Wyze AMA on October 29th, 2020!

News from Wyze
#23

4 seconds would be fantastic, cause now if the phone screen is locked for more than a minute or two, it can take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour or so before they all come crashing through in a big group. Of course if you wake the phone up, yes, then they also come pouring in all together. However if the phone is plugged into a charger, no problem, instant notifications even if the screen is locked. And this is regardless of the fact that everything possible in the phone settings is turned off to disable doze for the app, and the app has a constant message saying it’s running in the background.

I’d certainly be curious if that’s not the case on your Android phone, but the problem for most people here seemed to start around Android 8 quite some time (years) ago. I’ll also point out that wyze has promised or been promising the fix for this for just about as long. I’m on my second android Galaxy (S10 plus now running latest Android 10) phone that’s having the exact same issues as lots of other folks have been having, and been posting and testing for ages with extremely repeatable results.

#24

Interesting, I am pretty sure I don’t have that problem, just that often it takes like 40-50 seconds to get a camera notification (some other notifications like my Wyze sense motion sensor or contact sensor are really fast). I suppose I can try to set up such a situation and verify. Maybe I don’t notice because I have lots of redundancies set up (Ex: front porch has a V2, a motion sensor on the porch, a contact sensor for the mailbox, and an Eufy cam to catch the Wyze cooldown misses). But I’ll experiment with those limitations you listed with just a single cam by itself, because I’m sure they haven’t affected me.

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#25

So, I think I figured out that they mean things like a “light switch” type of switch, and a button type of thing (click), and that those are coming out.

#26

Yeah, they are talking about a smart wall switch and that clicker thing , they are both in the wish list some place

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#27
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#28

On the clicker thing, I thought they were referring to a switch bot type physical actuator to convert existing physically controlled devices to remote addressable devices, I do agree with the button interpretation too,

I did a DIY for the buttons, converting some contact sensors to remote buttons, I won’t pay Flic prices for a simple button, even the Samsung SmartThings runs $20 for a single binary button.

In case anyone hasn’t tried it, and your wondering how to repurpose your Wyze sense lying around:

I use the contact sensors for a quick and dirty conversion for control of any binary decision, on/off remote buttons, override switch for automations, etc.
On the downstream, I’ve used them to bring other binary inputs into Wyze; presence/occupancy states, etc.

I use the reed switch input and attach to whatever on/on circuit I’m converting or monitoring.

This married with a 3D printer and I’ve got a quick and pleasing (in the eyes of the beholder…etc) solution for some projects that I’d like to tackle and experiment with, but don’t due to price point or available options.

I don’t play repair, they don’t merit that and time is definitely a factor so I’ll strip any useful components and move on.

Yes, I arduino/esp is available, and LoRa provides them huge distance control etc., and I’ll use them as I need, but for a no frills solution it works for me.

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#29

I have bought 3D printed objects to turn V1 Contact Sensors into light switches. It’s pretty cool. Even in a long hallway where I stick up 3 “light switches” to work on the same lights they work really well.

I buy lots of these ($3):
https://www.etsy.com/listing/796214025/switch-bracket-for-wyze-sense?
image
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(I have about a dozen of them throughout my house as switches, though not all for lights)

The only downside is that the rules are set up so that to turn the light on, you have to switch them up (and down for off). If they are already in the up position from earlier (because you turned them off on a different switch or using Google/Alexa/Wyze-App, then you have to move it down then up to get it to turn on. The opposite applies for turning the light off. Not a huge deal, but it is not the way most light switches work when there are multiple switches connected to the same light (switching the position up or own always switches the state to the opposite of its current state of on/off), so it seems to confuse guests (maybe I just need new family/friends with critical thinking skills?).

Regardless, I wish someone would’ve addressed this in the AMA: it would be nice if Wyze’s switches could work in tandem with each other (allow us to use multiple switches such as throughout long hallways controlling the same lights), and that they will work like normal multi-switches in that situation, changing the position of the switch simply does the opposite of its current state (if the switch is up and the light is off, then switching it down will turn the light on). Although, I am not sure how that would work if the switch is also a “dimmer”…I’ve never seen or heard of dimmers working in tandem with other switches down a hallway or long room.

I also use multiple Wyze contact sensors as switches in my Master Bedroom. One switch that works normal at the entrance/exit, and another on our headboard, that my wife can turn on (up) to make the lights dim to 1% at night like she likes it while relaxing using her phone (even at 1%, Wyze lights are fairly bright for her!), and down is always off. So there are workarounds to make your own switch and dimmers…but it would be nice to have an official more conventional looking one. I had a sister-in-law and Window contractor who couldn’t figure out how the lights worked in a long basement hallway and just gave up and used their phone flashlight instead. :rofl:

I will be interested to see both how the switches work, and how the Sensor V2’s are (how hard it would be to modify them into cool different tools like we could do with the V1’s). I’d be happy to help test them all out in lots of situations too (since I use them so much already)…shame I never get picked to test anything though. Not surprising since I live somewhere that they already have tons of excellent long time regular testers though. It’s all good. Just looking forward to those new options…then I can reallocate the current V1 Sensors to be used for something else!

#30

I thought up another thing I loved hearing them discuss in the AMA: working on some kind of geofencing!

That would be awesome to have the Wyze app automatically activate or deactivate devices or notifications from certain devices depending on who’s home.
I can do this to some degree through 3rd party solutions, but Wyze doing this would be awesome! Right now I have Google and Alex and even Tasker do some things through geofencing, but Wyze implementing it themselves to be able to work with any and all of their rules would be really AWESOME! Especially with things like the thermostat, lights, certain notifications, etc. I really like this idea.

I just noticed that Eufy now allows me to do geofencing and set home/away settings based on my GPS, so I activated this for those devices and was thinking how cool it is that Wyze is working on offering this too.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they require you to get their security system subscription or something…but it could honestly be something that’s offered to everyone since all the location stuff is done completely locally on our phones already anyway.

Anyway, I guess I’ll go update my summary to include this awesome item I somehow let slip before!