Roku Expands Into Smart Home, With Some Help From Wyze

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By way of Reddit, Walmart, a pair of shipping manifests (1, 2), and some noodling around we learn that Roku is imminently expanding beyond streaming media and into the smart home… with more than a half dozen white-labeled Wyze products, a seemingly confirmed ‘Roku Smart Home’ Channel, and likely a new dedicated mobile app.

Thus far, the Roku Smart Home hardware consists of a Roku color bulb, Roku white bulb, Roku lightstrip, Roku Smart lug, Roku Indoor Camera, Roku Outdoor Camera, Roku Floodlight Camera and a Roku Pan Camera are confirmed. But Wyze has a deep bench and there could be more to both the product lineup and relationship.

Setting the video streaming scene with thematic mood lighting makes total sense and, beyond traditional app or voice control and automation, it’d be quite compelling if Roku streamers directly with the connected lighting to harmonize television content. Something like the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box… but without breaking the bank. I can also imagine Roku’s Smart Home television app (pic above and below) itemizing one’s home accessories along with streaming the requisite video cam feeds. But, beyond those obvious technological tie-ups, I wonder about the respective company’s business intentions. Could this be a Roku investment in Wyze and dry-run ahead of a potential Amazon-esque acquisition of iRobot Roomba?

Interestingly, given their original vision, TiVo had a great opportunity to move into this space once upon a time with $1b cash in the bank. Yet, as has been the case the last decade or so, Roku beats them to every punch. And one of the many ways Roku has outmaneuvered TiVo is through efficiency. Rather than reinventing the wheel, Roku is clearly heavily leaning upon Wyze for their smart home ambitions vs starting from scratch.

(Thanks Nathaniel!)

12 thoughts on “Roku Expands Into Smart Home, With Some Help From Wyze”

  1. Glad to see it. Love Roku and am a huge fan of Wyze, which is based in my home state. I’m optimistic that innovative consumer-focused services and products will emerge from this relationship.

  2. Used to be a big fan of Wyze, simple idea take a Chinese surveillance camera, typical 1.0 only software no updates. and improve the software.
    Except the camera had a backdoor
    For anyone to view. They stopped up-dates, forgot to notify the consumers of the flaw. And discontinued it. I have 4 cameras ?

  3. I was a huge fan of Wyze in 2019-20 – but they got too greedy and started charging for features that should have been embedded in the camera itself – except that you now needed a cloud account. In addition, the other home automation products needed their Wyze app – which meant that we were stuck with whatever logic they in their wisdom decided to offer and cutting out Home Assistant (yes – there is a way of using HA – but it is clunky). I am permanently off Wyze now and will invest in other companies (Sonoff and others).

  5. Very happy with my 20 Wyze v3 indoor/outdoor security cameras. The quality for this price range is stunning and pretty much matches Ring except you’re paying way less. The support is quick via AI chat and you can get a hold of real human beings without any problems. I had 1 cam that didn’t work properly, it took about a week to be replaced free of charge. The current update version 4.36.9.139 supports garage door controller trigger duration settings. So far there have been 16 updates from 15 Nov 2020 until 18 May 2022. I’ve subscribed to the $99.00 renewable yearly plan for 99 Wyze v3 cam’s offering online monitoring. If the plan is still available grab it! I highly, highly recommend Wyze v3 cams

  6. I would love to see Roku implement a channel that would allow you to view Roku/Wyze channel feeds. Put this in action and I’m sold! I’m looking forward to all of the possibilities from this new relationship.

  8. That’s the question Uncle Ron… will the Roku Smart Home channel connect to straight up Wyze stuff? If not, will there be a dedicated Wyze channel too? Seems like we’ll find out this week.

  9. @Bill, they have newer cameras and are get updates quite regularly. But if, just if, the Chinese or whoever else wants to look through my cameras and see my front yard and back yard then so be it. Nothing there but grass and a dog ;)

  10. Yeah, if something is on the Internet, it can be abused. I generally advise against running any vendor’s camera indoors. If you’re on vacation or need to keep an eye on an elderly relative, you’d make an exception. And, on the hardware front, there are some potentially more secure solutions than a Wyze or Ring (like Unifi or Apple HKSV).

    But, beyond that, yes it’s been my experience that Wyze has had a hard time keeping products updated and some functional. Like my first gen contact sensors that were bricked and robot vacs bricked due to expired certificate. My vac escaped that fate, but navigates poorly – possibly due to not seeing a software update since April 2021.

  12. So most things are live now, including product on walmart.com and roku.com, mobile apps, and a Roku cameras channel. I wasn’t able to link an existing Wyzecam v3 to the Roku app fwiw. Interestingly, the Roku v3 comes in two SKUs – indoor and outdoor. The outdoor has a longer power cord, additional protection, and more mounting clips. The Roku Smart Home Channel is just video feeds at the moment, with onscreen alerts while doing other stuff. No video+light sync… yet?!

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