Wyze Security Cameras Will Go Offline Tonight For Two Hours (theverge.com) 69
If you have Wyze cameras or a Wyze home security system, you will need to make other arrangements to monitor your property from 12AM PT to 2AM PT tomorrow morning. The Verge reports: The smart home company sent an email to its customers this week stating that system maintenance on February 8th at 12AM PT will impact every feature of the system that relies on the app or website. That includes being able to alert Noonlight, the professional monitoring company Wyze uses for its Sense security system, about a potential break-in. Not only will your security system be down, but if you use Wyze cameras to keep an eye on things going bump in the night, you'll have to stay awake. Wyze cameras won't be able to upload any video to the cloud or send alerts for motion or other events to the app.
While it's a good thing that Wyze is giving customers a heads-up, the flip side is that everyone is getting a heads-up. It's posting a sign that any location using this equipment will be unprotected between these hours, with basically no notice to create a backup plan or take other precautions, depending on your security concerns. It's also worrisome that the professional security customers have paid for and rely on can be completely disabled for "maintenance."
While it's a good thing that Wyze is giving customers a heads-up, the flip side is that everyone is getting a heads-up. It's posting a sign that any location using this equipment will be unprotected between these hours, with basically no notice to create a backup plan or take other precautions, depending on your security concerns. It's also worrisome that the professional security customers have paid for and rely on can be completely disabled for "maintenance."
Oh no! (Score:1)
Oh wait....I didn't structure my life to be dependent on "the cloud".
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For the same price, I bought a bunch of cameras that can record on 128 gb flash cards. It seems that wise cameras have a maximum recording capacity of 32 gb - just not enough.
I'll be throwing a couple of them on the front balcony later this year. They'll be mounted on the lids of really big glass jars, and power will be from the outside plug. In the winter, I'll just throw a couple of aquarium heaters in the jars, and screw the jars onto the lids. Voila - wintererproof camera housings :-)
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For the same price, I bought a bunch of cameras that can record on 128 gb flash cards. It seems that wise cameras have a maximum recording capacity of 32 gb - just not enough.
I'll be throwing a couple of them on the front balcony later this year. They'll be mounted on the lids of really big glass jars, and power will be from the outside plug. In the winter, I'll just throw a couple of aquarium heaters in the jars, and screw the jars onto the lids. Voila - wintererproof camera housings :-)
What good is recording stuff to a flash card (regardless of the size) if the camera is stolen, the house burns down, etc...? Or are you saying that your cameras will store video temporarily on the flash card until some service comes back online to store it more permanently?
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the house burns down
What good is watching your house burn down from the other side of the world? It's still burning down...
Why the fuck even have cameras IN your house? All you need, is to monitor who approaches and departs your house...if it's been broken into, you've got them on camera.
People have become so dumb about their video monitoring needs.
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the house burns down
What good is watching your house burn down from the other side of the world? It's still burning down...
If it's an electrical fire, nothing. If it's arson, having the evidence might come in handy.
Why the fuck even have cameras IN your house? All you need, is to monitor who approaches and departs your house...if it's been broken into, you've got them on camera.
People have become so dumb about their video monitoring needs.
I never said "in" your house. And if I decided I wanted a camera in my house, it would certainly NOT be connected to some external storage service. I'd buy the dumbest IP camera I could find, stick it on an isolated VLAN that only has the camera and a storage server.
Re:Oh no! (Score:4, Funny)
> All you need, is to monitor who approaches and departs your house...if it's been broken into, you've got them on camera.
Your cameras just show your wife letting in the mailman, the milkman and the garbageman for 30minutes each once a week.
Since there is no actual break-in it's all good.
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If you've put cameras in your house to monitor your spouse and family...you got a whole different set of problems to solve.
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Who said this was a problem? He gets off on it and got tired of missing the action.
Re: Oh no! (Score:2)
"People have become so dumb about their video monitoring needs."
Say that to the people who had their cameras pointed into the living area and caught their babysitter thrashing their disabled, non verbal child. =Sometimes= this kind of video monitoring is needed.
Re: Oh no! (Score:2)
Better to "live in fear" in this manner than to end up with a battered, traumatized, or maybe dead kid.
Note that I said "sometimes", and I myself wouldn't have a camera pointed into my livingroom 24/7. But if I had a baby sitter over, then "SMILE!".
