Wyze Sense + IFTTT stopped my car getting stolen this morning

First off, thank you Wyze team.
Your products mean I’m only looking at replacing a broken window on my car, rather than trying to find my (likely stripped car) when I left for work this morning. I wrote a quick guide for some of my neighbors (given this is like a $50/20 minute solution to the plague of people trying to take what’s not theirs). If I’ve missed anything, or anyone sees things I could have explained/done better I’d be most grateful for feedback. I wasn’t able to find a similar guide, so hopefully this a) helps someone else and b) doesn’t break any of the rules:

Where I live (Detroit, MI), we’ve had a wave of vehicle thefts over the last 6 months. Most of the time, they break the rear window (as most car alarms won’t sound unless a door is opened while the vehicle is locked), bust up the center console to get the vehicle into neutral, break the steering lock and then push the vehicle with another somewhere nearby where they strip the car and leave it on blocks. Having had two unsuccessful (although in both instances problematic, as they broke important parts of the vehicles leaving them undriveable) attempts made on our vehicles, I wanted a solution to give me a heads up that someone was in the car which didn’t have many false positives (there are 4-5 vehicles that drive by our house every evening, every hour between midnight and 7am, so just using the motion function of the cameras resulted in far too many false positives. After reading somewhere that IR doesn’t go through most glass, I thought putting one of the Wuze sense units in the car might give me the solution I was after.

this is a $50 solution that while it won’t necessarily stop the initial damage (broken window in this case), should allow you to react to scare the thieves away…

First off, I installed the sensor in the vehicle, I chose the spot just behind where the rear view mirror attaches to the roof trim, as it has good visibility of the whole vehicle and is fairly innocuous:

With that done, I named the sensor in Wyze after the vehicle (in this instance ‘Explorer Motion Sensor’ - if you’re doing more than one of these, this name is important later):

Once I had the sensor, I created a rule (the … in a circle above ‘Edit Rules’ in the app from the prior screenshot) :

So that the motion trigger will only run between midnight and 7am (I don’t need to know when I return home that there’s motion in my vehicle :D)

Next, you need an IFTTT account (www.ifttt.com). It’s free to sign up and has no monthly fees. I use the Apple app, once again I’m assuming the android one is the same, your experience may vary. Open the app, sign in and click the + after ‘Make your own Applets from scratch’, you should see the following:

Click the + by This, type Wyze and click the green box that pops up. It may prompt you to log into your Wyze account. Once you’ve done that, you should see the following:

Scroll down until you see ‘Motion Sensor Detects motion’ and select it:

In the ‘Which device’ select the motion sensor you set up earlier (this is the first place where the name matters so you know which device it is), then select ‘create trigger’.
When you get dropped back to the recipe screen, click on the + by ‘That’

Type call in the search box:

Select ‘Phone Call (US only)’:

Select ‘Call my phone’ at the bottom (nb - you may get prompted to enter your phone# at this point - it was already set up on my account, so feedback welcome here)

You should then get the following screen:

‘Trigger message’ here will read out the name of the sensor and ‘TriggerTime’ the time of the event - so as of posting it would read something like ‘Explorer Motion Sensor detected motion at February 11th, 1018am’

Once you’re happy with it, click ‘Create action’

Slide the checkbox on ‘Recieve notifications when this connection is active’ and click Finish

Finally, select the recipe once more and ensure it’s connected:

Then, test. Make sure it calls your phone.

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That’s amazing. Great job. Glad I don’t have to worry about that and sorry you do. But what a scare I bet you put into them! Good for you. And way to think out of the box and use what you have and do so cheaply. That’s what’s so cool to me about home automation/IOT devices. So many ways to use them. And for good purposes. You’re like Batman with a tool belt of Wyze gadgets. :superhero:

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Years ago I had the same problem too.

