“Could a $20 home security camera actually be any good? That was the question on our mind when we were pitched the WyzeCam, the first offering from a cabal of ex-Amazon employees trading under the name Wyze Labs,” Michael Ansaldo writes for TechHive. “Turns out the answer is, yeah, it can be very good.”
“WyzeCam defies everything we know about Wi-Fi security cameras. Not only does it cost a fraction of most of its popular competitors (you could buy 10 WyzeCams for the price of one Nest Cam), it also doesn’t require a costly cloud subscription or look like a sci-fi film prop,” Ansaldo writes. “But don’t let this adorkable 2.20-by-1.97-by-1.97-inch cube fool you. It houses many of the same features as $200 cameras, including 1080p video, motion and sound detection, night vision, and two-way audio. It also comes with 14 days of free cloud storage — double the most generous offers of other DIY cams — for detection-alert videos and up to 32GB of local storage via microSD card.”
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say the most attractive thing about WyzeCam is its $20 price tag, but this camera is no cheapie cash-in. On what we now consider de rigeur security features, such as high-def video and sound and motion detection, it holds its own with its much higher-priced brethren,” Ansaldo writes. “That it also includes sophisticated features like smoke/CO2 alarm listening and time-lapse recording is remarkable.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Stocking stuffer!
At Amazon…
Currently unavailable.
We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.
I only need outside cameras. Once the jerk is inside, it’s too wet to plow, for him.
Are you CRAZY to recommend this camera? Have you not read the reviews? Like
“The camera video quality is definitely good, but there is no privacy… Since there is no way to use the camera locally without their app and just using a regular app like “ip cam viewer” that simply uses RTSP, I ended up putting an SD card on it and disabling its internet access by assigning an IP that is restricted by my router…
Well, to my surprise, the camera is CHINESE intelligent and decided to change its macaddress to a new one (completely different from the one in the back label) in order to gain a new IP from my router and regain internet access.
Definitely not a safe cam for indoors…”
or
“Why are your cameras sending data to non AWS servers? I consistently see UDP traffic (port 10001) heading to Japan, Germany, China + other locations.
IPs below
45.79.98.243, 45.32.19.31, 45.76.82.115, 106.15.0.207, 192.240.123.153, 192.240.110.98”
Thank you!
Funny how none of them are verified buyers.
Agree with the posting about the spy aspect. I suggest this entire article and its links be removed from macdailynews AND/OR a prominent warning be included in this brief and the links be taken down. Irresponsible as it is posted and linked now and puts people in danger. Rule of thumb- it it’s too good to be true then it’s too good to be true.
The question for any IoT device:
Q: Has it been hacked?
In this case:
A: No, not yet! But keep an eye out.
Then again, we have a NEW question to ask with this particular IoT device:
Q: Does it send its data to potentially nefarious locations on the net?
As ‘TheTruth’ points out, apparently the answer is:
A: YES.
Next question:
Q: So what do these nefarious types actually do with your video data?
I don’t want to know. IoT fails again.
I have 4 of the WyzeCams set up in my home and I love them. I’ll admit, I did not check to see if they were performing unwanted web traffic until I read some of the previous comments. So I ran WireShark on my network and have seen no suspicious traffic to any web servers. I’m not sure if this was something that Wyze Labs may have corrected in updated firmware revisions or not, but it doesn’t seem to exist now. I will continue to check my traffic though, just in case.
For now, I am very please with the quality of my $20 cameras. They function great!
AWS (Amazon’s cloud) is used ONLY when Wyze camera’s motion detection triggers…no other filming is sent to AWS due to it being cost prohibitive. Also, manufacturer of camera is listed on Wyze twitter site…not from a Xiaomi factory which surprised me since they have a clone. Suspicious web traffic/servers mentioned in detail on several reddit threads fyi. Interesting read for safety minded ppl.
Seth Kolodny