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The GP said nothing about cameras inside the home.
However it could be useful to have well concealed cameras inside the home which upload somewhere (even via wireless to a server hidden in the attic) so even if the camera is detected and destroyed/taken, the images are very likely to be available.
When going through a home looking for stuff, an intruder may well slip up and show their face or tattoos or something else revealing that they were able to hide successfully when approaching the home with a primary
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Trust me - my first layer of security is physical. Even a locksmith takes an hour to open one lock (left the keys inside) - and that's not counting the deadbolt, which with a steel frame, forget it. My first security precaution was upgrading the locks on all exterior doors. And it's kind of hard to just bust in from outside since I'm on the 3rd (top) floor. And there are no adjoining balconies.
I have the option for online storage, but quite frankly, if everything is destroyed in a fire, I have bigger conc
Re:Oh no! (Score:4, Informative)
That's assuming someone is going to try breaking in through picking the door lock..
A lot of thieves are opportunistic, my CCTV caught someone going around every house and car on the street trying the doors. Door locked, she moves on to the next and didn't seem to notice my fairly prominent cameras.
Other thieves will simply use brute force, either against a door, a window or even a vent - whichever looks easier.
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steel door frames and high-grade deadbolt locks make trying to get in with a prybar a VERY noisy business. Windows are on the 3rd floor, so unless they're carrying a ladder ... so I'm not that worried. They'll move on to easier pickings, which is the whole idea.
The real worry is people you know. Not friends or acquaintances, but just people you know, like neighbours' kids, the janitor, etc. If they know you've got half a dozen cameras or more recording, they won't try.
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Trust me - my first layer of security is physical. Even a locksmith takes an hour to open one lock... My first security precaution was upgrading the locks on all exterior doors.
Check out The Lockpicking Lawyer's YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@lockp... [youtube.com] before you get too smug about your first layer of security.
As for choosing a locksmith - even a reputable and experienced one - as a benchmark for a lock's "unpickability", you might want to watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] . The locks you currently use may thwart the average B&E artist, as well as the average locksmith; but if your house is a high-value target, then even the best locks you can find may
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The Wyze cams I have do not store video on a cloud. It stores motion events for 12 secs.
The SD cards are for my own retention.
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For the same price, I bought a bunch of cameras that can record on 128 gb flash cards. It seems that wise cameras have a maximum recording capacity of 32 gb - just not enough.
I've got some of the Wyze v3 cameras (released in November of 2020) -- they do accept 128 GB cards.
They do have their share of limitations, but "they only take cards that are 32 gb max" isn't one of them.
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They'll be mounted on the lids of really big glass jars, and power will be from the outside plug. In the winter, I'll just throw a couple of aquarium heaters in the jars, and screw the jars onto the lids. Voila - wintererproof camera housings :-)
I have questions. Aquarium heaters require water otherwise they crack, so you're filling the jars with water and putting heaters inside the water? And the heaters have cords, so how are you putting the lid on the jars if the cord is sticking out? Is there a reason you don't want to use a $8 waterproof heat mat? [amazon.com]
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Retards (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm suspicious of cloud based anything that touches real world equipment.
And this is why.
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On a pure practical level it just seems like a terrible idea to have your security system dependent on a reliable internet connections and some cloud services. At the very least there needs to be a base hub in your home that can operate offline and provide the basics like short term recording and simple alerts. To have it wholly tethered to the cloud seems insane. How can people working at Wyze be building out a system like this without alarm bells going off (pun only partially intended)?
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This is for people that want to utter their peace of mind at having a security system, without actually having much of a security system.
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Not only that, I see your point about general availability, but what about the liability?
Bryan Lunduke put on a great talk about this at one point, I really enjoyed it, it's as funny and sarcastic as it should be, but with a lot of great points made. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HxPzutkNYw
Most things shouldn't be connected to the internet... =)
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At the very least there needs to be a base hub in your home that can operate offline and provide the basics like short term recording and simple alerts.
You shouldn't even need that. SD card slots in the cameras for local storage, and having them operate as a cluster (think in terms of controllerless WAPs) would solve the need for anything centralized. Of course, if your business plan is "people pay us monthly forever, and if they lose connection to our service (or it we decide to turn it off) it sucks to be them" then you have no interest in autonomous operation, do you?
