera of seen if it did catch something? What type of camera are you using?
Sounds like the camera is pointed outside if it’s catching bunnies, bur is the camera actually pointed at the garage? In the garage? On the garage pointed to the yard? Is there damage on the door that is in view of the camera? Is that the only way into the garage? Just looking for more info. Thanks! And I’d also suggest using a sd card in the camera, use depending on what type of camera you use.

I’m so sorry to hear this happened. I would be so frustrated as well.

Customer’s thoughts are my first thoughts as well. I read through several studies on this for college, and the various studies found that most burglaries/thefts were done by someone who knew at least one of the household members, such as a family member (majority of burglaries were substance-addicted family members), neighbor, or someone who has visited the house before (including children’s friends, etc), or they were told by one of those people who had been to the house before when would be a good time to burglarize it and suggested ways to get in. Stranger burglaries of opportunity are apparently the uncommon exception to what it usually is in all solved cases.

In all but a very few rare cases, the culprit ends up being a teenager or desperate adult drug addict. I hope your brother wasn’t involved in any way.

There are a lot of possibilities, none of them pleasant to contemplate. Is it possible someone else who knows someone in your family well or had been to the house before would know how to enter without being on that camera (I don’t know your positioning, so I can’t say)? Could they have flicked the breaker or pulled the power cord right away (then the video wouldn’t get a chance to finish the upload, and when they plugged it back in after leaving it would take a minute to boot back up). Does anyone know you only use cloud for your videos? Even if they didn’t know that, some habitual burglars now carry WiFi and cellular jammers with them to prevent people from getting security alerts, and this would also prevent cloud uploads (another good reason to have SD cards as a backup). They could also come up from a blindspot position they knew the camera wouldn’t see. All of those things would explain why it didn’t show up. Also, check your motion sensitivity settings. What time of day was it? That can make a big difference. What cam version was it? Were you using night vision and with or without IR? How much lighting was there?

Of course, this whole post is me speaking my own personal opinions and interpretations (I don’t work for nor represent Wyze in any way), but for what it is worth, I remember watching an AMA in October 2020 when this exact question came up about who at Wyze could or would have access to our data, such as video data. It was even discussed in the context of a scenario just like the one raised here, a burglary. Wyze leadership clarified that our data (including video) is encrypted, and not available to employees in general, including most the higher ranking staff who were on screen at the time. Wyze Jimmy even specifically mentioned that even he has no access to our cams. So T. Liu clarified that they use AWS SSO, which allows them to limit access to all this stuff. Nobody at Wyze can just secretly access our videos on their own accord. T. Liu said that even those employees actively developing the system with special permissions and oversight were “not granted the permission to directly download video” so even when they had some special permissions they were not granting anyone permissions to download videos. I suspect that Wyze does not grant any employees access to our video data (since there is no need), and if ever that did occur, it would be impossible to do in secret without leaving obvious database logs and huge red flags. It’s just astronomically absurd. The only people who could possibly do it would have to be out of their minds to all conspire together and risk everything they have going for them which is astronomically better and more secure than petty theft or burglary…and they’d have to involve multiple other people, and honestly, I agree with Ben Franklin: “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” Or Orwell: “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” There is just no way this is realistic IMO.

Man, I wish there was something I could do to help with your burglary situation! So frustrating. For the future, since you have cam plus and it will filter important detections I would also recommend making sure the sensitivity settings are up high. Usually, lower sensitivity settings are good if you don’t have cam plus and need to limit how often you get alerts of ANY motion, but if you have cam plus, the AI will do that for you if you need to make absolutely sure it doesn’t miss anything.

I echo what others said about using an SD card. I have Cam Plus on ALL my cams, but I also have an SD card that records 24/7 just to be safe and make sure I can always review any time period if needed, or in case power or internet or WiFi interference or anything else happens. Murphy’s Law insurance and all that.

