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

We have a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) focusing on Wyze Home Monitoring tomorrow! At 1:00 PM Pacific, please hop over to our subreddit to chat with our resident experts, u/WyzeLogan, u/WyzeSunny, and u/WyzeRyan!

If you’d like to leave questions in advance, you can put them in this thread:

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The wishlist is starting :slight_smile: Home Monitoring Hub Battery Backup ALERT Status
And will grow quickly after this very timely AMA

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I want to say that I wish Wyze would go back to doing AMA’s live on Youtube (like the one in the fall) instead of Reddit.

That worked well and could easily be watched or listened to, or you could still refer to the transcript to read it if you wanted, and everyone can easily do any of those from any device. Youtube is a way better way to do it, and you can still leave comments during the live webinar for the hosts to answer.

I don’t really like the way it works on Reddit. Reddit is a good place for certain things, but I think there are better options for AMAs…on the other hand, Reddit works okay if you have someone who struggles with speaking English, but can write it okay. Then they can type their answer out so everyone understands them, or use a translator. Otherwise I like Youtube better in every way.

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I agree. I don’t have a Reddit account and can’t seem to watch it.

I think it’s just typed out answers, so you can come back in a few hours and see all the answers they gave to questions people asked.

Anything you want someone to post and ask for you?

Not really. I like the concept of watching the Live video or interacting with individuals that way as well. Would love for it to go back to that.

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I could not agree more!

You JUST said you didn’t like…then you act like it’s cool…errrr, what?
Since you’re in the mood to ask…geofencing? Geofencing? Oh, and what about geofencing?

Actually…never mind. I don’t know why I bothered.

I forget to arm the system almost every time I leave. So, if someone could ask about automatic arming/disarming via geofencing…:heart_eyes::smiling_face_with_three_hearts::kissing_heart:

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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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Appologies if there is some kind of misunderstanding here. I definitely prefer Youtube for AMA’s. I was simply informing my friend that he doesn’t have to “watch it live” on Reddit…in fact, trying to keep up with an AMA on Reddit live is very confusing and hard to follow because the responder might jump around the thread answering questions in a disjointed manner, especially as people respond to them. This means you might miss a ton of answers as they jump back up to the top of the thread to respond to responses, etc. It is not linear and thus it really sucks to try to read it live as you might have to read the entire thing 20+ times including read the same answers over and over again just to make sure you didn’t miss something. This is really, really annoying and not something enjoyable at all. The best thing to do is post a question you care about, then wait until you get an email that you were responded to and then go respond again in that case. Otherwise, just wait a few hours until the entire event is done, THEN go read everything ONCE, instead of 20+ times.

I was not indicating Reddit is better by saying you can come back and read it hours later…because with a youtube AMA you can do the same thing too. I can still go watch Wyze’s Youtube AMA’s from a year ago…so Reddit is definitely not offering something that Youtube doesn’t. The benefit with Youtube is that it cuts out all the worthless “noise” I don’t care about (people complaining, whining, saying things I am not interested in, etc) and keeps the entire content 100% all about Wyze’s answers, which is the only thing I care to hear anyway. With Reddit I have to sort through a bunch of stuff I don’t want, with Youtube it’s 100% Wyze talking, and I can still refer back to it hours or days or months or years later. I can listen to it (hard to do with Reddit), or watch it, or even read the transcript if I prefer it to be in writing for me to read.

I hope that clarifies. I was just suggesting to my buddy to wait and read it all later so he isn’t frustrated by all the necessary re-reading to keep up with where in the thread they’ve posted or not. That in no way reflects my preference that I’d still prefer to have it on Youtube.


Now, if you check the above summary I did on the Reddit thread, you will see I got an answer for you about geofencing…they said “it is on the roadmap.” And I am just as excited and anxious for that too.

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Thank you @carverofchoice for taking the time to post these AMA Q&A. Well done and very helpful! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Any information on multiple locations? How about multiple pins or temporary, onetime pins? Sharing for multiple users in the house?

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Thanks @carverofchoice this is an excellent Summary of the event. Like you indicated, I prefer the Youtube approach as well.

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Wow, that took a lot of work. Well done! Thank you!

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Thank you for saving me a lot of time and headache. Very well done Sir! thumbsup2

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I partially did it because we know people are going to get on and repeat the exact same questions a thousand times, and now we all have an easy reference to quote or link to the Wyze employees’ answers in a central location in the forum, instead of having to search through the Reddit thread every time or look like we’re making up our answers. Now we can all link to the official source if people want a “Wyze Employee” answer.

I imagine this will be particularly useful for you Mavens/Mods to reference with all the repeat questions you already answered a dozen times that day. :slight_smile:

I can’t promise I’ll do this for EVERY Reddit AMA they may do in the future, but this seemed like one of the more important ones I’d find useful and use as a reference a lot over the next year, and figured while copying some answers to refer back to for myself, I might as well share it publicly too, and now it’s saved in an easy place for us all to reference.

Thanks for all the kind words.

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Why a day late? Today is Wednesday, the 19th and publish TODAY! Ain’t to smart WYZE!