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You are unfortunately correct. The tech world has pivoted superbly to subscription based products, to the point where we seem to have forgotten that in the past we used to be able to pay for something once and it worked. I vaguely remember when _aaS was a cool new buzzword that we didn't fully understand. We definitely understand it now.
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I'm suspicious of cloud based anything that touches real world equipment.
To be fair, a camera not recording for two hours hardly is the end of the world. I can look down my street and see several houses which have no security cameras at all *gasp*. Course, being that I don't live in the greatest of neighborhoods, those people probably have other ways of securing their home, if you catch my drift.
Now, people who connect their garage door openers to their voice assistants, yeah, that's a bad idea.
"Alexa, open the garage door!"
Re: Retards (Score:1)
It's not that the camera going down is bad. It's that it's everyone's camera is going down.
This is an instance of correlated risk--the very thing that good resilient design is supposed to avoid. But now that everything is on the cloud (that is, controlled by software written by god knows who sitting god knows where), you have that much harder of a time ensuring that is one thing breaks, the rest don't follow.
My nightmare scenario isn't some no name security cameras, it's a prolonged power outage that also t
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My nightmare scenario isn't some no name security cameras, it's a prolonged power outage that also takes out the internet...and all the internet connected toasters and cooktops and refrigerators and lightswitches that now won't even work on backup power but no internet.
Most devices which don't actually require internet access as part of their primary functionality typically "fail safe" in the event of a connectivity loss. I've got a bunch of IOT devices and the only quirk I've noticed is that without internet access, my smart bulbs will be stuck on whatever color setting they were most recently set to. They otherwise operate just like normal lightbulbs when not online, same as the smart switches. The smart bulbs did cause a need for an odd household rule though: if a h
an big vendor outage is likely and has happen. (Score:2)
an big vendor outage is likely and has happen.
not that long an go alot of big vendors had the UK zones shutdown due to an extreme heat wave takeing down the DCs
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To be fair, the only stuff that doesn't work is stuff that dumb cameras don't have anyway. They appear to still be capturing video locally, you just won't get alerts or clips saved to the cloud.
The privacy implications are more of an issue, especially since the cameras doubtless capture many public areas and other people's houses.
Ooright! Time for a crime spree! (Score:2)
..Is what I would be saying if I were that way inclined, and knew this outage was afoot. As they say, no face no case, and with all the cameras offline and a broadcast advising all defences are down, now would be the time.
Never will my security be dependent on someone else's uptime. Say no to the cloud kids.
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..Is what I would be saying if I were that way inclined, and knew this outage was afoot.
You're forgetting the small detail that a significant portion of Americans are armed. Heck, I'm a center-left gay man and even I own a gun. I believe the kids today call this sort of situation "fuck around and find out."
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is it any different than anywhere else where no one is likely to have a gun, you have a gun, the intruder has a gun. gun or no gun, the winner is probably the one with the element of surprise.
Criminal psychology is way beyond my pay grade, but generally burglars aren't looking for a conflict. The kind of criminals who are brazen enough to pull a gun on someone are gonna rob gas stations/convenience stores/etc. - some place where they know they can score cash rather than dig through the sort of crap most of us keep in our homes.
Or, like the sign says, "There is nothing here worth dying for."
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Exactly this, so they will target a property that they know to be empty.
Wait until people go to work, or go on holiday. Perhaps even knock on the door posing as a salesman to check if anyone answers.
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> Heck, I'm a center-left gay man and even I own a gun.
I don't think it works like that.
If you suck one cock, you're a cock sucker.
If you reject one vaccine, you're an anti-vaxxer.
If you own one gun, you're a right-wing white supremacist.
Prime (Score:3)
Amazon Prime reality TV show content will be serious lacking this week.
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If you cared (Score:2)
You'd be using local storage already.
Re:If you cared (Score:4, Insightful)
You cannot rely on local storage only as the potential burglars could damage or steal your storage. You can set up local storage and sync to an external (cloud) storage under your control, but then it requires competences that people don't have. And week worth of external storage of continuous video in good quality is expensive. For non-nerds or even nerds with limited free time, it's either nothing or these consumer-grade security cameras managed by an external vendor.
