Automatically restart the devices if it can't connect to wyze

This issue was originally opened in October 2018. It is still labeled as only a “Wishlist” feature. These facts fly in the face of your claim “Wyze is a great company that is good to its customers.”

We, the customers, are being ignored.

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Additional smart plug is an additional point of failure. The smart camera should be “smart” enough to reboot itself when there is no authenticated connections to WiFi. Obviously, it should be optional for a stand alone setting without WiFi.

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I don’t think anyone is arguing at that point. However, until the option is provided, an interim alternative is to purchase a smart plug and put it in place so that you can power cycle a device. As I indicated, for the last few months my cameras have been solid performers. But I still have a smart plug on my main outdoor camera’s so I can power cycle them.

Just a thought

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This doesn’t solve the problem… If the power flickers and the internet is down when the Wyze stuff comes up, the wyze stuff will just give up and be bricked until rebooted manually (switches are notorious in my experience) All they need is a retry algorithm to fix this… Easiest case is just to reboot itself if it can’t contact the wyze mothership after 5 minutes or whatever…

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Control Cam via App!

Please implement an option to actually turn the camera back on via app! It does ZERO good to live by yourself or be out of town, have internet or power go out and bam! camera is off and only can be restarted via full re-installment! That is ridiculous and defeats the purpose. “Dear Burglarers, please turn my cam back on when you’re done. Here are the instructions.” I mean really!
One cam is on the ceiling and no I don’t want to having to grab the ladder every single time and reinstall the whole thing.

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Wow ! I’ve been on various vendor’s "to-do"list or “wishlist” but this one is the longest I’ve seen in years ! It’s makes the camera’s such a useless device for security applications and remote placement. I’m now having to look elsewhere for a “wyzer” solution to video security cameras.

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Feature Suggestion: Auto restart device if can’t connect to Wi-Fi for 5 minutes

Hello, I’d like to suggest a feature for Wyze Cams. I have a handful of Wyze V3 cams and Wyze Pan Cam V2’s in my house and some of them occasionally get disconnected from the network and sometimes the only way I can get them reconnected is by manually unplugging them and re-plugging them in. Is there any way we can get a feature (which would be disabled by default but able to be enabled by the user) that would auto restart the device if it can’t re-connect to the network for 5 (or a changeable value) minutes? (This would be independent from an actual internet connection; this would be the attached wireless network specifically).

Let me know if that makes sense or if you have any questions. Thank you!

[Mod Edit] Merged with an existing wishlist topic. Give it a vote to help it along!

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Auto restart and reconnect if the camera loses connection with the server for more than a minute.

The Software in the cameras should be able to do an automatic reboot and reconnect toWIFI if it loses connection with the WiFi servere for more than a minute.

The reason this a needed is once a customer has left the propety for an extended amount of time, if the the cameras go down do to power outage or server interuption, There is no way to reset cameras unless you are at to residence to perform a hard reset. Not good at it’s current configuration.

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This is highly needed. Having to regularly go out and hard reset devices by pulling power from them when they are mounted in inconvenient to reach places is a huge pain. This is a feature that without saying should exist in any wifi connected devices. And as some users have mentioned that people should just use a wifi connected plug to force resets… the problem still exists because half of the time the wyze power strips remain stuck offline when the power goes out for the exact same reason as the cameras do. There needs to be some sort of continuous loop of:
If not connected to wifi{
Then try reconnecting or reboot
}

But what I’m seeing is once they fail connecting they simply stay in a failed state. I suspect the reason for this is because the WYZE devices boot up faster than the router does when the power goes out and then they fail when they try to connect because the router is still coming online.

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This is exactly what I see… After a power failure, the plugs come up before my cable modem has a chance to reinitialize, and the plugs give up after failing to connect. This is such a ridiculously simple thing, I can’t believe it wasn’t fixed in one day after first being reported, let alone not being tested and properly working before initial shipment. I am very surprised… Wyze is usually responsive, but I’m seeing NOTHING with this serious problem.

