Wyze Home Monitoring Reddit AMA - May 18, 1:00 PM Pacific

WYZE REDDIT HMS AMA SUMMARY

For those who want to know what was said, but would prefer to read it all here rather than sort through the disorganized mess in the Reddit thread to find the few spots worth reading, I’ve included the relevant posts here.

Each title is a direct link to the source of the original answer. I added Bold formatting in parts of the answer to help TLDR people be able to skim the answers easier. anything surrounded by [square brackets] is just replacing some words like “it, them, that” with what exactly is being referenced to help the TLDR people be able to just read the bold stuff without changing the meaning, but you can read the exact quote by clicking on the reference/source if you really want to see the words “it, them that” instead.

What about Geofencing automations? (Arm/Disarm based on the GPS location of the family)

We have [geofencing automation] on the roadmap too.

Any plans for Home Assistant integration?

We are still prioritizing features used by all Wyze Home Monitoring users. Home Assistant integration is something we will look into later. As of now, we don’t have a timeline for this.

Will there be plans to allow this to talk to HomeKit?

Hi there! We touched on this topic here.

We are still prioritizing features used by all Wyze Home Monitoring users. Home Assistant integration is something we will look into later. As of now, we don’t have a timeline for this.

[I think this was a misunderstanding of the employee thinking HomeKit and Home Assistant are the same thing, but it could be they were just implying the same answer is applicable to both of them, namely: “neither are a priority and there is no timeline for either of them.”]

When will the water leak sensors be released?

These were on our early list of sensors to add. You should see [water leak sensors] this summer.

What about wyze smoke/CO2 detectors?

Yes! We have [a smoke/CO2 detector] in the works. :shushing_face: Nothing to share on timelines yet. Side note, I agree with you. This is the missing piece.

What other kinds of sensors are you looking into besides leak and heat sensors?

Smoke/CO and glass break sensors are some of the other immediate ones.

Can wyze cams detect glass break sound frequency and trigger an alarm? If technically possible (and reliable), it would rid us of the need for a separate sensor. Also, the entry sensors should have a mic to pick up glass break sound as well.

:thinking:I will ask our AI team about this. This is possible and might be something in the works.

Dedicated separate loud siren :rotating_light:, are there plans to add one?

It’s coming. We don’t have a solid timeline for the separate siren, but we know users are asking for it and development [for a siren] is underway.

Are there plans for a weather-resistant siren? In a close-knit neighborhood, we like to know if the neighbors’ alarm is going off.

Not currently, but I dig this idea.

What is the timeline to get additional PIN codes? This is needed for guests, babysitters, house cleansers, etc.

This is coming! We know users are wanting this. Currently, we have [additional PIN codes] on our roadmap for the second half of the year.

When can we get more sensors?

Today! Like [another user] mentioned, we made sensors and the keypad available in the store :slight_smile:

Shopping cart prices jumped seemingly overnight. What’s going on? Are prices going to continue to go up/surprise us?

I can confirm that this was due to an update in our product pricing to reflect the inclusion of shipping :slight_smile:

When will [both spouses] be able to manage the same home security system on our own accounts?

[Spouse Access] is a widely requested feature among our customers. We are still planning how we are going to deliver the experience, which will likely arrive in several phases. The initial update with the minimum feature to realize the basic scenarios is likely to be available later this year.

Are there plans to add a cellular service (4G) as a backup if internet goes down?

Our mission is to “make great technologies accessible to everyone”. When we started the Home Monitoring project, we carefully evaluated many factors from the systems on the market nowadays to see why they cost so much for customers, because affordable pricing is the first thing we need to achieve to make the Wyze Home Monitoring service accessible to most American families. Cellar backup is something costly but scarcely used, so we decided to not to include it. However, we’ve heard your feedback and we understand that this is still a necessity for some of you. We’ll look into possible solutions, but we can’t make any promises just yet.

My previous system was integrated with my smart thermostats so if a fire was detected, it would shut down my HVAC so the A/C system wouldn’t kick on and effectively fuel the fire. Please consider adding this.

This is a great suggestion. We are planning on integrating Wyze Home Monitoring with Wyze Thermostat and adding this feature in the future.

Will there be a desktop client for monitoring Wyze devices while one is at work or working remotely? I cannot always be looking at my phone in the office.

We will have Wyze camera viewing through desktop this year. As for being able to arm and disarm your Wyze Home Monitoring from the desktop, this is on our roadmap, but we don’t yet have a timeline for it. For those users using a new M1 Mac, you can access the Wyze app on desktop right now.
…I should have clarified. We will be doing browser-based viewing.

What about Chimes when sensors on doors or windows open/close or motion detected?

We know many of you have expressed how important an “entry sound” is, and I am happy to share that we are working on it! We are aiming to have [sensor chimes/sounds] ready by this summer.

Can we get more options for entry/exit delay such as 3, 5, 10 seconds, not just 0, 30, 60

We are not planning to add additional delay options at this point, but we’ve noted your feedback!

Any update on when and if we expect this to be available in Canada?

Our monitoring partner, Noonlight, is actively working on getting the support from Canadian authorities. We don’t have a timeline for when this is available, but we would love to extend Wyze Home Monitoring into Canada as soon as possible.
It is unlikely we will have Wyze Home Monitoring in Canada this year. :frowning:

Will this work in Puerto Rico?

This is a tough answer. It works, but it’s not advisable. Noonlight, our monitoring partner, tells us that it takes a long time between when they notify the Puerto Rico dispatch to when first responders arrive at your location.

