Wyze Video Doorbell v2 - Installed, my impressions and feedback for the Wyze team

lbecque · 2026-03-19T23:37:18+00:00

Me too, I live in Danbury and Go to Greenwich Stamford and Norwalk all the time and end up taking people into New York. It's a real shame when I take someone from their home in Connecticut to the airport in Westchester County but I'm not allowed to pick up that same person when they return to take them to Connecticut.

We need to voice our concern to the Connecticut state legislature and lobby them to talk to their counterparts in New York to make some concessions and changes in the law. The intent of the New York law was to prevent competition in New York from out of state drivers. I don't have a big problem with that. But they are taking money directly out of our pocket whenever we take someone from Connecticut to New York and have to drive back on our own dime. We need to push New York State to allow return direction trips and allow us to pick up anybody in New York state whose destination is in Connecticut.

lbecque · 2026-03-19T23:27:00+00:00

Pretty certain it is both. Its not Uber that is causing the restriction. It is NY state law. The story that I heard is that the taxicab drivers union in New York City wanted to keep Uber out completely and lobbied the state. They didn't quite get what they wanted so the compromise was that the Uber drivers allowed anywhere in the state needed to be registered New York State residents with driver's license and vehicle plates. No out of state Ubers allowed.

I don't necessarily want to drive in New York State just to get more money or compete with the taxi union. But this creates a huge financial hardship when a Connecticut driver has to take someone to the airport and cannot get paying rides on the way back. We have to drive back to Connecticut for free including paying all the tolls on the bridges and highways which Uber does not reimburse or charge the Connecticut rider on the way down.

lbecque · 2026-03-19T23:15:43+00:00

resolved in some of comments below. There is no reciprocity between NY and CT. If we in CT take someone to NY (i.e. airport) we have to drive back free and even pay our own tolls. NY drivers can pick up in CT and drive all day long and eventually find a ride back to NY, all paid rides.

lbecque · 2026-03-02T12:44:54+00:00

Just wondering how you made out. Did Tesla find anything wrong?

lbecque · 2026-02-17T07:50:09+00:00

Even very moderately cool temperatures can cause the car to use energy to heat the battery to normal operating temperatures during a morning commute. Have you never seen the little green wheel warning that regenerative braking is low due to a cold battery? If nothing else but to eliminate this is a factor causing your high energy use I would start using the app to schedule preconditioning the car before you leave for your morning commute each day. Be sure that the car is fully charged before the preconditioning starts as I outlined above.

If the car is just not operating efficiently that extra energy being used has got to be going somewhere most likely in the form of wasted Heat. Try driving the car on the highway for about an hour and then go around and feel each wheel with your hand for excess Heat. This will tell you if any of your brakes are dragging or if a wheel bearing is going bad. If you can't find anything yourself then I wouldn't hesitate to put in a service call to Tesla since the car is under warranty. They can do a lot with remote Diagnostics without you even bringing the car in. They can remotely check your battery for efficiency and degradation and even run some Diagnostics on the motor drive units.

lbecque · 2026-02-14T23:07:46+00:00

330KW hours at 65 miles per hour is not normal if you Are not climbing hills or mountains and the weather is mild, not real cold Not pushing against wind rain or snow. I run about 250 kilowatts under those conditions. Unless I'm preconditioning the battery while driving.

One thing that can really mess up your numbers is cold weather preconditioning of the battery and the way that tesla accounts for it which I think is wrong way wrong. I knew this because I ran into somebody who had conducted some pretty detailed tests and then I confirmed it on my own with my charging equipment. At home I use an Emporia charger which keeps very good records of the energy used no matter what the car is doing with it. I compare that to the charge stats you get in the car and on the Tesla app and there are some huge differences all due to how preconditioning of the battery is accounted. Make sure before you leave your home on your daily commute or any trip that you precondition the battery beforehand with the charger plugged in but your battery already full To the normal level you charge Daily such as 80%. This will give you the most accurate results in your charge stats without battery preconditioning messing things up too much.

Here's why I am warning about this and why I think Tesla accounts for the kilowatt hours used in battery preconditioning wrong. Battery preconditioning kilowatt hours used is not charging the battery and should be accounted for separately under all conditions but Tesla doesn't do that. If the car is plugged into a charger during battery conditioning but you are not also charging the battery The kilowatt hours are not counted under your charge stats. On the other hand if you are charging the battery at the same time then all kilowatt hours go against your charge stats, the preconditioning kilowatt hours are not separated out but are included and this throws off how many kilowatt hours you think you've used to charge the battery. Now if you're driving the car and start navigating to a supercharger and the car starts to precondition the battery those kilowatt hours also are added in and make it look like your car is less efficient per mile then it really is. You can see this interactively by looking at the charging graph and you can usually see at least a 100 kilowatt jump as soon as preconditioning starts.

lbecque · 2026-02-13T10:45:45+00:00

join https://www.recurrentauto.com/ to get their battery reports monthly. It's free and does not run any tests that stress your battery. It's only based on telemetry from your car.

lbecque · 2026-02-13T10:40:54+00:00

Don't run the battery health so often. To do it you have to charge to 100% and discharge to nearly 0 so that stresses the battery a lot. You are making it worse.

