[proposal] $400 on wyze cams

[Ryan Mcdermott]

Specifically wyze cams and SD cards for them.  As many cameras as we can get for that amount.

This is to replace the existing security cameras.

The logic is: the incremental cost to add or replace a wyze came is $25.  This is considerably lower than what I perceive to be the cost of our existing, DVR based system.

-Ryan

[Brandon Gosch]

WYZE cams also support RTSP. Coupled with WYZE sense and IFTTT you could probably come up with some fun integrations and additional functionality. 

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[Nate Plamondon]

Do you have a model in mind? How is this an improvement over our current solution (keeping in mind we just bought several new cameras this month)? Do they offer non-cloudy recording?

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[Ryan Mcdermott]

1) the $25 one.  I don’t know their model naming.

2) The improvement is in the incremental cost of adding cameras

3) Yes that is why I said SD cards.

Nate this is literally what was in the body of my email lol.

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[Nate Plamondon]

It's really not, and I don't understand why you make things confrontational... I'm just trying to understand your proposal.

1) A quick AMZN search shows several $25ish WYZE cameras.

2) We already have several cameras ($18 each), and I'm not sure we need many more.

3) Is there a way to record these centrally? Not local (SD) or cloud?

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[Jason Nevins]

There's lots of brackets for around the same price, but there's only one camera (Wyze cam V2).

The second comment in this thread says that you can use RTSP, which allows you to record 24/7 on any computer in the lab. I've tested this on these cameras and it seems to work pretty well.

If there were more cameras bought, I can't find anything in HYH minutes or other threads. Saying what brand/model they are and whether they're any better than the potato cams we have now would help decide whether this proposal is helpful or not.

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[Nate Plamondon]

The CCTV system we have is distinct from the webcams on the live site. They're much less potato (1080p, night-vision, IR flood). They're also resilient to network and/or power issues.

Moving to a wifi setup would require additional power considerations, as well as a dedicated, hardened network/wifi segment, in addition to setting up storage. It really seems to me like a lot of work for little, if any, gain.

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[Ryan Mcdermott]

Nate please see attached.  I believe this would qualify as "potato quality".

Also I think you are confused about this proposal.

1) The original proposal explicitly lists local storage.

2) The point of the proposal is to decrease the incremental cost of more cameras.

3) Wyze makes two models of camera.  One of them is $19.99 on their site, the other is $29.99 on their site.  The average of these two numbers is approximately $25.  Also the standard wyze cam listed on amazon is $25.  Thus: the incremental dollar cost of adding a new camera is approximately $25.  The work involved is incredibly small.  I've set up lots of these cameras and they take <1minute each to set up.

I'm sorry you felt like I was being confrontational with you?  I'm trying to list these things as dryly as I can, but it sortof seems like you aren't reading the emails?

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[Nate Plamondon]

Yeah, that is awful. It's a still taken from a video David took of an LCD screen with his phone. The actual footage is better. I intended for us to get the better quality stills, direct from the DVR, posted but that hasn't happened.

I am, in fact, reading this thread, but I don't feel like my questions are being answered.

1) The original post doesn't mention storage aside from SD. SD storage is too local; we need central more than local. The board needs to be able to quickly and easily review footage when necessary, and that can't require using a ladder to pull SD cards. Yes, there's RTSP, but again, that requires additional resources (one of which being money).

2) How many more cameras do we need? Why not continue to grow at ~$20 per camera with the system we're already invested in? We are approaching capacity of our current DVR, but a new 16ch is going to run us less than replacing all the existing cameras.

3) See 2.

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[Nathan Crary]

Looks like wyze cameras will record HD for a estimated 48hrs on a 32GB card (don't know if larger cards are supported).

I think the image posted is from the break-in(s) we had.

The way I understood it, it took us a while to figure out something had happened.  Did it take us less than 48hrs?

Similar question for our current system.  How far back does our recording capability go (probably shouldn't answer that on this forum)?  Or to put it another way, does our current system beat the wyze cameras?

If we use the wifi capabilities would there be a cost to storing and/or retrieving the footage (looks like it's stored for 14 days for free)?

(Hope this doesn't seem like a stupid question, but does the company then somehow own the footage?  Do we care?)

