What happened?

I’ve been using Wyze cameras for ages now. I started with v2 cameras which just ‘worked’. Something happened, they recorded it. I was so pleased I changed them all for v3 cameras when they were released.

However, over time, I’m finding the cameras and app less and less useful. The app spends more time trying to get me to upgrade, and continous spinning wheels in the events section, than actually showing me events.

My front camera is now doing a good job of recording things like tiny spiders, but ignoring the man who came to the door an hour later (app performance meant I had to get up a ladder, remove SD card and manually sift through my footage on a computer)

It’s now somehow got worse, the detection zone which used to work perfectly is now totally ignored. A car outside with a flapping rain cover on it is now being uploaded as an event video every few minutes. And has been for weeks. Rendering the camera pointless. Guessing Wyze also have to pay for the cloud storage of weeks of flapping car cover videos.

Changing the sensitivity and removing/re-adding the zone makes no difference. All firmware up to date, as is the iOS iPhone app.

I’m obviously not going to pay to upgrade so I can watch spiders and car covers.

Why has overall performance/stability degraded so much?

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Incompetence, lack of proper testing protocols, and apathy.

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So the Wyze position is something like, ‘Yeah, we know we broke it, we’ve seen the threads here and on reddit, anyway, have you considered buying our vacuum cleaner?’ :thinking:

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Around the time Wyze was struggling to make bank some time ago, they secured a very significant amount of investor funding which propelled them thru the pandemic.

It was shortly after this funding windfall that their focus on core products and services began to meander. My guess would be that the investors, wanting immediate return on their investment, tied a few strings to the cash: product diversification for immediate positive cash flow. The margin on those POS items at volume is exponentially higher than the margin on core ecosystem gear that takes an army of developers to support and update and a gazillion TB to store.

All those non-core gadgets and toys are paying the bills, and investors, from quick sale revenue. The annual subscriptions and services are residual revenue and weren’t enough to sustain the short term volatility of market fluctuations.

Wyze continues to work on core services, but they can’t survive spending on the man hours for development and bandwidth\storage with the core alone. It just isn’t financially sustainable.

It may look like they lost focus, but they had to if they wanted to survive. Without all those nifty doodad gadgets, there would be no Wyze today.

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I completely agree with your assessment. Problem for wyze is that if all the core kit continues to degrade, who is going to trust that the other toys aren’t eventually going to be abandoned as well?

I’d absolutely have bought more of their kit if I had any faith that it would continue to work properly. Wanted to upgrade to smart bulbs etc at home, tried TP-Link, found it worked perfectly, now the entire house is kitted out with their kit, bulbs/switches/hubs etc

Wyze offer the same products, would obviously have been nice to stick with one app, but was a hard ‘no’ from me.

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I think most are in the same boat. I have yet to find a one ecosystem fits all solution. I have a mix of 5 different ecosystems now. 5 apps, most play well with the assistants. But, I have drawn a line in the sand. If it requires a hub or bridge they can keep it.

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Have a look at Homebridge, all open source, tied everything in my house together so the whole lot can be controlled via siri or the home app, web interface or pretty much anything else. Absolutely worth checking out > https://homebridge.io/

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Unfortunately, that is an iOS exclusive. And, the Android equivalents to HomeBridge and HomeKit set up the service as an in home server. Not feasible when the phone is the only UI device. I know there are possibilities if I wanted to install more tech like a laptop, tablet, Pi or one of the many alternatives, but I want simple. Device>WiFi>App… The less links, bridges, hubs, servers, controllers, etc… The better.

Now, if I could find a Long Range Dual Band Mesh Router with NAS and server OS options built in, I might be willing to give it a go. But for now, I’m just not ambitious enough to start the experiment.

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I have noticed this lately too but hadnt really realized the actual issue but you are correct. No matter what i do to the sensitivity settings it makes no difference and i get notifications after notification of the wind blowing tree limbs and sun shadowing movement. The smartness of the software seems to have taken [Mod Edit]. Updates do nothing for it. I too have different brands of product for different needs because of this and it would be so much better if it were all controllable thru one app but i cant trust fhe same software problems wouldnt exist if otherwise. Great observafion and thanks for posting about it although i find it hard to swallow that this problem still wont be fixed.

MOD NOTE: Post edited to conform to the Community Guidelines.

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Agreed. I have posted before about the relative limitations of the Light Pixelation Motion Detection Algorithms Wyze uses when the world is flooded in light and motion. That is why many users prefer the WCO. It uses a PIR activated recording logic, but it also has limitations.

Currently exploring my options for the next cam security system overhaul: wired cams & service w\ higher image resolution at distance, great NV, PIR activated, Smart AI, etc.

Wyze cams have been a real learning experience for me at a relatively low cost compared to the rest of the market. Now I know what features really matter in a security cam.

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Yes. It was a fun ride. I learned a lot at a low price. The Cam V2 was a fairly solid camera, after many updates.

So far, I have mixed feelings about the V3. The light sensor at night is a vast improvement but I noticed motion becomes a useless blur more often. The V2s seemed to handle motion a lot better in the daylight versus V3.

I have enjoyed forum conversations and the volunteers have been quite helpful. I just feel Wyze has been distracted from its core product. Too many of the valid requests for features fell by the wayside. I have given up hope of ever seeing dark mode. :pensive:

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To be honest, I’d be happy if just the core functions worked as advertised… How the camera can fail to record an event when a man comes to the door at 4am, tripping my security lights and waiting a minute before leaving is just silly.

Same for synching sensitivity/detection settings, sometimes when I go to check them they’ve all been reset/erased. Just basic UI/UX stuff, no need for it to not work. Just getting some of the basics right would be a big step for me.

I remember reading about people reflashing V2s when people recognition was removed. Possible that older V3 firmware is available somewhere and perhaps an improvement?

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Agree 100%.

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All old FW is downloadable from the Wyze FW & Updates page. I am still on 4.36.8.32

Just click on the blue version number and it will download the FW in a zip file. Follow the instructions and flash back.

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Thanks, something I’ll try out when I really have nothing better to do. In the meantime, totally happy for wyze to pay for gigabytes of ‘non event’ videos in their cloud :upside_down_face:

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The firmware page only has download links for the latest two release :man_facepalming:

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:man_facepalming: Indeed. Didn’t realize that. Not helpful at all.

I think I will be downloading all FW and archiving it from now on just in case they decide to not post it in the future.

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Yep, tired of the claims they make about V3 performance. Getting time to move on to greener pastures. Very disappointed with what we get out of our V3s for our paid subscription.

Wyze, get back to making your V3 what you claimed it is suppose to be !!!

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Please let us know where those greener pastures are.

Hi, Greener pastures would be a wired 4k NVR system. I’ve been comparing reviews and spec’s of available systems. I keep coming back to Reolink. They seem to have the best resolution at 4k (20 fps) and smart detection for the price. Check out the YouTube reviews.

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