Saw lots of issues in the threads re: solar panel and the v2 outdoor camera. Wondering if after all the firmware updates if this is now working for people? i have a critical solar powered setup i need to install on an island whereby i leave the island for the late fall/winter months. Need to be able to monitor remotely and solar will be critical to getting through the harsh winter. Does the connection to the camera seal properly and keep weather out?
Also - i see other brands like Wasserstein selling panels. Better to stick with Wyze?
If you are talking about the Outdoor Camera v2, then the answer is Yes, the Solar panel does work with those and charges the battery as expected. However, if you are talking about the Wyze Cam v2, the answer is no as those need direct power.
I was apart of one of those threads, the v2 WCO was being a little weird, but it’s since corrected itself and been a few weeks of perfect behavior. Gunna say it’s resolved.
Do note the base station needs power and an internet connection for the cam to function.
No, the solar panel still does not work properly with the wyze cam outdoor v2. This is with the original I bought myself from amazon, and the replacement panel that wyze sent out to me.
You don’t really think I’d go quiet on the issue do you, @IEatBeans ?
I am just down at my parents place over the weekend and replaced their troubled cam with the warranty unit supplied by wyze Sunday afternoon. So far, it’s operating like the original cam did (during its first two weeks) and fully charging during the daylight hours to 100%. After the first two weeks of solid operation is when my trouble began with the original unit. Then, charging just became wildly unreliable & unpredictable. Early on, the wco v2 tanked from like 83% all the way down to 0% overnight. After that, it would stay in the single digits and bottom out. Got a couple of spikes followed by periods of depletion even during broad daylight with charging indicator showing. Not sure that I’ll have enough sampling time to say anything conclusively unless & until it starts losing charge and failing to charge.
Wyze also sent me a warranty solar panel since it was unclear which device might be at fault. My first instinct was to replace the cam only to see if we can isolate a culprit. However, I might just end up changing both at some point since I head back home this coming weekend.
EDIT-1: I’ve now installed the new solar panel and it appears to be charging as did the original. We’ll see if this endures.
The solar panels are certainly advertised to work with wco v2. However, for many of us they have not been working as advertised the same way they do with the v1 model. There is some speculation that this is more a failing of wco v2 than the actual solar panel.
It never resolved for me. I got sporadic bursts of charging followed by a periods of no charging.
Other than a battery malfunction, this sounds like it might be an issue with the camera waking up over and over, and not the solar panel. I see this behavior sometimes (charge dropping rapidly), but have not been able to isolate it to anything yet,
I just happen to have a camera with Night Vision on, looking in the direction of my WCOs. It sees the WCO IR lights come on over and over sometimes. So the WCO camera is waking up, but it is just looking at the inside of a fence for squirrels, so no reason to do so at night…
A solar panel can not keep up with a camera in live view all the time, nor a malfunctioning camera that keeps turning itself on. On mine, I am hoping me or someone can identify a stimulus and response that can be fixed in firmware.
May help to have a camera pointed at them at night in NV mode (no IR lights). See if they are waking up, when there is no reason to do so.
Note I did see this behavior and cycled power to my Base, and the behavior stopped. So may be a Base firmware issue. The cameras are not doing it ATM.
None of that resolved things for me back in June. You can read back further in my thread to see where I actually described that. Nor am I continually viewing the camera.
I don’t have a “watch the watcher” cam rigged up to observe anything like this. However, I do have the IR lights set to off for this WCO v2 due to it’s placement causing a lot of feedback from the mount point. So, my original cam might very well have been waking up repeatedly but I never would’ve known it outside of log data since the lights are set to stay off.
I could get behind this theory which again points to my initial suggestion that firmware might be at fault. I will add further that my cam is probably at the recommended distance limit away from the base. However, it is always accessible without delay even though it only shows a single signal strength bar. I’m able to see live feed promptly and it sends smart alerts, motion, and other cloud clips as expected.
Would’ve been nice if there had been a little better vetting of the WCO v2 since, by many accounts, this problem seems to only plague the new model. WCO v1 folks herein describe everything functioning perfectly and only their v2s problematic in this manner.
EDIT-1 (09.02.22): @Newshound , I did a little watch the watcher test last night and trained a nearby cam to view my WCO v2. I went ahead and activated the IR lights to see if I could simulate what you described. I did see them flicker off and on a couple of times as if the camera was going offline and back online. So it is possible this needs to be addressed in firmware either base or cam or both.
So today I unplugged the solar panel for like 30 seconds, and then plugged it back in again as I typically have to do from time to time to get things working again. An hour or two after doing that, it was up 10% from where it was before, when it had been only going down all week since my last “reset”.
The charging symbol is always there on sunny days, but the only time the panel actually seems to charge is on the day that I “reset” it by unplugging it and plugging it back in. It’s like something happens after the sun goes down, the camera stops seeing a charge from the panel, and it won’t accept a charge the next day. I feel like this should be a relatively easy fix for wyze, and easy for the to replicate in house with a wyze cam outdoor v2 and a solar panel.
(I deleted my previous reply because I’m a noob and didn’t know how to just reply in general, instead of replying @ someone.)
