Wyze app additional features/improvements

I’m responding to each of your bullet points here…

  1. On the camera, “motion detection” refers to capturing videos from a motion event. That’s why it’s happening later – it happens after the video is captured. If you want to trigger things from motion immediately, you should be using the separate Wyze Sense motion detector. That will do what you expect. Lights or anything else you’re wanting to trigger should respond within 1-2 seconds at most. You can also get an immediate phone notification if you’d like.

  2. Once again, you can do this with the Wyze Sense motion sensor. The camera isn’t really set up to be a trigger for those kinds of events.

  3. Most people turn off notifications if they’re using the camera indoors while they’re home. The camera is really only intended to be used in conjunction with notifications in an area where you’d want to be notified of any motion change. If you turn on lights, EVERYTHING on the camera is suddenly changing, so of course it’s going to consider that motion. But the Wyze Sense motion sensors are infrared-based – heat – so those will only register motion if a human/animal is moving in front of them. (Note that you’ll end up with false positives in an outdoor setting. Outdoor environments are too unpredictable. But indoors, they’re accurate.)

  4. That’s a known issue. My understanding is that it works pretty well with video-based Alexa devices and FireTV. But I’ve tried it with my Chromecast and I have the same issue. They only added Google support recently, and it’s not quite as well-supported. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  5. I’m not 100% sure whether it’s even possible for them define multiple different notification sounds for the same app and make them user-configurable or not… I don’t think they can do that in iOS, at least. Maybe it’s possible on Android. I’m not really sure. But I would think of an “alarm” as being something separate from a “notification.”

  6. As for the GPS issue, This really has nothing to do with Wyze. IFTTT is a totally separate thing, and they’re the ones handling the triggers in this case. If you’re having problems with this, it’s either happening on the IFTTT side or with your phone’s GPS. As for the camera detecting motion when you move in your sleep – it’s just doing what it’s supposed to do. Most people would probably turn off notifications if the camera is pointed at a sleeping person all night. (You can make a shortcut for this at the top of the Wyze app really easily – basically make a “Home” and “Away” shortcut)

  7. They’re in the beta-testing phase of a premium feature called “Complete Motion Capture” that will do exactly this. It will cost $1.49 per month. I’m not sure exactly when they’re planning to release it, but it was planned for about a week ago and they delayed it. If you sign up to be a beta tester, you can use the feature now. The reason for the current 12-second, 5-minute cooldown limitation is, obviously, cost. The cameras are very inexpensive and bandwidth/storage costs Wyze money (and it continues to cost them money as long as you continue to use the camera, even though you only paid for the camera once)

  1. That is poorly designed. The camera has a motion sensor it should have the option to use it to sense motion.
  2. I’m suggesting the camera motion sensor be made into a trigger for those sorts of events. I shouldn’t need to buy a second motion sensor just to point it at the same location as the first.
  3. My cameras are set to not record when I am home and record when I leave so that they will never be recording when I don’t want them to. Also because the scheduling for motion detection is terrible and can only be set for an earlier time to a later time so if you want to record from 6pm-3am for example the app will divide by zero and explode killing 1/3rd of the planet.
  4. Bummer, hope that improves.
  5. It should be fairly easy for them to make the wyze app get a motion sensor alert and have the option to trigger an actual proper alarm and not just whatever single sound/vibration your phone makes when it gets a push notification.
  6. My goal is for automation I don’t have to use audio commands or shortcut buttons for. The performance of IFTTT is unacceptable so I’m requesting that the camera app itself have the ability to detect if my phone/a safe bluetooth device is present at my house and respond accordingly to it. The current scheduling app is a mess and needs improvement and honestly this is functionality a security camera should have.
  7. I can’t sign up for the beta because it requires a social media account on a platform I refuse to join. And having the option to stream directly to the phone app and have it record all motion means that wyze servers wouldn’t need to increase their storage capacity at all. I’m extremely happy with the free storage we get but I would like additional storage that is not tied to the camera in case someone smashes it.
  1. The camera doesn’t have a motion sensor, per se. It just uses the lens. It uses pixel-based motion detection.

