Earlier this week, Wyze rolled out person detection capabilities to its current lineup of ultra-affordable cameras. The new feature will tag a motion clip if it detects a person in the clip. You can then apply a filters to only receive alerts for people, instead of trees blowing in the wind, flies, or other objects. The processing runs locally on the camera using technology created by Xnor—no cloud AI services necessary. That’s an impressive offering for a $20 camera. The best part is this feature is totally free! All it takes is an app and camera firmware update (for V2 and Pan models—it’s not compatible with V1 cams). In our initial testing, it seems to work well.
Perhaps the bigger news that came with the person detection rollout lies within the app itself. Person detection falls under a menu labeled Wyze Service. Near the end of the person detection intro YouTube video, we can see a bit into the future of Wyze. Dave Crosby, one of Wyze’s co-founders, says that person detection is just the first of its Wyze Services. They will “add additional services, at the right price” in the future. We wouldn’t be surprised if Wyze adds some premium services in the future at an additional cost beyond the initial devices themselves.
Even without premium services, Wyze continues to deliver a lot of bang for your buck. But some customers may be willing to pay for longer clips, which Wyze currently caps at 12 seconds. Others may pay to avoid the 5-minute cooldown currently enforced between clips. Keep an eye on this space to see what Wyze offers in the future under the Wyze Services umbrella.
