Wireless Security Camera System

[bigbadboss101]

Looking to buy this set up may be later tonight unless I have remorse before buying. Will pick up a couple extra SD cards. Nice price!

https://www.amazon.ca/WyzeCam-Wirele...ords=wyze&th=1

[Doozer]

Got 2 Wyze cams for my birthday today. Setup was 5 minutes each, no problems at all. Smaller than I expected too. Already tested out the motion sensors, and a bunch of other features, and I'm pretty happy. I can confirm that you can save the 12 second clips to your phone or tablet whenever you want. So if you get a notification, you can save the video right there so you don't have to worry about it disappearing off the cloud. I'll pop a couple SD cards into the cameras anyway, but saving to your device is nice.

Also nice that you can rotate the picture 180 degrees, so you can mount the camera from the ceiling or top of a window with no issues. Last thing I'm curious about will the night vision, especially because I've got them both looking through windows to the outside. One is flush against the glass and another is at an angle, so it should be interesting.

[nagooro]

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Got 2 Wyze cams for my birthday today. Setup was 5 minutes each, no problems at all. Smaller than I expected too. Already tested out the motion sensors, and a bunch of other features, and I'm pretty happy. I can confirm that you can save the 12 second clips to your phone or tablet whenever you want. So if you get a notification, you can save the video right there so you don't have to worry about it disappearing off the cloud. I'll pop a couple SD cards into the cameras anyway, but saving to your device is nice.

Also nice that you can rotate the picture 180 degrees, so you can mount the camera from the ceiling or top of a window with no issues. Last thing I'm curious about will the night vision, especially because I've got them both looking through windows to the outside. One is flush against the glass and another is at an angle, so it should be interesting.

I have two pointed through a window, unfortunately the IR wont work through the glass, so you wont see anything at night. You'll have to turn it to "off" from "auto".

[Doozer]

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I have two pointed through a window, unfortunately the IR wont work through the glass, so you wont see anything at night. You'll have to turn it to "off" from "auto".

Yep, this is what I'm discovering. I've got the porch lights on tonight and the night vision off, which seems to be decent, but neither the flush-to-the-glass or the angled one work at all through the glass. I'll have to experiment a bit more, maybe get some motion lights outside or something.

[bigbadboss101]

Hmm thats too bad. We have two coming. One for garage, and for front steps.

[The Cosworth]

Can you access the Wyze just by pinging the IP as well? I have some other HA stuff set up as well and broadcast the IP to a webpage. My current Digoo cams are starting to freeze up quite a bit. Actually would prefer non-pan. I find if they reset (power surge or whatever) sometimes they don't always go 100% back to center.

[Kijho]

The IR night vision does not work through windows (I don't know of any IR that would work through a window, though) but for $37 I'm very impressed with the low light quality of these cameras. As I mentioned in my last post in this thread - I picked up some microSD's for each camera, which has been awesome. Now I can see an event notification at 2am (12 second clip) and then I can go scroll to that time in the video to find it...

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What MicroSD did you buy? I misunderstood the cloud, the 14 day cloud only stores notifications (12 second clips) - Not actual footage. So I need an card for it haha...
The ones on Amazon are indeed the V2s.

The keypad to open our garage disposal area had a dead battery last week. It's funny how stupid people really are; people began leaving their shit outside on the ground... which brings pests...



Had some neighborhood kid ding-dong ditching
This made me laugh moreso because it wasn't that long ago when I was young and doing this.. they did not have doorbell cams / security cams like this back then hahaha!

[Doozer]

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Hmm thats too bad. We have two coming. One for garage, and for front steps.

So far seems to be a minor issue. The cameras are so cheap and so good that I'm still probably going to order a bunch more. Very impressed in spite of what I'm trying to do. And I may get an external enclosure and see how a camera lasts through the winter anyway. External enclosures are available online for $20, and since the cameras are so cheap, it might be worth potentially sacrificing one for a test. I wouldn't expect it to fare very well, but it would be amazing if it did.

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Can you access the Wyze just by pinging the IP as well? I have some other HA stuff set up as well and broadcast the IP to a webpage. My current Digoo cams are starting to freeze up quite a bit. Actually would prefer non-pan. I find if they reset (power surge or whatever) sometimes they don't always go 100% back to center.

Good question ... I'll see if I can try this tonight. When you configure the cameras you don't set up any IPs, it's all done through the app, with app generating a QR code that the camera scans, and BOOM, it's set up. But I can check the wireless routing table and see if I can hit the IPs. I was actually hoping that Wyze provided a way of accessing my cameras through their webpage so I could see the video on my computer at the office, but no go. Might've been pushing expectations slightly too far! But that's what happens when it exceeds all the other expectations I had!

