Am I the idiot in the room? Endless trouble keeping multiple cameras running

Cameras
, , , ,
1

I’ve been a Wyze camera user for a little over 3 years now, so I feel I’ve been with the system long enough that the problems I am having are not simple user error. The problems are widespread and pretty major.

For security of our home based business I have 12 cameras, half of which are wireless. Every camera is covered by another camera, etc. so we have some redundancy built in. I’m also a subscriber to the Cam Plus system and use it on every camera.

We had an event today where wyze cam number 1 covering the entrance to a storage building recorded 8 seconds of a person detected event and then nothing else. The camera is only 15-20 feet from the person it was supposed to be recording. We know for a fact that the motion of the person continued beyond 8 seconds. The second cam covering this area (also a wireless cam) never triggered. A third camera (hardwired to power) shows that nothing / nobody interfered with the 2 cameras covering this area. A fourth camera, also hardwired, covering the general area had a recording problem and is of no help. Cameras 1 and 2 were set to 3 minutes recording with a 15sec cooldown. I have tried to adjust these settings to 5 minutes with no cooldown but the settings just reset themselves after I “save” them.

About once a month we completely lose a base station for a day or two with no warning.

We also have 2 wyze plugs that are used to do things like turn on area lights when a person is detected after hours. These two plugs have been useless, neither one will stay working in the system for more than a week. We replaced these plugs last year with two new ones and the performance is exactly the same.

Playback in general is quite hit and miss, sometimes it plays back fine and other times it acts like the SD card is bad, regardless of the card’s condition.

Some of the wireless camera events show that they triggered but there is no video or audio that actually uploaded to the cloud.

Because the cameras don’t self monitor their readiness, the only way to ensure they are working is to check each camera and it’s playback on a daily basis and fix the ones that have gone unresponsive.

These types of problems have been getting worse for the past year, sort of as if the Wyze team is not making improvements to the software, even though there are periodic updates so they must be working on it somewhat.

This brings me to my point: Are these cameras just novelty devices? The resolution of all of the cameras (even the newer ones) is poor, and the fact that the camera software seems to be unreliable, for month after month with little change, makes me think that the Wyze system is a lost cause. Add this to the point that I am losing anywhere from 10-30 minutes a day, 7 days a week, checking and repairing camera issues has me wondering if I’m the idiot in the room for still wishing to see the Wyze system succeed?

3 Likes
2

Wyze lately just buys crap in bulk. Making all the different useless devices work with the app seems to be near impossible. Add the fact they want everything on a subscription and you have the results you seeing.

1 Like
3

I wouldn’t go quite that far, but I don’t think they make the cut for security cameras, especially the Outdoor, battery cameras. If you really need something for security, you can’t beat POE cameras with an NVR. Not cheap, but much more reliable. I have both Wyze cams (V2, V3, Pan V1 and Pan V2) but I also have an Amcrest 16 port NVR and several POE and wireless cameras. The Amcrest setup works well but doesn’t have the AI for person, package, vehicle, etc. that Wyze has. However, it isn’t cloud based (NVR is local with a hard disk) and it has been very reliable. And with the hard drive, recording is continuous from all attached cameras.

5 Likes
4

My opinion here (and you alluded to it yourself). Using a battery powered Wifi camera for a security camera was mistake #1. Can’t beat a POE camera to a wired NVR. I gathered that all or most of the problems you described involved the battery powered Wyze Camera Outdoor - which are in my opinion so badly crippled in order to preserver battery life that I would NOT use them if someone gave them to me.

5 Likes
5

I mean yea, and this is coming from a guy who has tons of Wyze stuff and has no complaints or any reason to switch, that’s why I’m here providing community support.

It’s a $25 smart camera with ai and app and everything else. You get what you pay for. For my uses, and many others, it’s fine if it misses a few events, I don’t live in an area requiring high security, and I have an alarm system and locks from a diffrent brand. If your protection your buisness, you should get something a little more heavy duty and reliable.

Again, not saying anything bad to Wyze, but I would never trust anything $25 if it really matters.

A high quality POE camera with an NVR is definitely a profession grade solution, and it’s gunna be rock solid realiable. It’s also Gunna be $1000s

4 Likes
6

KyGuy2002, you are correct it’s a cheap camera compared to others. But if you advertise your camera as doing this and that, than you should make sure it works correctly and does this and that. Wyze changed the business model, for the worse. These days, sell any crap you can AND SUBS and deal with consequences later. Bad business IMHO. Has taken 6 months to fix a doorbell that worked decent enough before. That, i don’t care if cost $1 or $1000, it should work as advertised. I didn’t buy it to decorate the door frame.
I’ve been Wyze customer for a longtime, i should learned my lesson and moved on. But no, I bought 2 more V3’s, stupid. Those were the last ones. Just ordered Eufy doorbell and will start replacing some of cameras shortly.

4 Likes
7

Thanks guys for the perspective. Time to go with a POE setup I guess and stop trying to get the Wyze to do something it just doesn’t want to do. As if I needed another push to the POE system, my end of the day check found that all 6 wireless cams were down. Irony at its finest.

1 Like
8

No, I’m the idiot in the room, get in line. :slight_smile:

A great brief thread all around! :+1:

2 Likes
9

Except that everything was working just fine for the last several years and the trouble seems to have started when they added CP and CPL. I didn’t mind paying for CP and jumped on it. Everybody is raising their prices on cloud storage and I had no quarrel with Wyze about that. It seems to me that it is not the Wyze cameras that have gone bad - it’s the revisions being sent out in the software app and the firmware upgrades which have screwed up our cameras. It’s almost as if they have been remotely and inadvertently “sabotaged” by what was intended as enhancements. I read elsewhere on these forums that Wyze has been advertising for new quality control personnel. I wonder what the status is on that front, as loyal users like myself and others can only remain patient so long before being forced to move on.