Be able to disarm the alarm from the Wyze App when it’s been triggered

You can do this now - in-app PIN and everything! If you are unable to see it, that is definitely not right. If you submit a support ticket and share your ticket number here, or with me via PM, we will help you get it fixed.

Any plans to have a glass break sensor added into the lineup?

We’re exploring a multitude of sensors to add to our lineup, and glass break is one of [the sensors we’re exploring adding to our lineup]. We don’t have a timeline for this one yet.

Can I get the Starter Kit without the Subscription?

The starter kit is a part of Wyze Home Monitoring service at this moment and is not available to purchase separately. However, you get 50% off if you buy it with an annual subscription. Extra sensors for your Wyze Home Monitoring service are available to purchase separately (as of today!) on the Wyze Shop page: Shop All – Wyze Labs, Inc.

Will it ever be available separate from the home monitoring service?

Unfortunatelly no at this moment.

Explain the low-mid-high settings on the sense motion. Why 2 hrs and where is this coming from.

Changing the setting will alter how sensitive the motion sensor is. On high sensitivity just a little motion far away can trip it. On low you’ve got to be closer to trip it.
To preserve motion sensor battery life we only send these types of updates once every 2 hours.
So depending on when you change the setting it could take up to 2 hours to take effect.

Schedules and Rules for Arming/Disarming System

We have seen lots of requests to integrate Wyze Home Monitoring with the Wyze Rules engine (which would allow you to set schedules, have Home Monitoring events adjust notification settings, etc.). u/WyzeRyan added [HMS rules and notifications options] into our product roadmap, but we don’t yet have a timeline for when this will be released.

IFTTT Integration

IFTTT support is very soon.

Is there a plan in the near future to have the new sensor linked to IFTTT?

Yes, very soon.

Why aren’t Wyze video doorbells able to be added as a security camera in Wyze home monitoring?

Wyze Video Doorbell integration is scheduled for release in June!

When an alarm is triggered (pending alarm) and I receive the SMS message on my phone immediately, it is clearly a bot/automation sending those, which is fine. However, that text asks me if I need help. If I reply, no one responds, which is not good if there was a real emergency. Is this by design?

Yes, the text message confirmation will be triggered almost instantly when an alarm was triggered, however, answering “No” will NOT cancel the alarm and will NOT stop the dispatcher from contacting you and verify your status.

What about Multiple Emergency Contact numbers instead of just one, so Noonlight can check one number first, then if there is no answer, call the spouse or backup number to reduce false dispatches

Yes, we are working with Noonlight toward a solution for [having a second contact number], but we don’t have a timeframe to share just yet.

Have you considered what happened s during a power outage!?

We have thought about that. Our Wyze Sense Hub has a battery backup that will allow the system to function locally during a power outage. The alarm will trigger for whatever devices are set to trigger it (e.g., unwanted entry, or in the future, leaks and smoke/fire). The caveat to this is that the WiFi will likely be down during a power outage and while it will alert those in the monitored location, it will not be able to send to the monitoring company until it is back online.

If an intruder gets to the hub and disconnects it from the router or the wall plug before the delay is up, what happens?

The hub supports Wifi connection and battery backup, so in the scenario you mentioned, it will still be fully functional.

Are there any plans to have the CamPlus alerts trigger alarms?

Yes! This gets complicated, though. We have to get to an extremely accurate AI detection before we can have it trigger alarm events. This could take some time, but we are working on it!

Any advice on scaling to be able to cover very large houses including with a detached garage?

Each hub can support up to 100 sensors. We are working on a system builder to help guide people. The range between the hub and sensors is about 500 ft / 152 m. If your detached garage is within that range, you should be good. Otherwise you would need another hub.

What have you guys been doing to work on serverside stability for your services? From what I’ve seen it’s been short but substantial outages with cams/cam plus and other products requiring server side processing?

WYZE RESPONSE:
This is an important question. Since day one on this project, one of our main goals is to meet the highest standard of reliability and stability. To achieve that, we almost doubled our team, especially the engineering team, and invested heavily in cloud infrastructure, operation, and security in the past 12 months. Even with the reality that no service can guarantee 100% uptime, we are trying our best to minimize possible issues and make sure that when they occur, they will be identified and addressed quickly.

USER RESPONSE:
Great to hear, also happy to see more of you guys responding on Reddit and elsewhere!

Sometimes it did feel like wyze didn’t really care about responding to issues but I do like the initiative you guys are showing here today.

Also liked that you mentioned you are working on security, always good to hear.

WYZE RESPONSE:
In the first 2 years of Wyze history, we started from scratch and not having enough engineering resources for operational excellency of the cloud infrastructure. The legacy system was designed in pretty old fashion which was not scalable enough for millions of users. You might notice a few outages in Q4 2020 which was caused by the limitation of the legacy service won’t be able to scale up anymore.

Starting from late 2019, we built our in-house tech team, took over the cloud infra from there, spent almost a year and a half to re-architect the critical pieces of the services, e.g DB optimization and auto scaling strategies. All those effort was just paid off in this February when we noticed the significant latency drop and overall performance improvement of our backend APIs. If you view Wyze closely, you may notice we never have major outages from the beginning of 2021. I don’t want to jinx it but our infrastructure is much more scalable than before to handle unpredictable traffic peaks. In addition to the legacy services, all our new systems were coming with strict operational readiness & security review before facing customer which prevents “old fashion design” problems in the future.

What about monthly financing options to purchase the hardware

We hear you! We want to look into ways of making this even more accessible, and we are considering automated microfinancing options to add to our site for users like you that would rather pay via installments. No set timeline on this, but it is something we are considering.


Geez, that all took a lot longer to do than I thought it would!

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