It looks like the lights were turned out in the photo.  Would the wyze cameras have taken better video than our current system?  If so then perhaps one pointing at each entrance, to supplement our cameras, would be helpful (without wifi, we would still have to collect the data within the loop time of the wyze camera though).

 

[Nate Plamondon]

Great points. We currently measure our retention in weeks. The Wyze cloud storage is free for 14 days, then paid.

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[Jason Nevins]

  Looks like wyze cameras will record HD for a estimated 48hrs on a 32GB card (don't know if larger cards are supported).

Wyze recommends 32gb, but there are many people using 128GB cards, with some reports of 240GB cards working as well. https://forums.wyzecam.com/t/microsd-card-capacity/3910

 

If we use the wifi capabilities would there be a cost to storing and/or retrieving the footage (looks like it's stored for 14 days for free)?
(Hope this doesn't seem like a stupid question, but does the company then somehow own the footage?  Do we care?)

Cloud storage only happens if there's an alert, it has very good selectable motion, person, and car alerting as well as audio alerting (also identifying smoke & CO alarm sounds). SD storage can be either alert based or 24/7. RTSP depends on the setup. There is free software like iSpy or zoneminder that can do their own motion alerting or 24/7 recording. I find it hard to believe we wouldn't be able to find an idle computer and couple TB HDD to get RTSP running.

I haven't been able to find a T&C doc for cloud storage, but the company seems surprisingly good about security. They've said they use AES128 for data transport and all services for cloud should be through US servers. (https://www.reddit.com/r/wyzecam/comments/7cykgf/wyzecam_sending_data_to_servers_other_than_aws/dqfi46u/) They have a 3rd party doing the app-S3 connection, but they shouldn't have any access to data. (https://www.reddit.com/r/wyzecam/comments/8jsdh0/final_rundown_on_wyzecam_sending_data_to_servers/dz3h51x/) Based on how they seem to treat security, I personally am not worried about using their cloud features in sensitive areas of my house. They're very responsive in the /r/wyzecam subreddit and announce a lot of feature updates and take feature requests through there.

It looks like the lights were turned out in the photo.  Would the wyze cameras have taken better video than our current system?  If so then perhaps one pointing at each entrance, to supplement our cameras, would be helpful (without wifi, we would still have to collect the data within the loop time of the wyze camera though).

I think we'd have to test that to be sure. Wyze uses IR LEDs and removes an IR cut filter from the optical path for better low light recording. This is a standard feature on security cams and I would expect our current ones to work the same way, though the break-in screenshot looks like ambient lighting, not IR. The Wyze cams have pretty great dynamic range (https://forums.wyzecam.com/t/fireworks-lake-kayaks/42792) and IR still gives lots of detail (https://forums.wyzecam.com/t/fox-caught-on-camera-at-night/19910)

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[Ryan Mcdermott]

I think there are a few problems that have been highlighted in this thread that the wyze cameras solve.

For instance: why is the image we have of the guy who broke into our shop a cellphone camera picture taken of an LCD screen of a video?  That's totally crazy that we're a hackerspace and THAT is what we're doing to get a photo.  With a modern camera system, you could just...send the video, or take a screenshot of the video.  Much simpler/better.

Nate, you being apprehensive about adding wyze cameras I think highlights perfectly part of the problem they solve: you don't want to add more cameras because adding more cameras is a lot of work for you, which is of course completely reasonable.  However, the wyze cams are NOT a lot of work for anybody, which is one of the main reasons I proposed them.  You just take them out of the box, point them at a QR code, and they go.  They've really done a good job of streamlining this setup process.

As far as cloud storage goes: I propose we don't use cloud storage at all.  I propose we use LOCAL STORAGE as I've said a few times here, and was a part of the original proposal.  And of course nobody is climbing on a ladder to pull an SD card out (???).  While the SD cards are physically seperate, the applications involved in using these cameras makes them *logically* centralized.  Meaning you access all of the cameras, and all of their cards, from the same place.

If we wanted to talk about backing these things up, I think that would be interesting: but it seems like backups should be a concern with any camera system.

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[Andrew Lewton]

What happens when the Wyze cloud service discontinues, they deem the models of cameras obsolete, or if we need to set these things up without any kind of internet? It sounds to me like this could be a setup to failure in 2-5 years time.

