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I understand the frustration, and I’m not trying to be disagreeable, but I wouldn’t waste the time complaining to the BBB about this, and in theory if Wyze was a company run by jerks (which it isn’t), it could potentially leave the complaint filer subject to a defamation suit.

As soon as Wyze responds to the BBB complaint with any evidence it will just get dismissed and removed because there was no misrepresentation in advertising. The BBB only accepts complains about product issues or misrepresentation in advertising. This feature and dissatisfaction would easily be disqualified as not falling under either of those. BBB specifically does not accept as legitimate any pricing complaints where there was no corporate misrepresentation (and there wasn’t).

  1. Wyze has not advertised this as being a current feature with the products.
    • Everyone who bought any of their products did so with no statement from Wyze that his was available or included.
  2. It doesn’t matter how long ago anyone asked for it, Wyze never promised they would do it way back in 2018. At best they just recently said a few months ago they were working on developing this.
    • Never promised a timeline of when it would be completed
    • Even if they cancel the project, they are still not legally bound to provide this feature
    • Even if they were required to provide this service (which they aren’t), they would be allowed a lot of time for reasonable QA testing and redesign from the time they promised (which they didn’t), so a few months is definitely not going to be held against them as a misrepresentation.

Also, as mentioned above, a person filing an untrue statement or complaint to the BBB based on untrue factual allegations can potentially be held legally liable for defamation. In this case, nobody can realistically claim that Wyze misled them or promised this service. The facts would be on Wyze’s side…though defamation is hard to close on because perception is a finicky thing, and Wyze isn’t usually a bully like that, so I doubt they’d do that.

The point is, from my perspective and my experience with owning multiple businesses and with the legal system in general (IANAL), I would recommend against such a filing. It would be much safer and much attention worthy to simply file a review on Google or Google play or Apple app store or whatever other review site if anger and dissatisfaction are the drive here, because reviews can be completely perception based (the BBB is supposed to be factual misrepresentation, which this isn’t).

I am anxious for this feature too, but having been involved in programming and QA stuff, I honestly would not be surprised if it takes till the end of this year or into next year before we see this. That would honestly be reasonable. If we start attacking Wyze or other companies for not developing things really fast, all it will do is push them to go closed-channel and never mention anything they are considering working on or thinking about until it’s actually officially released. Then nobody can complain that it’s not done yet. I’d rather hear about what’s being worked on, researched, thought about, etc. even if they don’t always come true. The way I view it, especially based on how I’ve seen other lawsuits play out…we just can’t feel entitled to anything that isn’t officially released yet and advertised as a part of the product.

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I understand your point. I worded everything based on everything we have been told. And I used “I felt” as to make it my opinion only. And I have not used anything that is not a fact. All because I did not want to be sued. I did tell them to call me if they disagreed. So I was not nasty about it. It was all around disappointment.

To everyone else, I pulled all of my Nest equipment to support the small guy. Who were offering lower cost and great product. And was thrilled with the expectation of web based viewing. And the way it was presented and it being this company I would not think it would of gone monetary. That is where I was disappointed.

Well, one benefit is it will get their attention and they are likely to contact you and discuss it with you. That will be beneficial.

After that they will likely ask you to withdraw your complaint voluntarily (which you may or may not do depending on how that conversation goes I assume).

If you don’t remove it voluntarily, they’ll likely submit a request to the BBB to remove it for not being a true misrepresentation… And they should have enough proof to do that.

Either way there’s a good chance it gets removed in the end, but the benefit here is that you’ll at least [probably] get to have a conversation with someone higher up (as opposed to a CSR who just reads scripts and isn’t involved in discussion of any policy or developments.

So I suppose you’ll possibly get something out of it even if it is ultimately removed. I guess they could also ignore it entirely and leave it up there… Some businesses do. If they do respond and there’s no NDA or anything, feel free to share how it went, I will read that with interest.

Also, I do understand the disappointment of this feature probably requiring Cam Plus. I was among the first to report my disappointment on that end. I will be interested in seeing why since it should do a direct connection, so I’m wondering what could possibly be their ongoing costs. I will reserve further judgement until I know the details though.