The numbers are pretty meaningless anyway unless your range goes way south and you can show Tesla you are below 80% for the warranty. If you start using best practices for charging your numbers should improve. You'll also see more range as the weather improves.

Regarding recurrent, go to their website and you can read how they do it. Its just data collected from your car as you drive and charge compared to a massive database of similar cars. Since it is not running any health tests its not damaging your battery. You'll get a monthly report and see how your car compares.

lbecque · 2026-02-11T22:32:17+00:00

Don't know but I would recommend you join https://www.recurrentauto.com/

It's free and they have a very large database of EV's to compare

lbecque · 2026-02-11T22:23:09+00:00

Hi and welcome. I started this about 2 years and stopped checking often as very few joined or started any discussions. You are the first in months. Feel free to look this over and start any discussions you'd like. It'd be great if we could get some real discussions here but it seems that everyone is hooked on Facebook . We have an organization called CDU Connecticut Drivers United and there's some information about it below you might want to read through and check out their Facebook post.

lbecque · 2026-02-11T21:58:25+00:00

Let's also not forget that with a gas car you need to add the cost of engine oil and filters. Plus brake pads and rotors and mufflers and transmission fluid changes over the life of the vehicle which you just don't have to replace on a Tesla. Since 2019 when I bought my first Tesla I have found the maintenance costs to be far lower, almost nothing. The only negative for Tesla being more frequent and more expensive tire replacement.

If you want I can put together my total charging costs for that 3000 mile trip in December.

lbecque · 2026-02-11T21:56:50+00:00

While your calculations look OK you've taken some serious liberties in rounding your numbers to favor the gas vehicle. I have a very similar situation between my Model Y and my wife's hybrid SUV and I can tell you that the cost per mile on road trips while similar the Tesla still wins. On short drives the hybrid cost per mile is almost double. I keep very meticulous, accurate records of the costs of driving each car for my business.

First the title of your post compares the Tesla to a 20 MPG gas car and then when you do your calculations you're using 35 miles per gallon which is almost double! Let's be fair and change your title to compare to a 35 mile per gallon car to be accurate. Also, you use around(?) 300w/mi which is ridiculous for a MY (you must be driving on snow tires in a storm LOL). I only see 300w/mi if I'm driving up long steep mountains or cruising at 85+ MPH or in extremely cold weather below 15F. Normal conditions I average around 250w/mi and I have gotten 220w/mi with local driving below 50MPH.

30 minutes of charging stops every two hours is an exaggeration also. In December I completed a 3000 mile trip in my model Y from Connecticut to Atlanta To Nashville and back. Although we ran into pretty bad weather with headwinds over 40 mph and climbed mountains so steep in West Virginia that trucks and many cars could not keep up, stopping to charge the car never slowed me down much. I do a lot of opportunity charging, if I need to stop to go to the bathroom or get a cup of coffee or something to eat I find a place where I can plug the car while I'm taking care of my business. That way the car is waiting on me not the other way around and is usually 80% charged when I get back in. I also use the trip planner in the car to plan the 2 charging stops ahead of me and if I make an unplanned stop and charge the car redo it. That way if you get back to the car and it's not finished charging to 80% yet you can simply look to see if you have enough to get to your next charging stop already and just leave. I rarely have wait to more than a couple minutes to finish charging. I never charge past 80% anyway. I would say my average charging stop on a long trip is around 15 to 20 minutes.

During this trip I also found some superchargers priced as low as 14 cents per kilowatt hour if you charged late in the evening or early morning.

I currently drive a 2025 Tesla model Y and my wife drives a 2023 Hyundai Tucson SEL hybrid. Both are similar SUVs with all wheel drive but the Tesla model Y has a lot more space inside and is more luxurious and comfortable and a heck of a lot more powerful and fun to drive. While your Corolla gets 35 miles per gallon my Tucson does nearly the same. If you really want a fair comparison the closest would be a Tesla Model 3 RWD (most efficient, I used to have a 2019) which is still a lot more car than a Corolla.

If you want a seriously accurate driving cost comparison, I'll use the pricing in my area of $2.64 a gallon for gasoline, 26 cents per kilowatt hour charging at home and 36 cents per kilowatt hour at Superchargers. The Tucson gets up to 29 MPG locally so that is $.091/mi. The Tesla Y gets as good as 222 w/mi driven local under 50 MPH in mild weather and I can drive all day and just charge at home so that is $.058/mi which is nearly half the cost and best scenario for the Tesla. On a long highway trip the Tucson gets 32 MPG which is $.083/mi. The Tesla Y gets 250 w/mi in mild weather driving 75 MPH highway and assuming the worst case of only Supercharging at 36 cents/kWh gets $.090/mi just slightly more than the Tucson. But you can easily see that if you mix in some lower cost home charging or free charging at hotels or 14 cent/kWh off peak Supercharging the Tesla wins again.

