Video Doorbell

Here is a new wish list item to add SD card to the next Video Doorbell, please vote to have your voice heard!!! :grinning:

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From what I’ve learned of how Wyze functions, complaining in here about the lack of an SD card slot will not achieve much. A new thread needs to be created with enough votes on that thread to garner the attention of the powers that be to deem this matter valuable enough.
In other words, chatter within this thread requesting change is useless. The best way to get Wyze’s attention is to create a new thread and everyone vote on it. If it has enough votes, it’ll be placed as a priority.

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looks like you beat me to it

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Great minds think alike :laughing:

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Here is a new wish list item to add RTSP support to the next Video Doorbell, please vote to have your voice heard!!! :grinning:

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Welcome to the Wyze community!
@steve4335 made a #wishlist topic for this. You can go and vote for it here: Ideas for Wyze Doorbell V2

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Thanks steve. I went ahead and voted in your new thread and basically reiterated what I already said here. But I don’t hold out much hope. I don’t think any of the changes I’ve requested here (big or small) have ever been implemented.
I’ve been waiting on this video doorbell from them (and the outdoor cam) for years and each of them came out strangely a little short of expectations.
We can always hope for the best, but I think these forums are largely just viewed as a ‘venting’ platform. In the end, they will make the decisions for what serves them best, not the customer.
It seems like everyone and their dog wants me to dole out extra coin for recurring monthly fees (even for features that were already promised to be free forever). Sadly, this may be yet another push in that direction by attempting to force everyone into the CAM plus subscription.
All I can say to that is, they’re going to start losing their existing customer base at some point. For now, let’s stay hopeful! :+1:

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It should go without saying that SD card support is NOT going to happen with this current product. They seem far too far along in developing, testing, manufacturing, and sales. You’re essentially asking for a new and different product. I wouldn’t count on it any time soon.

RTSP on the other hand…

(Seriously they should have gotten the hint by now and included RTSP from the get-go here as many other vendors do.)

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RTSP Please !!

Well, based on this post:
wyze link
I doubt they will add RTSP support either.

How does continuing SD card or RTSP support help them sell CAM Plus subscriptions? Think about it.
I think the only way this trajectory will change is if something notable begins to affect their pocketbooks (like disappointed customers moving to an alternative cam ecosystem, such as Eufy). We’ll see.

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So the whole WYZE idea is to force people to pay for subscriptions with this door cam? I preorded 3 units. So I’ll need 3 subscripts on top of my Netflix my IPTV box ,car insurance
mortgage payments etc etc …

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My point exactly!

Exactly, I am not sure why Wyze thinks they can only have one or the other: Either RTSP or else no RTSP but with features. Other competitors don’t have separate firmware. My Eufy Cams (that I ordered after Wyze announced they were ending free PD), have RTSP set as a selectable option where I can choose to activate RTSP or not with a setting change, indicating no need to develop 2 separate firmware versions (though to be fair, if you choose RTSP in the 2K Eufy Cams it cuts the resolution down to 1080p max instead of 2K, so I haven’t done it).

The point being that Wyze wouldn’t need to have a separate firmware “branch” as they did with the V2’s…just build it into the current firmware as an option. Then we could link it all through Home Assistant and any number of other things, including having Local storage capabilities onto a network drive. They’d kill 2 customer frustrations simultaneously.

I mean, even if they added Home Kit support we could then link it to our Home Assistant. I don’t even have any Apple products at all, but when I installed Home Assistant as a Virtual Machine yesterday it told me about a bunch of my devices it could connect to Home Assistant because they were immediately Home Kit supported, and thus Home Assistant supported. It was cool…my Ecobee thermostat, Eufy cams, etc. There’s a lot Wyze COULD do…but the focus seems to be more on the investors’ desire of “what can we limit in devices so that everyone feels the need to get on our monthly subscription instead.”

People were excited about all the new investor money when it was announced…I was concerned…investors want things to be all about increased profits and golden handcuffs…

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Did you use Hyper V? Recording to internal, external, server? I am curious about integrating this, and i have a Qnap server that i could use, but it looks like it doesnt natively support them :confused:

overall looking at maybe getting some yi outdoor cams (permanent mount w/ no battery) and possible amcrest video doorbell (sd card/PIR,RTSP), and would love something to bring them together with phone app and local storage.

sorry for all the questions, just thinking strategies through. :nerd_face:

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Short version: I’m just getting started (installed Home Assistant for the first time last night).

Longer response:
I used Virtual Box because I already had it installed for when I was trying to learn Kali Linux for college (as a Virtual OS).

I was initially going to buy a Raspberry Pi and install Home Assistant on that, but then I read a post about an engine that Home Assistant can use as an AI to do Person Detection or any other kind of detection of any kind of animal or object or even recognize specific people’s faces and run your video feeds all locally to detect these things and give you alerts for them, totally free. The developer said the engine would probably work a lot better on old laptops than a R-Pi…so I finally decided to quit procrastinating and install it all as a Virtual OS on one of my laptops and just tried it out last night. It’s pretty cool so far.

