We’re Giving Wyze Person Detection to All Users at Whatever Price You Want - 1/11/22

Paying annually for choose your own price is really the way to go. It cuts down heavily on credit card transaction fees that cost Wyze a piece of that money. Would really help Wyze with the margins on this and that will help us users!!

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I have recommended that to the team, Thank You

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So with CPL, does that mean Person Detection has to be turned on?

I have a few outdoor cameras where I want it to detect cars driving up to my house. But there will rarely be “people” walking up to the house via this route. So I’d still like it to record (12 seconds to the cloud) if it detects non-person movement.

You can have it still do motion detection notifications for any motion, not just people just like you’re used to. Your choices will be:

  1. Notifications for all motion just like it’s always been
  2. Notifications only when it detects a person
  3. Both together; get notifications when it detects a person and also still get notifications about all other motion events too.

I suggest having both in your situation. You won’t lose anything, you’ll just get the added benefit of it also telling you when the recordings included a person, but you’ll still get all the other notifications as normal too.

A person who wants everything to continue as it always has without person detection, should just leave person detection disabled and all motion enabled. A person who wants both should leave both selected and turned on. A person who only wants person notifications just selects person and deselects motion in the notification settings. :slight_smile: All 3 options are possible.

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Waiting for Cam Plus Pro Max…

Sure they can. Why not? Tons of Patreon supported people ALSO have tons of paid commercials on their podcasts or streams. Tons of open source based companies charge tons of money for support and for services. Heard of IBM / Redhat? Open source companies may also CHARGE for software. I mean, you may not approve (and I agree it’s incongruous and the upselling is sketchy) but it’s hardly a *binary" thing. Hell even PBS has blatant ads now in addition to fundraising and pledge drives.

I prefer CamNePlusUltra and/or CamDoublePlusGood.

I have Cam Plus Lite (PD Legacy) on my application is that it?

Go here and scroll to the bottom. You need to make sure Cam Plus Lite is part of your Services. When you add the service you will be able to select a price you would be willing to pay, or select Custom to enter something different, even $0. Then when you commit it you will be prompted to see if you would be will to pay $1 (if you entered $0) select the correct response you want and you are done.

https://services.wyze.com/catalogs

That is it.

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Just need to make sure it is listed as a service on their account as well.

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I read that you can get CAM plus for $99 per annum for unlimited cameras. Is this correct? and if so how would you purchase it?

The break point for Unlimited vs Individual Cam Plus licensing is around 6/7 cameras, where Unlimited would cost the same as single licenses and allow for growth at no additional cost.

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Thx Jason - it makes sense, but I wasn’t aware that this upload was happening for Events in the first place. I has presumed that since I never signed up for any of the premium services that I was already going against the SD card, since that’s always capturing on a loop.

So from an experience point of view, what do I lose by having to go to the SD card? Need to be on the local network? Speed? I don’t need to have Events while away from the local network and I’ve already gotten past being able to access the camera from a web page (aka PC or Mac) but I’m trying to get a sense of what the difference is seeing as I’ve never thought that the Events were being stored somewhere other than local SD.

You are not losing anything! Your free cloud Events will continue IF you take advantage of the new “CamPlus Lite” program and demand $0/month with no credit card, refusing the popup upselling / guilting.

You always could optionally record motion events (or continuous recording) to SD card and you can still do that while sending cloud Events. The settings for motion Events and motion SD recordings are separate. You view SD recordings through View Playback while viewing a camera.

The only people who will lose are those who don’t convert to CamPlus Lite. They may find they have no Events recorded when they need them. (SD recordings should continue unabated anyway.)

This response isn’t directed at or to you specifically, my friend, since I recognize you understand this already, but for the benefit of the community in general.

I will add 2 small clarifications for some people who may misunderstand…

  1. Many people have asked not to be forced to have cloud events (there has even been a wishlist for this, and people throughout the years making posts saying they did not want cloud events, but still wanted notifications), so many of the people switching to text and thumbnail only won’t be “losing out” on anything as they are finally getting what they have been asking for, without losing notification access.
  2. Although the change will happen for anyone who doesn’t opt-in by Feb 15th, ANYONE will continue to be allowed to add Cam Plus Lite even after that time:

So in that sense, I would suggest that nobody misses out on anything. Anyone who suddenly switches right to thumbnails and text notifications will still be linked directly to the event on the SD card (so no big deal since they still get notifications and still get linked to the event), AND if they later decide they have changed their mind and now want cloud events and person detection, they are able to do this at any time. Nobody will lose out on anything. Everything will be available to everyone whenever they wish it, even for free…so there really is no risk or missing out. There is no “too late” and anyone who doesn’t get the memo or wants to do it after February will still be allowed to do so…they won’t actually lose out.

