Wyze Finally Works With Google Assistant!

I love facts…

Big Fat Fact: The FTC Act prohibits unfair or deceptive advertising in any medium. That is, advertising must tell the truth and not mislead consumers. A claim can be misleading if relevant information is left out or if the claim implies something that’s not true.

I realize that you must use your phone to view your cameras and thus this is not an issue for you. But, there are a lot of Joes out there. [Mod Edit]

AND the simple solution is to remove the “Works with Google Assistant” from the advertising until is actually does.

[Mod Edit]Joe wants to know…

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I agree wholeheartedly

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Not true right on the box it says works with google

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Nicely said 100% True

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all Wyze has to do is change the video feed that others use that work with google since Wyze cameras are the only ones that have a issue with feeds

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giphy

One of my cameras just started working on my Google display, maybe they are making progress. It took about 45 seconds for it to connect, but it is still streaming.

Since I’m in charge of that integration, let me comment.

First and foremost, we did not invent or decided to put a sticker that says Work with Google Assistant, we went through a strong review of our integration by Google. It usually takes about 2 weeks to get reviewed, ours took 3 months because of the scrutiny they put on us. We passed all the tests that were required to pass and Yes the Google Nest Hub was the device that was used the most for the validation and the device we used during development.
For the record, those integrations are anything but trivial to get in place.

Second, the integration does work with Google ChromeCast, so this is the proof that the integration works BUT that there is an issue with the Google Nest Hub. We recognize that and have been working on addressing the issues. When we launch the integration at the end of the May 2018, Google Nest Hub was working perfectly with our 1080p stream so at this point, this is a regression.
As for the “blame game” mentioned, it’s about who could make the change to fix that regression. We are all losing in that situations while this is going on.

Third, we started to get some significant issues early April this year. When asked about the problem to Google, they have been telling us that it was an authentication issue. Therefore a lot of the recommendation that we have provided at the time to unlink and relink the account.
The error rate went down but we still had issues, when we asked for clarification of the error rate from Google. they said they were investigating it. It took several weeks for them to come back and mentioned that we had the wrong codec, we mentioned that we have been using the same codec from the very beginning. Upon more testing, they mentioned that the Google Nest Hubs is not supporting 1080p but Chromecast are. It was the first time that the resolution was mentioned and was an issue.
Solving the resolution is not trivial, there is only one quick easy way to fix it and it is to drop the resolution of the stream from 1080p to 360p (that’s 11x less pixels for reference). That will impact users who use Google Nest Hub but also people that are using Chromecast and also every Alexa users.

So where does it leave us.
Google is aware and fully engage now including engineers working on the video rendering for the Google Nest Hub itself. I have daily discussions with that team. We do not have an ETA just yet. But Google is telling me that they might have found a way to address the issue. We are on our side have the firmware and the cloud engineers looking at the codec alternatives and evaluating the work required to downscale the signal. We don’t have a solution just yet but we are getting closer.

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Thank you. This right here, the openness and transparency makes all the difference. I appreciate you sharing exactly what has transpired and the direction things are going, and I know others will as well.

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As of this post, so it can expire at any moment:

On a side note, Amazon has Wyze Cam 1080p HD Indoor Wireless Smart Home Camera w/ Night Vision on sale for $9.99 when you order through Voice Shopping w/ Alexa and say ’ Alexa, order a Wyze Camera " valid for Amazon Prime Members only.

That’s a great price.

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Thank you for the clarity and transparency. It means a lot, thanks for taking the time.

Thanks WyzeFrederik. Based on what he said I set my camera resolution to 360p and tried it on my nest hub. It worked A LOT better. On average took about 10 seconds to start streaming with a 12 second delay. If anyone just needs it to stream to their nest hub this might be an option. It still wasn’t perfect but could be usable.

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This worked for me too, I think I will do this for when I really need it for now, but that’s not often. Thanks for the tip.

Yes, changing to video resolution 360P also worked for me, but it still took a LONG time for the stream to appear.

  1. We know Wyze didn’t invent the Google sticker. But, if Wyze didnt decide to place the Google sticker in the advertisement, who did? Is Wyze claiming that their advertisements are being hacked and a rogue competitor is nefariously placing Google stickers where they are not meant to be placed?

  2. I have 13 Google Chromecasts that would like to disagree with this statement. None of my 5 Wyze cameras will stream to any of my streamable displays. I have 13 Chromecasts, 1 Nest Hub Max, 1 Nest Hub, and 1 Lenovo Smart Display. All of my other cameras( Nest, Yi, and Kasa) do stream to all of these devices almost instantly. I will also say that the Google Assistant thinks it is streaming the Wyze feed. When asked to stream Wyze camera X to display Y, the Assistant replies with “Ok streaming camera X to display Y”.

  3. You started to have significant issues a lot earlier than April.

So where does it leave us? After numerous support calls to numerous Wyze wizards, numerous chat sessions with numerous Wyze Wizards, none of them even claimed to know that this issue even existed let alone that it has been an ongoing problem for 18 months. If I had a nickel for every time I was asked to factory reset one of my cameras to fix this issue, I would have about 78 cents. And like I have said before, to make a claim that you know will attract potential customers is called good business. To make that same claim knowing it to be false is not only bad business, it is illegal…do better.

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Finally, works? NOT. I’m so tired of Wyze acting like a start-up. When they are releasing all types of products and they can’t figure out the bugs on the cameras. Wyze is cheap, their cameras are from Alibaba.com, they didn’t even design them, so I’m not that surprised.
But seriously, I was happy to support Waze because of the low prices. But when I move out of this apartment and get a house I am not going to use Wyze. It’s simply wrong to tell people something works when it doesn’t, or halfway works…
I think many people on this thread are blindsided by WYZE start-up appearance, Wyze is a few years old now, and like I said they didn’t even make the cameras. So why is the software is hard to get working? I respect Wyze and its transparency. However, saying it “was not our choice to put works with google on our packaging” is a poor excuse to blame another company. In my opinion, they have been selling all types of unrelated items, so either they are too focused on what’s next, or they are making more money from other products to even care.

I convinced my parents to invest in wyze for their own home, they spent $500 on everything, just to find out it doesn’t work as advertised? There is no excuse, wyze is not a toddler, their catalog is huge. So it really confuses me why people defend this company instead of demanding the features that are on the box, it might not be trivial to fix this issue with google but that’s still not an excuse.

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You forgot to Mention if You have Alexa

switch to 320 resolution they will stream that way

I’m using google home hub. I’ve seen some people switch to a lower res, but I think it should work perfectly fine at 1080p because it doesn’t disclaim otherwise.