I hope you had insurance, and I hope you can all feel safe again. Hopefully SD cards as backup can help with that. Like I said, I have cam plus on every cam and keep my sensitivity high, and while it’s been reliable for me, I still keep SD cards as extra backup. I am very glad Wyze allows us to use both at the same time. I hope it helps, but even more so, I hope you never need it and never have to deal with this again.

Thanks for the write up. Just wanted to add that that I have sd card recording enabled on all my cams, and have camplus on the mission critical ones. I also double up on coverage, weither that’s two cameras looking at the same area but different angles, or one camera on one side of a door, and another on the other side of the door. I realize this is very vigilant and it’s not for everybody, but it’s what I have in place at my home. Just saying it out loud as a best practice that I use so that the community can know that it’s another option when designing their system coverage.

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Yeah, I do that too now. At my last residence, my neighbor had someone come up from behind one of his cameras and I don’t remember all the details, but after that happened he put cameras going crosswise angling at a slant slightly toward each other so that could never happen to him again. For example, a camera on the west corner of the house would now point Northeast and the east corner would point Northwest, so they both could see each other in the corner of the screen so nobody could sneak up on them ever again.

Ever since someone did that to my neighbor I started following that advice on all critical perimeter cameras. They all cover each other as well as some overlap and all have Cam Plus and SD Cards. I also set up to get alerts if my internet goes down. Even the best security can’t ever be 100% impenetrable, but a few precautions can make it so it’s not worth it for most people. But at least my whole perimeter is fairly sure to capture people one way or another.

Pretty sure he was kidding about the brother.

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Yes … the brother story was a joke.

The camera’s view includes the garage. So, on a normal day’s worth of footage, we see: any one of my family members go in and out of the garage; people/cars walking/driving on the alley behind the garage; and other boring stuff. The break-in was involved … it would have taken at least a few minutes. I believe we were targeted. But this wasn’t a Mission Impossible-type job. It probably happened when we were all deep asleep. But our Wyze Cam V2’s failure is a big part of the mystery. An SD card will help in the future, I hope. Unfortunately, in our case, the Wyze became a part of the mystery instead of helping to solve it. Thanks for all the two cents and empathy from everyone! (FYI: Insurance will reimburse us, minus the deductible of course).

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Any exterior lights in the area? Motion activated maybe? Able to post a photo of what the cameras view is for visual aid for the rest of us?

Sure! Here are two videos taken today, both of our backyard and garage: This is where the camera is aimed day after day. One is a day video showing trees blowing in the wind. The other was taken in the middle of the night–and, lo-and-behold–caught another bunny scurrying in our backyard. (Our motion-sensor flood light usually isn’t always permanently on as it is in that video; but given what just happened, I’ve turned it always-on for awhile … But even when it’s not on, the Wyze captures stuff when the yard is completely dark).

The theft/break-in, we believe, happened in two stages. First, they tried unsuccessfully prying the garage door open. They severely damaged it and it will need to be replaced entirely. Then, I believe, they came back another night and entered through the unlocked side door (on the left-hand side of the garage). Of course, the side door is usually locked, but I was going in and out so many times to fix the big garage door, just to be able to open and close it again, that I apparently left the side door unlocked one night.

So, hopefully, I’ll get some good feedback (and understanding) over my amazement that the Wyze cam didn’t catch ANY of that.

Video 1
Video 2

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Oh wow, I thought at first that the garage must be the smaller building on the far right but no, the daytime video shows it’s the one smack dab in the center of the frame.

If you have CamPlus there is no reason to have missed this break-in…

Right. Thanks for the validation!

Either my Wyze : 1) captured it and I just haven’t found the clip (I swear I’ve looked through each clip at least three or four times well before the incidents even happened and in the days after); 2) malfunctioned; 3) turned off due to a power or Wi-Fi outage; or 4) succumbed to intentional sabotage (this is the least likely option–believe me).

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Only thing I can think of is the scum had no lights and it was simply too dark.