I been thinking to use the gate sensor with a relay. The relay would be hook to the inside door handle light. If someone checks the door handle it will trigger Alexa. Then maybe put a wifi horn in car. This would only work if the car is park in driveway.

https://www.amazon.com/Geeni-Wi-Fi-Wireless-Sensor-Required/dp/B07MCMHTYP/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=wifi+horn&qid=1581479978&sr=8-1

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Another great idea. That would send em running. Lol

I hate new cars because they don’t have a flashing red light.
I had to add two car alarms to mine dad truck and jeep. I put the flasher led in the drive side windshield on both of them. At night he will look at the cam to see if the flashing red light is on.

For the jeep rear gate door lock. I put the actuator so it only locks it and use the key will to unlock it only.

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I never even thought about the flashing red light being removed. But that was handy to monitor. Wonder why it was removed?

I have two car didn’t have them 97 Saturn and 03 Sport trac. The dongle only locks and sound the horn. I had to add a after market alarm to the Saturn. When I got the Sport trac I moved in a safer are but still had problem.

The boat is gone and will start parking cars in the garage when I get back home.
I also look at the Ring Neighbors app. It also can in handy to see what is going on.

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Hi @olobley. I checked your trust level. You should be able to edit your post and add those images now.

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One word - money. Cut costs for car makers.

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Great work @olobley. I say that with the caveat that I haven’t tried it yet but In sure it will! Sent myself a link to this and plan to try it ASAP. My only concern would be that IFTTT has been kind of flaky lately. I’ve moved my things like this to Alexa/Wyze but this may be beyond that.

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I am looking in to a local smart hub to bypass where Wyze and Alexa is weak.

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I did build an Alexa recipe to do this too, but it wasn’t something I was entirely familiar with (plus, it only seems to be able to play a chime or similar once on a specific echo…wheras I want it to keep ringing until either it goes to VM or I pick up, hence I went with the IFTTT option). I can do a similar guide for the Amazon recipe if there’s interest in that (with the aforementioned caveat).

For what it’s worth, I’ve not noticed any issues with IFTTT (and the one time I needed it to work, it came through with flying colors :))

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Here’s my Alexa Routine:

I only just noticed that I typo’d the title in Alexa, but fear not, I’m not some kind of mad carnivore…I meant bedroom, not beefroom. Apparently testing it is working as the wife texted me complaining that she can hear a trumpet sound coming from the bedroom :smiley: Will continue to text it over the next few days to see if it’s more/less reliable than the IFTTT one using my spare phone (to see which rings first)

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Very nice. I’ve used similar Alexa routines. I haven’t tried IFTTT for a while - it went thru a period of being slow and unreliable and Alexa was working so I migrated. Guess I need to look again - redundancy is always good!
No comment about the beefroom!

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I would recommend replacing the Play Trumpet action with Messaging… Send Announcement… {Some text}… All Devices.

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Play the trumpet first then a message.
By having sound first then like saying attention to message.

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Very true. However at this time, Alexa routines don’t allow you to play music on speaker groups, so you can only play the sound on one speaker.

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Thanks for this clearly written procedure. I finally learned how to use ifttt.
Great contribution.

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I have that setup too but I took it further.I have dot mounted outside home near driveway can’t be seen, if floodlight cam detects motion it starts to record, then on dot says “you shouldn’t be close to my vehicles the camera is always watching!” If that is not enough to scare off bad guy I also Have an echo dot mounted in my car under center console. Cannot be seen but loud AF. It wired to car battery when motion detected By Wyze sense in my car 12am-7am dot set Vol to 10 says “I got you!”, plays imperial March , turns on All my ring flood and path lights , makes my drive way light by garage flash rapid red! Then with IFTTT I also get a call so I can rack the slide and make it outside in time to protect my property!

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Love it! Sadly, the only place I can position my cameras at the moment has the road/reflective surfaces in shot, and even with careful box-drawing for motion triggering I’d still get 1-2 false positives/hour. Love the idea of the red lights/turning the path lights on :slight_smile: Might borrow that one myself

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