Wyze cameras are cheap and genuinely good, and Wyze's default path is app-first and cloud-friendly — especially if you're on Cam Plus. But you don't have to leave them there: you can pull a plain RTSP stream off the camera and keep it on your own LAN. The catch is that Wyze RTSP has always been finicky, so the real trick isn't turning it on, it's putting go2rtc in front of it.
How local RTSP on Wyze actually works
Wyze's own RTSP has always been a beta, model-specific affair. For the v2, v3, and Pan, Wyze documents an official RTSP firmware you flash from microSD and then switch on in the app — though the download files have come and gone from their site, with a fresh v3 / Pan v3 beta surfacing in late 2025. It works, but it leans on the Wyze app and account, and the RTSP firmware locks the camera out of future app features.
A common community route — the one this post leans on — is wz_mini_hacks. You write the mod to a FAT32 microSD card with a DOS/MBR partition map (exFAT, ext, or a GPT-formatted card won't boot it), insert it, and power on. The camera comes up with SSH, local RTSP, and a lot more control. Once configured, the stream can stay local on your LAN.
This is unofficial firmware: it can brick a camera, it carries no manufacturer support, and a careless network setup can expose it. Don't port-forward these cameras. Use strong credentials or SSH keys, keep them on a trusted LAN or a dedicated camera VLAN, and if you're not comfortable recovering a camera from a failed flash, stop here.
The part people miss is firmware. RTSP only works on specific versions, so check before you flash:
| Camera | wz_mini_hacks RTSP-compatible firmware |
|---|---|
| Wyze Cam v2 | Latest * |
| Wyze Cam v3 / Floodlight | 4.36.9.139 or older |
| Wyze Cam Pan | Latest * |
| Wyze Cam Pan v2 | 4.49.1.47 or older |
* Wyze Cam v2 and Pan run on the latest firmware, but RTSP audio isn't supported on the newest versions.
On the Cam v3 and Floodlight, anything newer than 4.36.9.139 still lets you root the camera for SSH, but RTSP and the cmd features are gone. If you're setting one up for streaming, pin it to that firmware (or older) first and turn off auto-update — an overnight firmware bump is the most common way people quietly lose their stream.
The stream URL
Once the hack is running and RTSP is enabled, the stream lives on port 8554. For a single high-quality stream:
rtsp://admin:wyzecam@<camera-ip>:8554/unicastEnable both the high- and low-res substreams and they split into /video1_unicast and /video2_unicast. Change the default password in the hack's config first — wyzecam is not a secret.
Why go2rtc, not a direct pull
Here's the real lesson from running a handful of these: the Wyze RTSP server falls over when several clients pull from it at once. Open the stream in Home Assistant, a dashboard tile, and Frigate at the same time and you'll get artifacting, freezes, and dropped connections. The fix is to never let more than one client touch the camera directly.
That's what go2rtc is for — and it's no coincidence the wz_mini_hacks project credits it. Configured as the single restream source, go2rtc can pull each camera once and serve the rest of your tools from that copy. One connection to the finicky camera, many stable consumers:
# go2rtc.yaml -- pull each Wyze cam once, fan it out
streams:
garage: rtsp://admin:CHANGE_ME@192.168.1.50:8554/unicast
porch: rtsp://admin:CHANGE_ME@192.168.1.51:8554/unicast
nursery: rtsp://admin:CHANGE_ME@192.168.1.52:8554/unicastPoint Home Assistant and Frigate at go2rtc's endpoints instead of the cameras and the artifacting largely disappears. go2rtc also gives you WebRTC, which is what makes a camera tile load in well under a second instead of the multi-second spin raw RTSP gives you in a browser.
Once your Frigate alerts are tested and trusted, disable the duplicate Wyze cloud motion events and push notifications you no longer need. Frigate gives you more local control over object detection and alert logic — just prove that path works before you switch the old one off.
The setup, in order
- Check firmware against the table; downgrade a v3/Floodlight to 4.36.9.139 or older if needed, then turn off auto-update.
- Flash wz_mini_hacks from a FAT SD card; boot, confirm SSH, set a real password.
- Enable RTSP and confirm the
:8554/unicastURL plays in VLC. - Add each camera to go2rtc as a stream; point HA and Frigate at go2rtc, not the cameras.
- Disable the camera's cloud events once Frigate is handling detection.
If a stream keeps dropping
It's almost always one of two things: too many clients pulling the camera directly (route everything through go2rtc), or a marginal Wi-Fi link. Wyze cams have small antennas — a stream that artifacts only on the far cameras is a signal problem, not a software one.
None of this needs the Wyze app or a subscription once it's running. The cameras become plain RTSP sources on your own network — exactly what you want before you hand them to Frigate or a local dashboard.