I respect everyone’s opinions and feelings, even those who disagree or are upset. I am simply saying that from my personal perspective I find this change to fairly reasonable. Wyze found lots of people never use their cloud events at all, and some people actively want to get rid of it and couldn’t. All of that unnecessary cost was pointlessly costing Wyze money that they could instead reinvest elsewhere. I think it was a brilliant move for Wyze to find a way to reallocate those costs and resources in a way where everyone can get what they want. Those who don’t want their videos stored on a connected server somewhere, now get what they want. All that wasted cloud storage and bandwidth is now saved and with that savings Wyze gives Person Detection to everyone (which costs in cloud processing expenses…but has been offset by all those who no longer use the cloud space and others who decide to donate money). Further, Wyze doesn’t lock anyone into a deadline or a chosen rate. We can add it at any time and we can change our payments based on whatever we feel like at any time, even free, never locked in. If Wyze makes MORE money or this is successful then they can potentially expand and offer more features too (my hopes, not Wyze’s promises). I personally see no downside. and they upheld all their promises of free cloud.

I talked to a friend with Wyze who told me they are going to decide what to pay based solely on how much they decide to use person detection. Their personal decision is that the base rate is “free cloud” and if they decide they like person detection, then they will pay a little bit extra for that extra feature if they decide to use it. They feel no guilt at staying free for cloud. A family member who makes over 6 figures told me he’s going to pay a little bit anyway, not because he feels guilty but because he can afford to and it will make it possible to help cover costs for others to have person detection for free.

Nobody needs to feel “guilty” for whatever they pick. Seriously. I think Wyze’s reallocation of unused cloud events to cover the extra cost of person detection is a great way to be able to offer more functionality to customers. Allowing people to be able to pay what they feel it is worth IF THEY WANT TO, is a reasonable business option. I’d honestly rather have them do that than seek more investor funding for more growth. Whoever came up with the idea to reallocate the wasted cloud expenses to offer people more functionality was genius, IMO, and they did so through finally also giving people an option to switch to local storage only without losing notifications, but still be linked right to where those events started on the SD card. I personally see no downside and nobody losing out at all with this change and anyone can change their mind at any time.

Even if someone ever wants out of Wyze completely, they have awesome resell values. I just looked on ebay for what USED Wyze cams actually sold for recently, and they were still selling for most of their original retail cost:

  1. V2’s: $25.99, $28.40, $24, $29.98, $30.41, $21.24
  2. V3’s: $69.44 (for 2), $33.33, $32.88
  3. WCO’s: $53.99, $29.95,
  4. Pan: $44.90, $67 (for 2), $30.90, $29.99

So even the people who really want out have a great option too because Wyze devices hold their value pretty well with a pretty high demand even for previously owned and used devices on auction sites…so even the people who want to switch companies aren’t really “losing out” on anything either as it appears pretty easy to recoup the costs selling to someone who is satisfied.

Again, I totally respect different opinions and feelings, and from everything I’ve looked at with this change, I personally feel like Wyze did a great job at making sure everyone can get what they want out of it, and they upheld their earlier promises to see if the name your price model was sustainable and then possibly expand it to everyone else, and they fulfilled this promise by reallocating wasted cloud storage people didn’t even wany/use while offering people a way to finally be local storage only while still getting notifications. I give props on that because I previously criticized them for limiting Legacy person detection to only people who activated pre-11/2019 when they first made that change and now I am man enough to say I was wrong and I give Wyze props for following through on their promise and offering it as an option to everyone like so many of us told them they should do.

I will keep a secondary account without person detection or cloud events so I can see what happens after the change and see how everything works without cloud events.

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I am man enough to say Carver was wrong, too. :wink:

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Yes but you’ve missed my point.

The people who will lose out, the ones I am talking about, are those who unknowingly fail to take action now, and come to find their Events missing when they need to check them later. Whether they miss the news, or changed their mail address, or neglect to opt in, or don’t have the time, or don’t understand the terms and how they apply to them.

As others have written, the people who happily installed Wyzecams and check them ONLY on the rare occasion they need to - an item went missing, or there was an accident, or a burglary, etc. Unlike us weirdo forum dwellers, most normal customers aren’t even thinking about their cameras for huge stretches of time.

So those customers are going to go looking for who took their wallet off the table 6 months from now, and will find there is no Event video to be had. They will have lost.

And many of them will NOT have installed an SD card either. They will have lost.

Regarding your "people wanted to turn off cloud Events but retain notifications* theory I have 3 thoughts - 1. I’ve been here quite a while and don’t ever recall seeing that complaint. 2. I expect it’s a vanishingly small subset of people. 3. Why would someone who doesn’t want their video stored in the cloud be okay with clear image thumbnails of the exact same video… being stored in the cloud?? It’s not even solving this narrow edge case.

I agree that extending person detection to everyone is a great thing but let’s not gloss over the absolute fact that many unwitting Wyze customers are about to lose out.

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There’s a picture of Carver with a big dust cloud around it just below your post… :slight_smile:

Wuh, now it’s below my post…

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Wyze is gonna owe both of us new keycaps. (well, mine are virtual so…)

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For newcomers or those who have not joined CamPlus lite before February 15, all they have to do is subscribe to CamPlus. Then they will have the option to subscribe to CamPlus lite for an amount of $0 or more. If they want, they can cancel their CamPlus subscription and keep their CamPlus lite. Am I wrong?

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