There is also the problem that in the event that you are victim of a burglary in which you are brought unconscious to the hospital (or die): if the local storage is obvious, burglars will find it and destroy it. If it's too well hidden, police might miss it. Having an external vendor will streamline the access of the police to the recordings that in principle you want the police to find so they can avenge your death.
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People are *obsessed* with the idea that they're going to be the victim of a crime.
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You'd be using local storage already.
I've got both a Ring doorbell camera and a generic el cheapo Tuya-based camera that uses an SD card. When it comes to reliability, they're both about equal. The Ring frequently misses motion events (unless it's a passing car, it loves recording those) and doesn't record when my shitty Spectrum broadband service is operating at its usual level of reliability (or lack thereof).
The Tuya camera sometimes randomly corrupts recordings for no discernable reason. I've tried several different brands of SD cards
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I use Amcrest cameras, but any camera that outputs an rtsp stream will do. ZMNinja Android app, and I'm set. No cloud -- I even took the extra precaution of blocking the cameras' MAC addresses in my router from directly accessing the internet (no accidental transmission to the cloud, and no unintended firmware updates). I run my own ntp server, so they grab their timestamps from there.
Thanks for springing this on me last minute! (Score:2)
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Depending which model (maybe not), these cameras accept built-in microsd storage.
They might not know immediately to alert the cops, but they'll have a video of your entry when they do. Good luck. Ensure you take/break enough to make the insurance co-pay!
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Or steal/destroy the cameras and their microsd card while you're there...
Stop updating at midnight (Score:2)
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So for most things, patch when it's midnight in the time zone where most of your customers are.
However, for a security system, patch when it is midnight in the middle of the pacific!
Downtime Notice (Score:2)
It will still record to local SD card, so you can still send your blurry infrared footage to the police so they can ignore it. Let's face it, these things are about as useful as those dummy security cameras but they come with a monthly subscription.
That said, what kind of infrastructure has a single point of failure like that? It's almost unbelievable
Never depend on a cloud service (Score:4, Insightful)
...if you have any technical inclination.
With a handful of IP cameras and free management software, I have a system that will store a LOT of video and alert me on my phone if there's a problem. It doesn't report to Amazon, Google, or a server in China, and it gets patched on my schedule. I don't have to log in to Facebook or LinkedIn to get it to work.
It's not even rocket science, it's "have an available computer and can follow instructions" stuff.
Wise Devops say: (Score:2)
Versionize and preroute your API. For instance make your api call something like:
Example.Com:/V1.0/CommandOldWay
Example.Com:/V1.6/CommandNewWay
And use a load balancer rule to route the API call to the appropriate back end services. Eliminates having to do "light switch" version or infrastructure changes and keeps the services usable while upgrades are in flight. Once you're sure the new version is stable and working, then you can begin to deploy the changes to the field gradually or quickly as suits the sit
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Thank you, this needed to be said.
Are they cheap, lazy, or inept?
Wyze owners who work here can install openmiko from Github and stream via RTSP to their own surveillance system.
PS has anyone seen fsck.vfat with the lowmem patches that will build on mips? There's an open issue on it there but in general many projects would benefit.
So Wooze (Score:2)
Does not provide a DVR that can be used as a backup to record what's going on?
Wyze System Maintenance (Score:1)
My thoughts upon reading of the Wyze system maintenance and its impact on security features were not unlike the feeling that grips one during the nights of the Purge. A sense of vulnerability and exposure, as the only shelter from the dangers of the world is suddenly stripped away.
It is disconcerting to consider the idea that the professional security customers have paid for and rely on can be disabled for something as prosaic as "maintenance." The lack of notice given, with only a narrow window in which to
wow (Score:2)
I have to say I wouldn't have expected this. This is heist movie level tech. Almost as bad as vulnerable cameras that let the bad guys "loop the video".
Why doesn't Wyze doing their updates in a way that won't cause an outtage (google seems to be able to do this), or at least randomize when a given camera is offline.
The Purge (Score:2)
I think we can all agree it's going to be a fun night. Let me just get my tools.
Actual reported downtime of 16minutes (Score:1)
List of crimes prevented by Wyze: (Score:2)
profit!
Or not (Score:2)
Or I could just carry right on "not monitoring my property," because I'm not so delusional to think there's anything especially attractive about it to other people, or to think danger lurks around every corner.