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[Mike Wolfson]

Can we still view a stream of the Wyze cameras on the internet ie. http://live.heatsynclabs.org

I find this a valuable tool for me if I am thinking of coming down to the lab, and want to see if anyone is there.

Would love to have many cameras pointed at our various stations, so I could know if a tool is being used before I head down.

-Mike

[Ryan Mcdermott]

I haven't done anything with RTSP personally, but it sounds like Jason and Brandon have.  My intuition is that these cameras could replace both the security cameras *and* the webcams with better, cheaper, and easier to install hardware.

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[Nathan Crary]

I think Nate said there was a better image, he just hasn't retrieved it yet.  The picture is actually pretty good for a camera phone photo of a screen.

Not sure what format the video is in.  I assumed it was digitally stored.  If so then it is a matter of format and usability.  This is an assumption - but for the number of times I've heard about us actually accessing/using the video's, I'm not sure it's a worthy reason to spend money (and more importantly) time to upgrade.  Especially if, as a tool, it served it purpose.

Lets move on from discussing the quality of a camera phone picture taken of a screen (or, if you like, start a new discussion about camera phone quality).

I would expect these camera's to be in similar high-up places as our current cameras.  And (it sounds like) in more places than what we currently have.  They would need power.  If the power wiring is on the outside of the walls that's one thing (it would be much easier to wire them up).  If they're on the inside of the walls, then remember that Nate spent time crawling through the ceiling getting the wiring installed for our current camera's (I do appreciate that by the way, I think it makes the place look more professional) and that process would be VERY labor intensive (I would not suggest we do it until it cools down).

This needs to boil down to how we use the current system:

* how often

* does it accomplish the purpose we asked it to perform

Compared to the new system:

* does it do EVERYTHING the current system does (with enough money & time I'm sure it would; how much money, how much time)?  And is that lost functionality valuable?

* what can it do for us that the current system can't

* are there situations we've encountered where our current system failed us and the new system would not?

* do the added features of the new system have any real value to us?

Finally, is it worth spending the time and money on a completely new system.

If they are better quality, and they don't force us to spend more than the $25/camera (we don't need to drown ourselves in reoccurring fees), then I still like the idea of buying a few to supplement the current system instead (seems like it allows for redundancy)?

Ryan's made a valid proposal.  We seem to have enough people who understand what we might be getting ourselves into (cost and labor wise).

It can be decided at the HYH meetings I guess.

[Nate Plamondon]

For the record, the current solution does record digitally, and Mesa PD has a copy of footage taken directly from the DVR.

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[Russell Mason]

It's been reported that good video quality via RTSP is only possible using Xiaomi Dafang Hacks firmware https://forums.wyzecam.com/t/real-time-streaming-protocol-rtsp/6694/874  I'd like to think it's a newbie mistake but the guys username is literally camdev...

Per the Dafang github https://github.com/EliasKotlyar/Xiaomi-Dafang-Hacks

Attentention: Do not install the latest Firmware on your Device. It will disable the support of this hack.

Further information about this topic can be found here: https://github.com/EliasKotlyar/Xiaomi-Dafang-Hacks/issues/669

Pine64 CUBE IP camera https://www.pine64.org/cube/ has a reported target price of $20 https://ameridroid.com/blogs/ameriblogs/good-read-new-pine64-products-coming-soon but the release date is not clear https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=7218

On Saturday, July 27, 2019 at 10:20:20 AM UTC-7, Brandon Gosch wrote:

WYZE cams also support RTSP. Coupled with WYZE sense and IFTTT you could probably come up with some fun integrations and additional functionality. 

On Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 8:12 AM Ryan Mcdermott <blh...@gmail.com> wrote:

Specifically wyze cams and SD cards for them.  As many cameras as we can get for that amount.

This is to replace the existing security cameras.

The logic is: the incremental cost to add or replace a wyze came is $25.  This is considerably lower than what I perceive to be the cost of our existing, DVR based system.

-Ryan

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[Dillon]

The SD cards wear out, though the new high endurance SD cards for dash cams are better. 

I don't know the Wyze cameras well and if they will alert if the SD hard has died..

[Ryan Mcdermott]

Nate offered to just install some new cameras tonight!  So that basically solves the problem of wanting to add new cameras, and renders the proposal irrelevant (for now).

Thanks, Nate!

-Ryan

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