Monthly Archives: February 2021

Uncategorized, Video

Physically Disconnecting the Speaker and Microphone on the Wyzecam V3

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The Wyzecam v3 comes with some great features – namely the $20 price tag and excellent starlight sensor. It also comes with a microphone and speaker – both of which have their downsides. For those that wish to disconnect them (say, for privacy reasons) — and don’t fully trust the software “disable” — one can physically disconnect them without damaging the camera.

NOTE: if you plan to disconnect the speaker you should probably do this only AFTER setting up the camera, as it provides voice prompts during the setup.

Estimated time: This takes less than 5 minutes.

Step 1 – Use a plastic spudger such as this one for $1.99 from ifixit

Step 2 – Guide the spudger under the outside of the white rim on the front of the camera. Run it around the ENTIRE white rim to loosen the underlying adhesive. Be careful not to push it too far under the rim as it will mar the adhesive tape and thereby decrease re-assembly quality.

Note the sticky tape on the back of the white insert. You want to avoid marring this as it will affect the reassmbled product

Step 3 – Use the pointy end of the tool to carefully remove the three white inserts. This part is easy – but if you get it wrong it will be VERY hard to get the underlying screws out! Tip: push on the far side of the squishy insert to cause it to rotate, then you can carefully tweezer it out.

Step 4 – Use a small screwdriver to loosen the three phillips screws. Yes – only three; if Wyze had a fourth hole and screw the price would be much higher.

Step 5 – Carefully insert the spudger in between the white case and the black front. This is the trickiest part! You don’t want to damage the red moisture seal just underneath the black front. To avoid damaging it, do not repeatedly pry at the black front – instead get the tool just under the edge and lift.

  • Insert the spudger, as in the previous step, carefully working out the black portion.
  • As you lift the black part up you will note the red seal just under the black edge. Careful! It punctures easily

Step 6 – Once you have carefully lifted out the black portion the electronics slide out easily. The mic and speakers are on the bottom of the assembly. You can use the tool to carefully loosen the connectors. This should allow easy reconnection if desired later.

With microphone and speaker disconnected

Step 7 – Reassmebly. Push the assembly back in the case. Insert the three screws and tighten. Carefully push the white inserts. Re-attach the white rim.

The reassembled product – you can’t even tell it was modified – which is kinda the point!
Uncategorized

Comparison of Wyzev3 Sensor vs RPi IMX327

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One of the best low-light sensors for the raspberry pi is the Sony IMX327 (available here: https://www.inno-maker.com/product/mipi-cam-327/ for around $90). The wyzev3 offers similar starlight performance for $20 – a fraction of the cost. But how do they compare?

IMX327
Wyzev3

As can be seen, both images capture all the overall scene well. The white balance of the IMX327 was not adjusted leaving the overall scene seeming a bit “warmer” than the wyzev3.

As for detail a few important differences pop out:

  • The wyze seems to saturate around light sources. Especially pronounced near the streetlamp and the car’s break lights.
  • The wyze has a slightly wider field of view
  • The wyzev3 doesn’t seem to capture some detail, such as the lettering on the stop sign, as well as the IMX327 – this is especially apparent when zooming in on the full size image.
  • The wyze seems better at keeping details crisp in “busier” sections of the scene – examples include the ground around the forest on the right of the image
  • The wyze seems to suffer more motion blur. I believe that the wyze acheives some of its performance by combining multiple frames. This improves low light performance but smears together details.

While the IMX327 seems to have potentially better quality, cost almost hands the victory to the wyzev3. By the time you add a fully-equipped pi4 to the IMX327 your cost is close to $160. Cutting that in half you could point four times as many wyze cameras at the problem and have vastly better combined video coverage. Add to this the wyzev3 includes IR-LEDs (near and far), microphones, a speaker, and can be set up by a non-PhD.

The only caveat here is that wyze3 is a “closed” product. Unless open source firmwares can be loaded on it, it will never be as secure as the pi solution – users of wyzev3 are at the mercy of wyze to protect their data. To this end there is some hope that wyze will release an RTSP version of their firmware, as they did for their v2 product.