Even though there is no proper integration for it yet, I went out and bought a Wyze Cam v2. This will be both a general review of the product, and from a Home Assistant perspective. So when you get the camera, setup is simple in the app. You sign in with a Wyze account or create one, then you click “add a device”, choose Wyze Cam v2, then you setup Wi-Fi credentials. Now a QR code appears on the screen, so you plug in the Wyze cam, and press the setup button on the bottom inside the stand thing. Now you just point the camera at the QR code, and it works.
You immediately get all the features working, very simple. Great camera quality, recently improved person detection, motion detection, and sound detection. 2 way audio is decent quality too.
It also can record motion and sound events and save them to cloud, but you can disable it. You can also record to a Micro SD card. I believe someone made firmware that makes it just an rtsp camera and makes it impossible for them to spy on you, but i dont care and wont get into that. (Edit, it is called OpenIPC, I will try it out soon
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Now for the home assistant part.
So to get the RTSP for the camera, first you have to actually flash a different firmware, with RTSP support from Wyze’s website. Took about 5 minutes, wasnt too hard. All i needed was to put the files on a Micro SD card and put it in the camera.
Then in the app you turn on RTSP.
You then create a username and password, and it gives you the url. Easy as that.
Here is my config.
camera:
- platform: generic
name: Office Camera Test
still_image_url: local/wyze-logo.jpg
stream_source: rtsp://admin:[email protected]/live
It works. What else can I say? The quality is decent for the price. Good low light, too.
I don’t use anything advanced like motion eye or whatever yet.
That’s pretty much it. My only complaint is it only being rated for indoor use, but others have put silicon and made it water ressistant, and you can also get cases for outdoor on Amazon for pretty cheap.
I asked Wyze if they are working on a water and dust ressistant version, they told me yes.
If you need a cheap 1080p camera with loud enough 2 way audio, ability to see RTSP in HA, maybe consider this. I’m not really sure how it holds up to competition like Xiaomi though, but Wyze will likely send firmware updates for a while.
https://amzn.to/31MvA8R
I am not in any way affiliated with Wyze.
1 YEAR UPDATE:
Ok so its been 1 year, so I decided to give some updates.
Reliability: its been pretty good so far
Camera Quality: It’s ok, dynamic range isn’t great but that’s not so bad since it is an indoor camera anyway, but bright windows in a dim room isn’t a good combination. Its only 15fps and the shutter speed probably isn’t that high. It works fine outdoor as long as it is protected from rain. RTSP Wyze firmware now has Person Detection. Wyze Cam Outdoor is now available, I have one but it is battery powered so RTSP probably isn’t a good idea. But i wonder if i can break into it…
Update 2: Wyze has also now announced the Wyze Cam V3, which is an upgraded version that had a better sensor as well as water resistance. I have pre-ordered some and when they add RTSP, I’ll make sure to post about it here.
