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p/wyzecamA $19.99 tiny smart home camera
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Adithya Shreshti

WyzeCam - A $19.99 tiny smart home camera

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WyzeCam is a smart home camera designed for, well, whatever you want. It’s easy to find uses for a $20 camera that fits in the palm of your hand, or rests comfortably on just about any surfaceWyzeCam is

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Saif Al Falah
@alextsayun This is exactly like this Mi Camera. 😱
Kyle McDonald
@alextsayun Pro dropshippers 😉
Conrad Barrett
@alextsayun I believe the Xiaomi version only works in China.. This must have updated firmware to work in US. Would be great for makers to *drop* in and provide some clarity -
Dongsheng Song
@alextsayun thank you for your comments. In creating the WyzeCam, we licensed the same industrial design as xiaofang, but we worked directly with the manufacturer to design a new version, the WyzeCam. So while the physical appearance is the same, we created our own Wyze app, firmware and AWS cloud service. We also provide US-Based Tech support to help our customers if they ran into any issues.
Alex Tsayun
@conradd Nope, it works fine outside of China.
Constantijn
Ripping off a Chinese product...what kind of parallel universe is this. It's clearly a rebranded Xiaomi security cam. https://xiaomi-mi.com/ip-cameras...
Dongsheng Song
@iamconstantijn thank you for your comments. In creating the WyzeCam, we licensed the same industrial design as xiaofang, but we worked directly with the manufacturer to design a new version, the WyzeCam. So while the physical appearance is the same, we created our own Wyze app, firmware and AWS cloud service. We are a team based in the state of Washington and we provide US-Based Tech support to help our customers if they ran into any issues. pls let us know if you have other questions. We are very happy to be able to come here to discuss our product with you guys
Csaba Kissi

You can get the original Xiaomi for even better price.

Pros:

Concept

Cons:

Only the rebranded Xiaomi

Joshua Dance
Link to the Xiaomi?
WyzeCam
Hi there - this is WyzeCam :) We did license the industrial design of Xiao Fang (which is the name of the camera you have in mind, sold on Xiaomi's website), but we designed the WyzeCam with a completely new solution from the ground up, including a new app (named Wyze, available in both iOS and Android), new firmware, and AWS cloud solution to store alert videos. Hope this helps. And btw, Xiao Fang does not work in the US.
G G
Really cool, almost too cool. Wonder if they also have access to our videos and privacy.... I mean for $20 there I am bit leery.
Leon
@androidlove You can hack the camera to turn off access to internet https://github.com/samtap/fang-h...
Dongsheng Song
@androidlove we use end to end encryption for all videos transmitted to AWS cloud for security purposes. As the company, we do not have access to your videos in the cloud. Only the Wyze Account owner can view their own videos.
Gwendolyn Evans
@androidlove That's a totally understandable concern! We absolutely do not have access to your videos and privacy. We firmly believe that your videos are for your own use and respect your privacy.
Pavlo Grozian

"to maintain video data recorded from Your WyzeCam on the WyzeCam cloud. Wyze Labs shall use commercially reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized access to Your recordings maintained on the Wyze Labs cloud. However, You acknowledge, understand, and agree that as a result of issues unrelated to Wyze Labs’s fault, including the inherent limitations in all hardware and software, unauthorized access to Your recorded video data may occur. As result, in addition to, and without limiting any other provision of this Agreement, You agree to and shall indemnify and hold harmless Wyze Labs, its employees and agents for and against all claims, lawsuits and losses arising out of or related to video data recorded from Your WyzeCam and Wyze Labs’s storage of that video data. This provision shall apply to all claims, lawsuits or losses whether or not based on negligence (active or passive) on the part of Wyze Labs, its agents or employees"

Pros:

Price, 2 weeks of storage, cleaver design by Xioami's vendor (yep, it's OEM-over-OEM).

Cons:

No microSD. Shady Terms of Use that covers only vendor if someone crack 'commercially reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized access'.

