Wyze cameras set to lose person detection next month
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On Tuesday, Wyze sent out an email to users of its cameras, letting them know that person detection will be removed from their cameras in an update scheduled for release in Jan. 2020. Person detection was added to Wyze Cam V2 and Wyze Cam Pan in July, through a partnership with Xnor.ai.
According to the email I received, Xnor.ai has terminated the contract with Wyze, requiring the company to remove the on-device person detection in its next firmware update. That update is scheduled for the middle next month.
Wyze is already working on its own person detection algorithm and plans to release it at some point in 2020. Exactly how it will work, be it on-device like the current implementation, or in the cloud is yet to be seen.
Wyze has promised that regardless of how the feature ends up working, it will remain a free feature.
This is disappointing, for a number of reasons, but Wyze seems confident that it will be able to add person detection back to its camera lineup. Ideally, person detection will remain on-device as it is now, and not require any sort of cloud assistance. The currently Xnor.ai-powered feature has worked great for me since it's launch, and I can only hope that Wyze is able to match it.