I figured I should stop procrastinating since:

  1. I can just run it as a virtual OS instead of having to learn a R-Pi.
  2. Wyze wants to charge for PD and won’t support NAS, so I can just switch all of my Wyze cams to RTSP and have a lot more than just Person Detection…I can have specific detection of anything and anyone I feed into the engine, with alerts, etc. all at no cost. Plus NAS so I can get like 3-6TB drive and save all the recordings for all my cams locally on that now.
  3. IFTTT also got greedy and wants to bully everyone into subscriptions, so I decided I’d cancel IFTTT and run all my automations locally for free with unlimited options instead.

I am hoping to switch as much as possible over to Home Assistant now…but again, I am just 1 day into it. I want everything possible (IOT devices) to use Local Push (or else at least Local Polling)…so trying to figure out which devices support this. I know I can convert Wyze Sensors to all be local push only, but I need to get some “local push” smart bulbs so I’m not internet/cloud reliant anymore…causes too much delay and headache to have everything on either Cloud polling or Cloud Push.

I appreciate your mentioning of some devices worth checking out. I’ll look into those. Wish I could give you some ideas, but I just started working on it yesterday to resolve the issues with this trend of greedy required subscription for less usability stuff going on lately. There’s lots of people in Home Assistant creating far superior services and interconnectivity all for free. Greed is going to start killing some of these companies as more people with skills keep contributing to offer free open-source solutions that are superior.

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It’s stated on the RTSP firmware page why.

Due to hardware limitation, RTSP could only be achieved as a separate firmware version for both Wyze Cam v2 and Wyze Cam Pan.

I am looking for references to support, but I think it’s the storage memory amount in the camera. Not enought storage for the RTSP code, and future features code so they chose one or the other. Like I said that’s what I believe I remember about it, and am looking for references to back it up.

Edit/ trying to not assist getting this thread off topic, but wanted to address the question. I want to make sure this thread stays fairly doorbell related, and if needed, other convo can be moved to other threads, or new threads if one does not exist already. :slight_smile:

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But we ARE talking about the doorbell, and why in the world Wyze would continue to leave RTSP out of this brand new product over which presumably they have complete control. The “storage/resources limitation” argument made little enough sense on the V2s when simultaneously they had no issue wedging in a full AI engine and taking it out later, but much less so on a brand new planned product… Maybe they will surprise us.

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Thank you for all that, great rundown of the beginning of an ambitious project, sorry if we burned out your keyboard :wink:

I am at a similar point with ifttt, and others… and what your are working on sounds like it is a perfect fit for what i am wanting to do…soooo when you get yours up and running feel free to swing by and set mine up :grinning:

If you set it up on a laptop wouldn’t it be running 24/7 and never sleep? which means it would have to be plugged in all the time, and none of my current old laptops have removable battery (the old old ones did and i used to take it out and plug them in as mini desktops), so i would be a little worried about over stressing that battery.

I am excited to try home assistant, like you mentioned i like the interconnectivity (rare in a world where everyone is trying to lock you into an ecosystem), however not in a position to tackle it right now. If you can it would be great to hear any updates as you progress. I am curious how the app interface and cam viewing is compared to the wyze app, and if/quality of viewing on a pc. - all in regard to the video doorbell of course…

Good luck with your project!!! :partying_face:

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To relate this back to the Video Doorbell :innocent: I saw someone made a whole new firmware hack for both the V2 and Wyze sensors to run locally on Home Assitant instead of through Wyze. I am hoping someone will do the same thing for the Wyze Doorbell like we’re discussing…

Afterall, Wyze firmware usually consists of a lot of opensource or already written code that they just take from others…someone just needs to see how to make the camera part one entity, the button another entity, and then POOF, we can make our own automations and stuff from it by flashing the firmware to something runs locally. They’ve done it for other things, and with the doorbell being so reasonably priced, it makes it easy for people to experiment with and not care if it takes several trial and error attempts to figure it out. They can’t really do that with a $200-$300 doorbell because a few failures are SUPER EXPENSIVE, but a few Wyze Doorbells are no big deal to screw up and awesome for everyone when they finally figure it out. So I am excited Wyze priced this so well.

As for the rest, yes, I leave the laptop on 24/7 anyway (thank you solar power for costing me nothing in utilities).

We’ll see how the rest of the local automation journey goes! :wink:

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Unless you have a Mac it’s still pretty darned simple to remove batteries from “non-removable battery” laptops. Usually just unscrewing the bottom and pulling out a quick connector on the battery, maybe a bit of tape…

I’m also looking forward to hearing how Carver’s experiment goes.

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