Dongsheng Song
Hi Pavlo, Thanks for the review. I am one of the co-founders at Wyze Labs. Me and my Colleague Gwendolyn are here to answer questions. We are super excited to see so many votes on our product. Regarding MicroSD card, our product does have a Micro SD card Slot for user to be able to continuously record video.
Dongsheng Song
Regarding the T&Cs, it is a legal term that is put together by our legal team, and most of them are standard terms. I believe your question is mostly around how do we prevent unauthorized access ( what we did and are doing ) instead of the how the T&Cs are written. Hope below description of our security measure will help. Let us know if you have additional questions. The request between your mobile device, the Wyzecam, and Cloud Server are made via https (Transport Layer Security (TLS) ). We used symmetric and asymmetric encryption, consistent hashing and other ways to make sure users information can not be stolen. Every device in the process has their own secret key and certificate so that we can validate their identity during handshake. The contents are encrypted via AES 128-bit encryption to protect the security of the data.
Jack Woodmansey
Looks great! No UK/ EU shipping yet? 🙁
Csaba Kissi
@jackwoodmansey Go and get the original Xiaomi from Gearbest. They have a warehouse in the UK. https://www.gearbest.com/ip-came... I think there will be not a big difference in software.
Galen Han
@jackwoodmansey @csaba_kissi On the product page it states that it won't work in Europe or the US.
Gwendolyn Evans
@jackwoodmansey Sorry about that, Jack! We will have international shipping later. You can sign up for our newsletter at wyzecam.com for updates on this issue as well as other product and company related topics. Unfortunately, @csaba_kissi, there are enough differences between WyzeCam and Xiaomi products that they are incompatible. We built our app from the ground up and customized our firmware.
Adithya Shreshti
Hunter
If I am not in the US, here's what I will do to get the camera: 1) I will visit Aliexpress dot com 2) Search for "Xiaofang Smart IP" 3) Sort based on number of orders 4) Choose the first one on the list 5) Check and wait for the delivery 😀
Gwendolyn Evans
@adithya That's a nice method! But, unfortunately, the Wyze app doesn't work with the Xiaofang camera. The body of the camera looks the same but we have a different enough product that they are incompatible. We do plan to ship internationally later! You can sign up for our newsletter at wyzecam.com for updates on this and other topics.
Adithya Shreshti
Hunter
@fluffinthewind I knew about the firmware and app restrictions even before I hunted your product here :) Great little cam with great features.
Gwendolyn Evans
@adithya Thank you!
Ryan Hoover
Wow, only $19.99? I was just thinking of buying a security camera for my place. Now I might be two.
Adithya Shreshti
Hunter
@rrhoover Or maybe three or four.. 😉
AllanStepps

That's a XiaoMi Yi Xiaofang you' re proposing guys........

Pros:

the name maybe ?

Cons:

this product isn't working in EU due to legislation.

Karim Jedda
Thank you!!
Dongsheng Song
Hi AllanStepps, Thanks for the review. I am one of the co-founders at Wyze Labs. Me and my Colleague Gwendolyn are here to answer questions. We are super excited to see so many votes on our product. Regarding our relationship with Xiaofang, there are a few people asking the same question, we we have addressed it in previous review comments. Let us know if you have additional questions.
Félipé Upperlife

I'd love to get one in Paris

Pros:

Price, concept

Cons:

Only available in the US

Louis de Vaumas
Me too
Andrew Richard
I know a security organization in Africa that would love this tech.
Samuel
same
Gwendolyn Evans
Hi, everyone! I work for Wyze Labs and I definitely understand the frustration about not being able to order WyzeCams outside of the United States yet. I'm sorry that we aren't set up for international shipping because we are so new but we definitely have plans to branch out in the future. If you would like, you can sign up for our newsletter at wyzecam.com for updates on this and other topics.
Callan Christensen

While WyzeCam shares hardware with the Xiaomi Smart Home cameras that everyone has PROUDLY pointed out in the comments, it is the firmware, the app experience, customer support, and the cloud service offering that sets it apart.

So let's address the most common sentiment in the comments:

"This is just an upsold Xiaomi/Xiaofang/Chinese Smart home camera".

The cheapest I could find the Xiaomi camera using the recommended search term "Xiaofang Smart IP" from Aliexpress is $24.15 and ~$21 for a similar looking "wanscam" + $6 shipping, both with 60 day guaranteed delivery! The GearBest site selling it warns "you need to set the usage area for Mainland China. Please do not choose other areas." This means it is region locked and not meant to be sold/supported outside of the country.

My order from WyzeCam was $25.98 shipped. It was "backordered" when purchased on Friday 3 Nov and I received it in the mail on Tuesday Nov 7.

People have also noted that the Xiaomi cameras have a different firmware and will not work with the WyzeCam app, so this means that you can't get cheap hardware cheaper and use the WyzeCam app.

Ok, so lets say you are magical and get a Xiaomi camera for $15 shipped and you get it in 1 day. You are still going to be using the Mi Home app and let me tell you, it is a mess of an app. I made an account just to look at it and there were elements popping in and out, most of it was in english, but there were some important settings toggle buttons that were not translated and only displaying chinese. Also, the Mi Home app is rated 1.5 stars. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/...

Another thing mentioned multiple times in other reviews was a "Lack of an SD card slot".

Not sure how people could think this if they even took 20 seconds to look in the specs. Maybe they were disappointed it didn't come with one?!? I can report that it has an SD card slot and it is impressively fast when skipping around in playback. It works incredibly well, just format it Fat32 (if isn't blank), pop it in and set it to continuously record in the settings menu. Even tells you how much space it has, which helped me realize that the card I was trying to use had some weird Fat/Fat32 partitions that needed to be cleared.