[HiTempguy1]

You can block the IR lights with electrical tape or something that light can't pass through so they don't reflect in the glass. This allows you to have night-vision mode on, without the IR blasting the camera.

Combined with having dim lights on outside (such as porch lights), you'll be able to see anything at night as long as you have the smallest amount of light outside.

[Doozer]

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You can block the IR lights with electrical tape or something that light can't pass through so they don't reflect in the glass. This allows you to have night-vision mode on, without the IR blasting the camera.

Combined with having dim lights on outside (such as porch lights), you'll be able to see anything at night as long as you have the smallest amount of light outside.

I'm not sure why you'd do this, instead of just turning off night mode. Isn't the only difference the IR? Or do you think the aperture or something also changes?

[The Cosworth]

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Good question ... I'll see if I can try this tonight. When you configure the cameras you don't set up any IPs, it's all done through the app, with app generating a QR code that the camera scans, and BOOM, it's set up. But I can check the wireless routing table and see if I can hit the IPs. I was actually hoping that Wyze provided a way of accessing my cameras through their webpage so I could see the video on my computer at the office, but no go. Might've been pushing expectations slightly too far! But that's what happens when it exceeds all the other expectations I had!

Awesome thanks. Look forward to what you find.

My digoo cam's were the same. Setup using their app. I've disabled it now though as I don't know how much I trust random chinese software. I had to do some extra work on the routing table, changing the ports that are open, and beefed up security quite a bit. Im far from a network expert (see the thread where I broke my router setup, haha) but Im fairly confident that it would be hard to access my cameras. And even if someone magically did get them best you're going to get is a view of my street or front door.

[kenny]

These Yi Indoor/Outdoor cams seem pretty decent for their price.

Indoor - $50
https://www.amazon.ca/YI-Wireless-Se...dp/B01CW4AR9K/

Outdoor - $120
https://www.amazon.ca/YI-Waterproof-...dp/B01CW49AGG/

Yi cloud is $66/year and includes 7 days footage for 5 cameras if recording on motion only or 1 camera 24/7 recording.

So much better than dealing with SD cards.

[Doozer]

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Awesome thanks. Look forward to what you find.

My digoo cam's were the same. Setup using their app. I've disabled it now though as I don't know how much I trust random chinese software. I had to do some extra work on the routing table, changing the ports that are open, and beefed up security quite a bit. Im far from a network expert (see the thread where I broke my router setup, haha) but Im fairly confident that it would be hard to access my cameras. And even if someone magically did get them best you're going to get is a view of my street or front door.

Got home a little early this afternoon and tested them out ... no go. Between phones, etc, there were a bunch of devices that I couldn't narrow down which one had which IP, but none of them pinged and none had web access. I checked the Wyze page and seems like this a known missing feature. People have been using some workarounds with Android sims and 3rd party apps to get it displaying on a computer but looks like it will take some hops anyway.

[Doozer]

Also got some feedback from Wyze today ... they know there's a problem with night reflection on glass, but can't do much about it. Their recommendation is to turn off night mode and use outdoor lighting to support. Also they don't recommend their cameras outdoors below 0C, but they're currently developing an outdoor version. No ETA on that yet though.

[The Cosworth]

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Got home a little early this afternoon and tested them out ... no go. Between phones, etc, there were a bunch of devices that I couldn't narrow down which one had which IP, but none of them pinged and none had web access. I checked the Wyze page and seems like this a known missing feature. People have been using some workarounds with Android sims and 3rd party apps to get it displaying on a computer but looks like it will take some hops anyway.

Damn, seemed like the perfect little camera. Thanks for checking it out.

[HiTempguy1]

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I'm not sure why you'd do this, instead of just turning off night mode. Isn't the only difference the IR? Or do you think the aperture or something also changes?

Because the camera settings themselves change to boost contrast at night in "night mode". There is a huge difference in image quality/sharpness between day mode and night mode in very low-light (night time) settings.

You do understand IR is a different wavelength frequency than normal "visible" light, right? So what the camera sees between the two modes is markedly different.

[Doozer]

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Because the camera settings themselves change to boost contrast at night in "night mode".

Well this is what I was asking. I'm going to have to experiment with this tonight.

[JfuckinC]

Chester told me about wyze and they've been pretty great so far! Got one on my front door and one on my backdoor/backyard. One in the house too, so i can set it on motion when we are outta town and i feel better.

[bigbadboss101]

Pretty happy with our two so far. Gonna tinker with the sensitivity level. Eg. Car on the street drives by or bright lights of neighbor's house will set off notification at current settings.