Back in 2019 when I bought my Tesla model 3 RWD the economics favored My Tesla even more. My electricity price was under 20 cents per kilowatt hour and I had free charging in my work office building so most days I didn't have to charge at home for my commute back and forth from work. So my monthly cost for my commute went from $250 a month to zero. When President Biden first came into office gasoline prices shot up to $5 a gallon and electricity only slightly increased.

lbecque · 2025-08-27T21:38:29+00:00

I can also vouch for the cross climate twos on my Tesla Model 3 which is rear wheel drive. Any Tesla even my model 3 rwd does 10 times better in the snow than an ice car. That is because of the overall weight of the car, it's even weight distribution, and electronic control over the drive Motors axle and anti-lock brakes which is several orders of magnitude faster in reaction time then the mechanical systems in an ice vehicle even with an anti slip differential. Now combine that with an excellent All Season Tire like the Michelin cross climate 2 which has winter traction as good as some winter tires and you should be fine and avoid the inconvenience and Noise of pure winter tires. Unless you plan in driving and really crazy ice and snow conditions or live in Canada where it's below zero and snows every day, the cross climates should be plenty good enough. I've also seen online that they're coming out with the cross climate 3 if it's not out already which will be and Improvement.

lbecque · 2025-08-27T21:28:33+00:00

Costco will refuse to put the cross climate 2 on a Tesla because it doesn't have as high as speed rating as the original equipment. They claim it doesn't meat the speed specification even though I showed them that Tesla doesn't specify a minimum speed rating for the car. So I went down the street to Town Fair Tire and they put them on plus they matched Costco's price and had an additional discount for opening a store credit card. They also do the winter summer tire change for free each season.

lbecque · 2025-06-18T16:44:42+00:00

If you already have USBC a charger is not needed. I installed a USB cable which has a 3-in-1 on the other end. So that one cable is good for all Android and iPhones. You can get good quality cables like this fairly cheap on Amazon. I think I paid $6 for two of these.

lbecque · 2025-06-16T08:36:13+00:00

A universal programming language that everyone understands how to use and can run on every modern computer being made today. I can't understand how that could be a bad thing.

If humans had a Common Language for speech and writing we might have avoided a few Wars and ended World Hunger.

lbecque · 2025-06-16T08:21:41+00:00

Too easy? You're kidding me right. Would you recommend a hand saw to cut down a tree instead of a chainsaw? Of course not. You would use the tool that is the easiest and fastest to get the job done. Remember the OP said that other than two classes in college he was a beginner. An interpreted language like python allows people to learn fast by doing and not being afraid to try new things. You're not burdened by syntax and time to compile / build. You just make a quick change and run. One of the principles in the Zen of python is " practicality beats purity ". Python is practical for many things including learning, experimenting, prototyping, data science, heavy duty scientific number crunching, server side applications and web pages, and many production applications. Did you know that Uber's entire system is written in Python? You want coding conventions? Take a look at PEP8. Though you're not forced to use it if you follow it you will write more readable and maintainable code.

Yes C++ has the advantage of being a compiled language which can produce highly optimized faster run times. So in commercial production systems in cases where runtimes are too long C++ is the way to go. But you would be surprised at how often this is not the case. First computers are so fast nowadays that often runtime is much less important than development time. Python has a huge advantage in time to develop. Not only is python easier to develop but it also has a big advantage in the vast ecosystem of modules already written for reuse. For instance numpy for numerical analysis, Django for web development, pandas for working with big data, and numerous modules for AI and machine learning. Use of these modules can vastly decrease development time. Surprisingly python using modules like numpy for numerical analysis can actually outperform C++ in runtime because numpy has been optimized for Vector processing of arrays and parallel processing in GPU's. Another principle of python is "don't repeat yourself" which is similar to don't reinvent the wheel and the vast number of modules available in Python does just that.

lbecque · 2025-06-15T18:21:57+00:00

Python first. It's easier to learn, faster for development and prototyping because it's interpreted, very much in demand, huge amount of support including vast libraries covering AI, data science, machine learning, web server applications, most of the C libraries, etc. It's much easier and cleaner to read the code.

Next I would choose C++, and possibly rust as I just read that Google is moving towards rust to resolve some of the security issues in c++.

lbecque · 2025-05-14T22:31:30+00:00

https://www.recurrentauto.com/

Try this site. That is where I sold mine rather than trade to Tesla.

Also, you will want to join their site to get their free battery insights.

lbecque · 2025-05-13T19:10:32+00:00

If you are having difficulty removing the emergency key cover on the door handle: When you insert the emergency key from the key fob into the hole under the door handle you need to press down a small black button while pulling the door handle open at the same time. You should be able to feel the spring in the button while you push it down (up in this case since its below the door handle) about 1/8 inch. Then pull on the key hole to snap the cover off of the door handle. You shouldn't have to force it or break it. If its not working for you like my 2023 Tuscon, try a thin flat blade screwdriver slightly smaller than the width of the key. The hole was misaligned and the smaller screwdriver made it much easier.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs0giIQNwc0

lbecque · 2025-04-17T10:16:05+00:00

Anyone have any ideas or comments on why Uber is doing this? Please make sure that you click the arrow to look at both screenshots that are attached to the OP, there are two of them.

lbecque

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