  2. I understand the suggestion, and I agree it would be nice. The notifications from the camera are currently tied to the video events, but if they change that so that notifications are more instantaneous, it might be possible. :slight_smile: I suspect that’s not a simple task, though. It would probably require a fairly substantial redesign to the way their backend handles events/videos.

  3. I’m not sure if I understand your original problem with lights turning on/off in that case. If you’re only using it when you’re not home, you DO want to know about lights turning on and off, right?

  4. Yep

  5. I’m not terribly familiar with Android, but I don’t think iOS apps can do that, at least. But I may be wrong.

  6. It would be nice. I believe Alexa may have some geofencing capabilities, too, so you may be able to do what you need with an Alexa routine. In my experience, Alexa is quite a bit more reliable than IFTTT overall.

  7. It doesn’t require Facebook. That’s just to give feedback. If you want to use the beta app, you can use the beta app. Details: Become a Beta Tester – Wyze

1-) It doesn’t really matter how the camera detects motion it is able to detect it and trigger recording the next few seconds and uploading it to the cloud so it should be possible to set that same trigger to work for other things, like turning on the lights.

2-) It might require a lot of work but that is neither here nor there though. The fact is they should do the work and get the response times to be within a minute of the event occurring and function as a trigger for other things you might want like a light to happen.

3-) The motion sensor is set to trigger a light turning on so anyone going someplace they are not supposed to will know they have activated a motion sensor. My “I’m leaving” google routine turns the lights off and camera on which triggers a motion detection event which turns my lights back on a full minute later. This does nothing to warn anyone and is simply aggravating the hell out of me. Both these aspects clearly need improvement.

5-) Something as simple as an alarm built into the app itself would work. A constant alarm that plays until the notification is dismissed or your battery dies would work. It doesn’t have to interface with the existing android/ios alarm feature. Shouldn’t be terribly difficult to add considering I literally coded the same thing in “Tasker” in about 3 minutes.

6-) I use many google services so I’d like to stick with google home and not have multiple things running at the same time that don’t interface with each other and drain battery on my phone.

7-) Huh, totally missed that it had two different sections to it and only one required facebook messenger. I’d still rather not use a test build for my home security though.

1.) Sure. It would just require the camera to send something to Wyze servers immediately, which it currently doesn’t do. I agree it would be nice. I will say, however, that pixel-based motion detection will inherently be pretty inadequate for a task like that, as you’ve discovered already. The dedicated PIR motion detector will do a much better job for your intended purpose, regardless of whether they eventually add that kind of functionality.

2.) Just a matter of how they want to prioritize their resources. But since there are inherent drawbacks to using the camera’s pixel-based motion detection for this purpose, I’m not surprised they haven’t prioritized it, especially since they already have a product that fulfills this purpose.

3.) Case in point. That’s a perfect example of why pixel-based motion detection is inherently limiting for this kind of purpose. But as a workaround, maybe you can set your “I’m leaving” routine to wait a few seconds after turning off the lights, before the camera turns on

5.) Yeah. As I said, I’m pretty sure iOS doesn’t allow apps to do that. What you can do on your own is a different question entirely. iOS and Android prevents apps from doing plenty of things that you can do yourself.

6.) There’s a support article here that you can take a look at. But I know a lot of people have issues with viewing the cameras on Google Assistant. (Including me.) I don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard that Google doesn’t play as nicely with the streaming protocol they use or something along those lines. https://support.wyzecam.com/hc/en-us/articles/360031241612-Google-Assistant-cannot-recognize-or-connect-to-the-camera

Edit: I just realized you were talking about the Geofencing Alexa thing I talked about and not the video issue. I’m pretty sure Google can also do some geofencing stuff based on your phone as well, especially if you’re using Android. I DO have a Google Home Mini as well, but I haven’t spent as much time setting up routines with it. I mainly use Alexa. But you should look into it. If you can do what you need to, I expect it would be more reliable than IFTTT.

7.) Fair enough. Just depends on your security needs, I suppose. I wouldn’t consider Wyze to be a robust security option in the first place.

You really can’t trust GPS and geofencing. I have my Samsung phone set to unlock when I’m at home. But it’s a hit and miss thing. Half the time it knows I’m home but the other times it says I’m not.