Now with all that debunking out of the way here are some other thoughts:

Setup

Very simple, just make sure the phone/device that you are using to set this up is on a 2.4ghz network and not a 5ghz! The software asks for your wifi password and passes whatever the setup device's currently connected network is.

Cloud Storage

WyzeCam has free 14 day cloud storage for motion detected videos. At the time of writing, there aren't any upsell options either. It works very quick, and it is my fastest cloud connected home device, and I have a few!

Devices Access

As long as the WyzeCam and your viewing device both have access to the internet, you can view it from anywhere instantly. You can view it live, and if you have an SD card set to continuously record, you can watch every second, from anywhere! (That blew me away as I assumed it would only work locally).

Software

WyzeCam has taken existing hardware and wrapped it in a wonderful firmware and software experience. The app is intuitive, clear, and works flawlessly.

Final Thoughts:

Is this copypreneur? Well, it uses a proven, properly licensed hardware design, with custom firmware, a unique app experience, with a US based support team, with US based cloud storage, in custom branded packaging, sold from a custom website and the order is fulfilled from the US. Their product is the software experience, which isn't copied. So i guess "copypreneur" is up for interpretation.

I am very satisfied with this device and immensely disappointed in the PH community for users bandwagoning on a pitchfork clenched "it's a rebranded device" witch hunt without performing due diligence.

I hope other small startups don't shy away from being hunted due to what has happened here.

Pros:

Ease of Setup, App quality, Access Speed, Mounting Hardware, Camera Quality

Cons:

The users of PH who thinks this is a chinese ripoff that are missing the forest for the trees. Motion detection needs "zones".

Leon
It looks exactly like the Xiaofang camera made by Xiaomi, is this just the Xiaofang with custom firmware?
Dongsheng Song
@leonn In creating the WyzeCam, we licensed the same industrial design as xiaofang, but we worked directly with the manufacturer to design a new version, the WyzeCam. So while the physical appearance is the same, we created our own Wyze app, firmware and AWS cloud service. We are a team based in the state of Washington and we provide US-Based Tech support to help our customers if they ran into any issues.
Esteban Aravena
Does it support Amazon Echo or Google Home?
Gwendolyn Evans
@esbvn Right now WyzeCam only supports the Wyze app. I will make sure that the dev teams knows about your feature request. Thank you!
Dongsheng Song
@esbvn We are currently not integrated with Amazon Echo, or Google Home. However, we are evaluating Amazon Echo integration for future improvements.
Tom Klaver
Solid marketing. Would love to order these once they ship to Europe! Will you support HomeKit anytime soon?
Gwendolyn Evans
@klavr Thanks, Tom! I will make sure that the dev teams knows about the interest in WyzeCam supporting HomeKit.
Dongsheng Song
@klavr We have Homekit on our list of things to evaluate. Currently, do not support
ILYA SPEKHOV
No delivery to Canada?
Gwendolyn Evans
@ispekhov No delivery to Canada yet. We do plan to have international shipping in the future, though! You can sign up for our newsletter at wyzecam.com to keep track of developments.
Randy Oest
Can I opt out of having the video stored in the cloud? (Or have it backed up to a cloud of my choice?)
Dongsheng Song
@amazingrando We currently do not have a way for you to back up to your cloud of choice. However, you can turn motion/sound detection off to not record alert video. Instead, turning on continuous recording with a Micrso SD card ( not supplied ). Not ideal to your need, but A option.
Parker Woodward
OMG ROFL - saw this is basically the same camera as here https://www.mi.com/xiaofang/?cfr... - wondering if its the same company - but when you go to that page the google english translation is hilarious, especially with the dog lol
Gwendolyn Evans
@parkerwoodward The camera body looks the same because we use the same manufacturer. However, our app was designed from the ground up and our firmware is different. Xiaomi and Wyze Labs are two different companies.
Adithya Shreshti
Hunter
Whoa, this is definitely aiming for the Nest cam's throne 📹
Juan Buis
Ok so now I suddenly want a home camera. Why don't you ship to Europe?
Gwendolyn Evans
@juanbuis It is a great camera! We will be shipping to Europe later but we are a small company that just launched our first product so we don't have that set up yet. You can sign up for our newsletter at wyzecam.com for updates!
Priyank Patel
Bunch of Copypreneur. now I know why "The founding members of the company met when they were working at Amazon" and never shared their name on their website
Dongsheng Song
@patelpriyank we are excited to be here to discuss our product. Let us know if you have any questions about our product.
Gwendolyn Evans
@patelpriyank Thanks for your feedback! We'll be uploading a temp photo soon but will take a whole team photo next Monday. We were waiting until we had everyone in the office at once before taking the picture to avoid leaving people out.