Do any of you watch TheVoice? (No I haven’t got sidetracked and I haven’t lost my mind. This is all related. Bear with me!) A few years ago a guy named Dave Crosby was on The Voice and his daughter Claire, a YouTube sensation, sang with him. Well, I was intrigued so I started following them on YouTube. Dave used to work for Amazon but he and some friends left Amazon to start their own company. They went to Japan to find a quality product that they could mass produce and sell at a reasonable price in America. Their company is Wyze and their first product was Wyzecam, a $20 security camera!! I don’t know if you’ve priced them but security cameras can cost hundreds of dollars, but now there’s one out there for $20? Would it work? Well, we decided to give it a try. It’s advertised as an indoor camera, but if you locate it out of the weather and you don’t expose it to extreme temperatures, it works like a charm. Here are some screen shots from our camera.
As you can see, it works day or night. It is activated by motion and records what’s happening. For those of you who may not be familiar with home security systems, the camera can be checked, activated, or turned off with an app on my phone. We use it for a lot of things besides security. We watch the bears. We check the weather. We look to see if that handyman came to work. Anyway! I bet you’re wondering why I’m talking about cameras. Well, an interesting thing happened. My camera captured this video of bears on my front Porch
Cool huh!
Well, the Wyze app on my phone has a section called ”Discover”. It’s a social media type section where WyzeCam users can share interesting or funny videos their cameras have recorded and other users can comment. So I submitted my bear video and titled it “Anybody Home?” Needless to say, it was quite popular (20,000+ views). A few weeks later I got an email from the people at Wyze asking for my home address because I had won a prize for “Best Video Wildlife Division”. What? (I vaguely remembered something about prizes being awarded occasionally when I submitted my video but I didn’t think much of it.) I almost didn’t send them my address because there are so many internet scams these days. But if you can’t trust your security company...... I sent them my address and wondered what my prize might be. I figured it would be discounts or coupons for more merchandise. Anyway, a few weeks later I got an envelope from Wyze. Oh boy, must be my coupons! You can imagine my shock and surprise when I saw this!
I was flabbergasted! Oh but wait! It gets even better. We were out of town, but when we got back home I found this package from Wyze.
That box contains 4 cameras, camera mounting devices, 2 smart plugs, 4 smart light bulbs, an SD card for the camera, a smart surge protector, and a trophy. I was stunned! I went to their Facebook page and sent them a thank-you note. Here’s their response.
Now I’m speechless, except to say I’m very impressed with this company and I wanted to share this story with you. So if you need any security devices, you might give them a try. I saw some of their cameras last week at Home Depot or you can buy them online.