It’s because of the GPS inherent error rate. Sometimes it in the order of yards, in which case it’s capable of determining I’m home. Sometimes the error is several blocks, and my phone fails to unlock.

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I have better results having IFTTT detect my home Wifi rather than using the GPS location.

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Yep. GPS error is especially pronounced in downtown areas. GPS works by triangulating your location with 3 or more GPS satellites. There are lots of them flying around all the time, so your phone should be able to see 3 or more most of the time. But you could end up with an obstacle between you and one of the satellites, and that could make your GPS think it’s half a mile away. That effect is especially pronounced in downtown areas, where skyscrapers may prevent a direct signal from a good portion of the sky.

I agree, I wouldn’t want to rely too heavily on GPS for things like that. It may be able to help in some cases, but I wouldn’t trust my phone’s GPS location as gospel truth. For example, Nest can use your phone location to turn on “Away” mode, but it doesn’t do it immediately. I think there’s a minimum distance and a minimum amount of time before it will decide that you’re indeed away from home. I certainly wouldn’t use it to arm a security system or something that I want an immediate response from

Those are environmental GPS errors, mainly due to line-of-sight blocking, multiple reflections from buildings, variations in expected atmospheric pressures, etc. Even the atmospheric variations can be corrected by the WAAS system, a geosynchronous satellite parked over the continental US.

But there is another type of GPS error. This is a random error deliberately injected into the system to prevent military use.

Oh really? Crazy. Didn’t know that. What is that, like Russian spy satellites that purport to be GPS satellites or something?

Edit: I Googled it, and it sounds like maybe you’re talking about “Selective Availability,” but that feature has been disabled since 2000.

That’s a different feature. That one totally stops civilian use of the GPS system during wars. The random error injection is still in effect for civilian use.

Of course the US military can circumvent, so it’s really not random. This is why both Russia and UK set up its own GPS systems.

Not according to this: Error analysis for the Global Positioning System - Wikipedia

You’re right. I don’t know where the error is coming from now. A small error is OK, but I see very large deltas.

Ugh it just gets more frustrating. I added a Wyze Sense kit to try and solve the latency issue of turning a Wyze smart light on when the motion gets detected and not 3 minutes after it is detected which kinda defeats the purpose of having a smart light if it can’t warn away intruders or help people navigate in a dark room and sure the Wyze Door alarm turns the light on within 2-3 seconds of the door opening but if you don’t want the door opening to always turn the light on then you need to set a schedule so I set a schedule for when I’m at work but the problem then becomes that the only way to turn the light on outside of the scheduled time it by making another schedule so if you want to program the light to turn on when the door opens while you are out running an errand, say going to the movies in case someone else in the house wants to access your room or you want to let an intruder know the area is being monitored then you need to set an entirely new schedule every time you leave!

This is incredibly frustrating as one problem just leads to another. For the love of god just give me an option to have push notifications from the door sensor turn on the light so that way I can make “I’m Leaving” and “I’m Home” shortcuts that turn on/off the push notifications for the door sensor which will turn on/off the light while I’m out of the house at a nonscheduled time.

And on the subject of shortcut buttons how about letting them be triggered by Google Assistant as the shortcuts can do a million things Google Assistant can’t do like turn the camera off so if I could have Google Assistant perform the shortcuts I made in the Wyze app that would at least get everything working, except displaying my camera feed which Google Assistant still refuses to do on my phone when I tell it “Show me the Garage”.

Also for some reason with the Wyze Sense kit installed when I set camera motion detection to turn on my wyze smart light it doesn’t turn it on. Is this perhaps because I had this rule before and deleted it? I’m not sure but it completely stopped working.

The hardware for Wyze devices is an incredible buy but the software is just a total nightmare that prevents me from recommending it to anyone (yet, hopefully it will improve drastically over time).

You can’t turn it on by clicking “On” in the app or telling your Google Assistant to turn on the light? What happens?

You can do this already. Here’s an example of what it would look like.