5 Likes
10

It might be your wifi network issue. Having 12 wireless IP cameras constantly using up the cluttered 2.4Ghz band with a cheap / weak wifi networking equipment is setting up for failure.

1 Like
11

Just to keep things in perspective, he said only 6 cameras were wireless. And I really wouldn’t assume that he has a “cheap / weak” wifi system, especially since security-conscious users like Wyze buyers have been the first to jump on the more powerful wifi systems which have come out in the last couple years. I have only two Wyze v3 cams and the Wyze DoorBell on, and a nearly new Eero Mesh wifi system, and I began encountering the same problems described by the OP at about the same time.
We are talking about Wyze cameras that have worked great for several years, and now suddenly have become very flaky, all at about the same time. Hence, with all due respect, I suggest that you may be pointing in the wrong direction as to the source of the problem.

3 Likes
12

Eero is a cheap wireless system…

13

Not to mention, i have cameras in 3 different places, all on different networks, ISP’S and equipment. While overworked networks can be an issue, certainly not in my case.

3 Likes
14

That really sums it up well. I remember the wyze cam system working better 2-3 years ago than it does today. I think that’s why I felt a little dumbfounded by the system’s current state of ineffectiveness.

Thanks for the idea. Wifi is in great shape though.

2 Likes
15

Not sure what to tell you… Wyze has been working great on two different properties: one has about 30 devices and a 3x Linksys Velop Triband Wifi 6 mesh system (all using wireless backhaul) with Comcast 500mbps internet connection, the other has about 110 devices and a Ubiquiti UniFi system with 6 WiFi 6 access points (all hard wired) with FIOS gigabit internet connection.

Only issues I’ve ever had were app limitations (like not being able to control sharing as finely I’d like it).

1 Like
16

The problems didn’t start when I installed my Eero 6 mesh system about 18 months ago; the problems started with the recent software/firmware “upgrades” the same time as all the others are reporting to Wyze.
Coincidence?

17

To answer your question directly; no, you are not the idiot in the room. We may have to have a competition to determine that answer.
I’ve anecdotally seen the same thing. I’m not going to spend the time analyzing it or debugging it, I get paid to write/debug software, and don’t need to do it for something I purchased, TYVM. My quick guess (just that), is that their servers are the fail point.
Two quick stories in the past few days. Working remote, with software that instantly tells me if there is a connection issue, my non-AI security system (A black german shepherd with her own sense of threat level) ‘went off’. Since her detection settings include someone walking an unliked dog across the street, I didn’t give it any thought since neither the Wyze doorbell (IP) or the Outdoor Cam pointed at the area alerted and I kept working. A minute later, Alexa chimes in with a notification that a package was delivered. Nada on the Wyze app from either camera. My non-wyze camera, not on notification, shows the guy walking up, putting the box in front of the doorbell, backing up and taking a picture of it. No connection issues at all.
Had the same issue early this morning with my daughter leaving the house. I have a heartbeat app running against a work server on 30 second intervals that hasn’t recorded an error in the 10 days since I’ve rebooted my computer. Like others, I’ve had the cams in two locations (500Mbs Comcast and 1G FiOS) do the same thing in the past few months. My other inexpensive cams, connecting to I don’t want to know :), have no issues.
No doubt an NVR is going to be much better, the one at work doesn’t miss anything. But it’s a pain in the butt to review, and running Cat5 to outside cams in a house is more of a pain.
These may be cheap, but they need to be as advertised. I have a couple of Conico cams in my other location - not as cheap, but cheap, that have had no issues. They don’t have any AI, just sensitivity settings, but if you aim them well, there aren’t many false notifications. I don’t need or want a POE-NVR but I also don’t need a product where too many answers are deflection to “local error”.

6 Likes
18 
 Your non-Ai security system, what kind connection is it on? :wink:

Your observations are spot on. Same happens here, my dog will usually bark when mailman closes the mailbox, yet the doorbell more times than not doesn’t catch anything. The V3 usually does, but the notification may or may not show up the day of the event. But, funny enough, if a single leaf moves on my neighbors tree, the doorbell will send a notification of a person detected. Absolutely useless.

This weekend will be last days of the doorbell, had enough of it.

3 Likes
19

These anecdotes mirror my experiences with my Wyze DoorBell v1 and cameras. Frozen food deliveries etc. dropped off in the hot sun with nothing heard from Wyze cams, etc.
While I don’t have the technical background of the above commenters, my tentative conclusion may differ. My hopefully evidence-based gut reaction is that since Wyze cameras and its doorbell worked so well for so long prior to the present disaster, it’s not necessarily that the hardware is too cheap and has to be replaced by more expensive hardware bought elsewhere; but rather that, since cameras bought and installed long ago and cameras recently purchased are all being reported as having pretty much the same malfunctions, the evidence strongly points, as others have suggested, to the fact that recent software and firmware updates have screwed everything up and reliable fixes have not yet been found and the final chapter in this saga has not yet been written.
For that reason, I am at least temporarily going even cheaper - I am replacing my Wyze DB v1 with a Blink DB with local storage module bought off Amazon for only fifty dollars total, and taking a wait-and-see attitude about what to do next, as clearly Wyze’s reputation is on the line right now.
Just my two cents, FWIW. :slight_smile:

3 Likes
20

The non AI system is on Woof-i. As much as we’ve tried to tune the detection settings, they still are pretty subjective. :grin:

Which as a side note, will trip my Wyze indoor pan cam when I have it on. Those do seem to work flawlessly.

2 Likes