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We do have choices and knew how Wyze cams operate. Since we know Wyze stores data in the cloud we can say no by not buying Wyze cameras.

I’m currently working on setting up Docker Wyze Bridge so I can connect to all Wyze cameras using RTSP in tinyCam. It still uses tutk though.

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Sure that’s fine for the consumer, but as a business model that’s not going to work. You don’t get to make statements like “You don’t like it, don’t buy it!” until you have the revenue stream to be able to ignore those customers. I don’t think Wyze is there yet. So as a consumer, my comment is still very valid…get me a local option.

Unfortunately I don’t think you can get away from tutk quite yet as that’s what Wyze chose. I was working on a stream capture idea, but that got sidelined because I got so busy with work. The idea is to have all the cams stream through a dedicated AP, which I can then capture through my router and store the data locally for processing. Still just an idea right now until I have some free time.

You can do that already with TinyCam as the mechanism to consume and redirect feeds from Wyzecams. You can likely do it with some of the newer open source projects too.

Edit: Whoa, sounds like that’s exactly what this does!

Hadn’t seen this one before? I hope it works well.

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Yeah that Docker Wyze Bridge seems to do just what I was planning, except mine was being written specifically for my UDM Pro. Having run inside a container is really interesting though…will check that out for sure!

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They do. :slight_smile:

Currently my camera firmware is too new. When I first found the container it worked with all Wyze cams. I’ll have to roll back the firmware.

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I have been tracking this docker app. I use UnRaid which allows for dockers and am waiting until they get a bit further for me to try.

However, I wonder if they will face the same issues Joshua did with his Home Assistant Wyze Addon.

I don’t think it will face the same problem. Just like with Tiny Cam, the cameras only cause Wyze an issue at initial authentication, then the rest should be local and not bother them. Joshua’s code was continually polling the sensor states and camera states (since he was treating all cameras as binary motion sensors). So I think this will be okay since it’s a single ping and then nothing for a while, as opposed to constant checks every few seconds.

It would be great if there was a way to make the sensors/Hub work similar to the cameras with RTSP…allow initial authentication and then have everything connected directly and locally after that so it’s not always polling Wyze’s servers constantly.

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Why should average people have to create a complex bluestacks interface on each computer? A very very simple web interface is all we need

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Have you tried Bluestacks? There is nothing complex about it. It looks and works just like your cell phone on top of your computer screen except you use your mouse or trackpad on it instead of your finger and of course the view is much larger.
I’m 85 yrs old and have eyesight in only one eye and my hands are arthritically challenged. If I find something “simple” believe me it is r-e-a-l-ly simple.
If you use a cell phone then you already know how to use Bluestacks.

Bluestacks has to be installed on every single computer, and runs displays slower than native browsers. 99% of all other mfgrs have browser interfaces along with a smartphone App. It is clear that Wyze programmers are not experienced in Windows for some unexplained reason. A multi million dollar company like this could EASILY triple cam sales with simple web access. Instead, they are screwing around with 200 different products in an attempt to go public.

When I asked for a list here of mfgrs who sell their cameras for $25 or $30 with a browser interface, the response was quite underwhelming. Not much champagne on a beer budget.

I get the Bluestacks solution. But can we not use it as an excuse for Wyze? It’s starting to come off as an infomercial. I’m sure that’s not the intent. But the point of Bluestacks as a ‘work around’ was made long ago. And we can probably move past that, and stay focused on the original request.

I’d rather get native support that I know is securely, and tightly integrated with the product. I would prefer not to have to pay extra for this, but that is at Wyze’s discretion. I’m just hoping to get it soon. Last I saw, they said ‘soon’ back in April.

Completely wrong!

I missed that conversation, otherwise I would have provided a list of IPCam manufacturers. Cheap as chips and always come with a webserver on the camera itself. And most are RTSP and even offer PTZ out of the box, for a very low price.

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Example:
BLINK MINI:


https://tinyurl.com/d4wjs5yd

Example:
REOLINK E1


https://tinyurl.com/8vezruyn

Example 3:

wansview Wireless Security Camera, IP Camera 1080P HD

wansview Wireless Security Camera, IP Camera 1080P HD

https://tinyurl.com/4whj3jyt