Alexa Not Responding - Doorbell V2

I’m getting really frustrated with these Wyze devices. I keep buying them because they are so cheap but I’m starting to understand why they are so cheap. Unreliable garbage unfortunately. They are constantly going down and disconnecting.

I purchased a Ring camera just to see if it was net or wiring that was causing the issue but nope. I’ve had the Ring camera for just about a month now and 0 issues. Its actually crazy that people keep buying Wyze with how unreliable these devices are. Alexa literally never works with anything. Its like playing the lotto whether or not Alexa will actually show the camera on any of the Alexa devices. Sometimes it does sometimes its “not responding”

For anyone reading this, save yourself some time and just purchase another brand. The Wyze support is comical as well asking me to factory reset and restart these devices like its going to do anything (surprise: neither worked)

One question. Have you checked in side the Alexa to Wyze skill to be sure there’s no issue with the link? And even though it looks okay, “enabled”, it cost nothing to unlink and re-link to insure no hiccup occurred on the Alexa side recently.

I just resolved a similar issue with the Wyze V3 cam Alexa integration. I have pinned the issue to one of two things, please try both in this order:

  1. The troubleshooting guide for the “Device is not responding” issue through Alexa tells the user to “rename the device to a simple name”. Alas that description is too vague. Of my two cameras, I had named one “Front Door Cam” and the other “Living Room Cam”, and neither worked via Alexa, always got device is not responding. Yesterday I moved the living room cam to the “Driveway” and of course I renamed the device to “Driveway Cam”. Some time later on a whim I asked alexa in turn to show me each camera. Imagine my surprise when one cam worked via Alexa and the other did not. The other was still called “Front Porch Cam”. I updated firmware on that one and various resets restarts, nothing. Then on a hunch I renamed it to simply “Front Cam”. Boom it has worked reliably ever since. Renamed it to “Dog Cow Boy”, and boom, it stopped working. Renamed it to “Door Cam” boom started working again. It looks to me like Alexa integration is fine with 2 word names, but NOT with 3 word names.

  2. The only other thing I tried was disabling 2-factor auth on my account. However, I am pretty sure it was the names that was the issue.

Two, not Three. That is a very savvy tip. Great, HIGHLY appreciate you sharing that. Could make a difference a lot of place, a lot of people. Never occurred to me before.

My favorite two things I try anytime one+ camera does not work are: (These are AND and OR) either could make the difference.

  1. Remove cam power, wait 1 and restore.
  2. Close the app. I don’t mean just jump out of it. I mean bring up the screen that shows all the apps running and close all of them. (No not suggested all non-Wyze apps also need to close, just referencing that screen) And then restart the app.
    These two things usually fix any “can’t get it to view on an Echo Show”.
1 Like

hi Sam. Naturally I tried all of those things first. After days of trying everything I could find online, I just “fell” into the solution.

I wish I could get someone else to try this. Someone who currently either has a camera completely working in the Wyze app, but not working with Alexa integration. Or even someone who DOES have it working via Alexa.

Rename the device to something that has 3 words. Tell me if that starts making Alexa say device is not responding. The rename it back to two words. Verify it starts working through Alexa again.

It sure behaves that way for me each time I try it with either camera. But would be nice if someone else could chime in and say they had that same experience.

That is very interesting. Funnily enough I have 5 Wyze Cam V3 and they are named as follows:

  • Front Door Cam
  • Side Yard Cam
  • Back Yard Cam
  • Side Door Cam
  • Driveway Cam

My Echo Show 5 (2019 1st gen), Echo Show 8 (2019 1st gen) and Alexa (Android) app can live stream my cameras without any issue. When I do experience Alexa integration issues it is usually due to a firmware update or Wyze’s backend made some changes that broke it, but they get fixed pretty quickly.

Well, okay then. Trying it again now… DUH, …now it works as Front Door Cam. Let me try reenabling 2 factor auth and see what happens…DUH now it works all ways. I cannot bring the issue back any longer. As far as I can guess right now, there was an issue with alexa integration that got fixed between the time I experienced the repeated pattern and now.

But sure enough, I can name them anything now. Still I have to wonder why it is that Wyze put a statement into the troubleshooting guide to name it a “simple name”. At first I thought they were just “forestalling” the issue of people who were mumbling to Alexa and not getting the name properly recognized. (A problem I have never had.) But my earlier experience with renaming was so repeatable I created an account here to post the issue.

But I did just try this all again, and the issue is now completely gone and I have no means to bring it back.

If I (or someone were getting this issue) I’d STILL try the whole same procedure I went through. I am guessing that your devices have been named like that for a long while, and not just the last 2-3 days I’ve had mine. SOMETHING changed and permanently fixed the issue I was having.

Wait, the issue came back last night in the following manner. The last thing I did on this issue was re-disable two factor auth on my account. This action unlinked Alexa and I did not know it.

I relinked my Alexa account. My “Door Cam” was still named as “Front Door Cam”, while the other camera was still named “Driveway Cam”. Toggling the 2 factor auth and causing the Alexa account unlinking brought the issue back just after the relink process.

I then renamed the “Front Door Cam” back to just “Door Cam” and the issue went away again.

So the issue is there, it is just that after a good successful connect after the last linking process only then is it not sensitive to the 3 word names. It appears that if you have been linked for a while that you can later rename a two word named camera back to a three word named one and it will STILL work. At least until you unlink and relink your Alexa account…

It it also possible that 2 factor auth is still a part of the whole thing, but I think that toggling 2 factor auth only had the affect of kicking out all connections, including the Alexa one. It is probably the case that if you manually unlink and relink the Alexa account with a Camera already named to a three word name that you can create the issue.

I’m sure this isn’t just me.

Also, if this matters, my Alexa show is Echo Show 8 (1st Gen), and my Cameras have printed on the bottom “Wyze Cam v3”

Maybe they need to tweak the skill to allow it with 2FA

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.