I agree with you. I’d really like to see this. It would start to get pretty complex if every piece of functionality from the app was mirrored as a trigger or action in Alexa/Google/IFTTT, but they could add a “virtual switch,” If they did that, anything that could be automated within the Wyze app could be automated in any other service they support by tying the automation to the state of the virtual switch. And vice-versa (Anything that could be automated through Google Home could be automated through the Wyze app or with a contact sensor, etc.) A virtual switch is the #1 feature I’d like to see them add, because it would unlock tons of advanced functionality like this while keeping the logic required fairly simple. Go here and vote for it if you’d like to see them add it. I’m trying to rally support for this. :slight_smile:

It’s hard to get people to vote for this because I’m not sure if they understand how much functionality this would unlock. The title doesn’t make it immediately obvious what you could do with it. But i’m hoping Wyze will see the potential with this. Basically, it will help all the services they support play nicely together without needing to add tons of complexity. Theoretically, if the third-party services supported ONLY the virtual swtich (and not the bulb, camera, etc) you could do everything else you can already do in the Wyze app by tying it to the state of the virtual switch.

  1. I can do that but I want the light to automatically turn on when the door opens (or ideally within 2-3 seconds of the camera I have pointed at the door detecting motion so I don’t need a redundant door sensing device to monitor it).

  2. You didn’t read what I wrote. I want the ability for PUSH NOTIFICATION SENDING to trigger TURNING ON THE LIGHT because right now push notifications don’t trigger ANYTHING and if you set a schedule for when the DOOR SENSOR turns ON THE LIGHT it will never work during the off hours so if you leave the house at a time you didn’t expect to (like going to the movies or buy groceries or any kind of trip outside not on a regular schedule) then the only way to make the light turn on in response to the door opening in those hours is to SET A WHOLE NEW SCHEDULE JUST FOR THAT ONE ERRAND. The only alternative is to leave it running 24/7. I want the ability to turn on/off the DOOR SENSOR OPENING TURNS ON THE LIGHT with the push of a button so I don’t need to take 60 seconds to code a new schedule EVERY TIME I LEAVE THE HOUSE. It’s the worst. At least I could set the camera to always detect motion and turn it on/off when I wanted so it only turned on the lights when a shortcut key was pressed but it took 3 minutes to turn the light on. Literally nothing they make can handle something as simple as turning on a light. It is maddening.

  3. That is exactly what I’m asking for and I’ve voted for it. The fact that to get this app to a semi-usable state I need to set Tasker to respond to a door opening push notification by triggering an IFTTT webhook in JOIN to turn on the light is RIDICULOUS. Just make it work in a simple way that makes sense for the love of god.

Okay. But you’ve actively decided to turned off that ability at certain times of the day. Why do you have it on a schedule at all, if you don’t want it to follow a schedule? I guess it seems like that defeats the purpose. I’m not sure if I totally understand what you’re trying to do, to be honest.

You’re right. I guess I wasn’t following you. It’s only triggered on a door opening, right? So what scenario do you have in which that door is being opened during the off-hours but you DON’T want it to respond? It seems like a really edge case, I guess.

If you want it to work every time you leave the house, as you said, I’m struggling to understand why you DON’T want it to run 24/7.

Anyway, I think I understand what you’re going for, and I think you’re right that the app can’t do that. To enable really complex stuff like that, Wyze would essentially need to let users use a logic-based programming language, to have really specific if/then scenarios like you’re talking about. While I’d love to see this, it probably wouldn’t be user-friendly for most users, so I wouldn’t count on it, at least not any time soon.

I want it to be active when I’m not at home. I can predict and schedule the hours that I work but I can not predict other reasons I might leave like what activities I will get up to over the weekend and I do not want it running while I am home so I can’t set it to run 24/7 either.

I don’t think it is that much of an edge case to have tasks you only want to execute based on your presence or absence at home. For example security cameras/lights or smart outlets you only want on while you’re home. Considering the gps network is garbage and randomly says I’m not at home even when I am at home for a little bit make it take over a minute of not being home for it to register as you not being home and in exchange for 60 seconds of vulnerability everything should run itself without anything too complicated going on in the background.

I understand. Anyway, I don’t think it’s currently possible. But why does it need to change when you’re not home, if it only occurs in response to a door opening/closing? If a door opens/closes, that would generally indicate that someone is home, right?