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On the contrary - It is VERY common, and it is NOT just because of poor wifi signals. It happens EVERY TIME the power goes out and the plugs (in my case… apparently cameras in others) turn on faster than the Internet router comes back online. There is no excuse for causing the devices to brick just because they came up when the wifi or internet connection wasn’t available yet… In some cases, it may be the access point which is still booting, in others, it may be able to associate with the AP, but either not get a DHCP address or connect through the default gateway… In all of these cases, the IOT device must know that it’s not talking to the central server, and retry it’s connection occasionally.

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My comment was 3 years ago. A lot of changes/updates since then :roll_eyes:

I agree… but we’re still experiencing the problems with current firmware on the plugs… For example, we have a light/filter on a fishtank that stops working every time we have a power failure… To fix it, I have to go physically unplug the Wyze plug from the wall and plug it back in because it wont retry joining the wifi if it comes up with the network unavailable.

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My outside battery operated cameras reconnected when internet goes down. All my inside Wyze devices DO NOT reconnect.
I will leave this brand if the font fix this!!

I have a summer home with a bunch of Wyse cameras and every now and then a camera will just lose internet connection and would go offline and I have to send someone to power cycle the camera.
I think the camera itself can detect that it lost connection for a long time and then reboot itself automatically… that would be a great feature to have specially for remote locations.

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I have this issue too!! I reported it to Wyze months ago and they still haven’t made any movement on it, it seems. I’m actually a developer myself and I can confirm that it’s not difficult to alter your codebase and add new features, especially one that is so crucial as this one. I honestly don’t even know what admins to tag so at the very least we can get some sort of clarity as to why this feature doesn’t exist? (And this happens to me FREQUENTLY! I’m honestly considering just going with a different vendor at this point. Wyze Cameras are cheap and affordable but at this point they’re really hitting the nail on the head with “you get what you pay for”). Anyway I dunno, The ball is 100% in Wyze’s court with this and they have the capacity to address it, they’re just choosing not to. Soooooo I guess the next camera I buy will be from a more reputable vendor. GG Wyze! It was fun while it lasted :man_shrugging:

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This issue was first reported in October 2018. Welcome to the club…

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My concern with this feature when/if this feature is implemented (now that it is “in progress”), is that the way it has always worked before now, is that if a camera lost internet, it would still keep recording to the SD card. But if this feature is not optional, and you have an internet outage of any kind, then your camera will reboot, and if there is still no internet when it loads back up, it won’t record to the SD card again until it can finally authenticate with Wyze servers.

This would leave a HUGE security vulnerability. Now, a criminal would know that all Wyze cameras are completely vulnerable if the WiFi goes out, either cutting the Internet cable to the house or using a deauth tool or a jammer. Right now, none of those actions stop a Wyze camera from continuing to record locally to the SD card, but if this feature gets implemented (as it is “in progress” now) I am a little concerned that it could cause it to lose offline recording options.

So I am just asking the Wyze team working on this to have the following considerations if you’re going to do this:

  • Make it optional. Maybe some people don’t want a camera rebooting (some people use these in a remote business warehouse with no internet… They activate using hotspot on their phone then rely on SD card recordings to continue recording when they walk away leaving the cam without Internet on purpose). Please don’t force this feature automatically. I might want it on some cameras but purposely leave some without it so they will always record to the SD card even during an outage.
  • Make sure all cameras are not rebooting at the same time (or there will be no recorded evidence). Maybe have them reboot in a random interval between a range of time.
  • Let us choose the interval of how long it must go without Internet before rebooting. I might want it to wait at least 15 minutes because maybe I’m just rebooting my modem or router every night to clear memory leak issues, so if the camera is just patient, it will restore internet soon as expected.
  • Set up a companion option that would allow us to tell it continue recording to the SD card on boot up, even if it hasn’t authenticated with the Wyze server again yet. This will help ensure jammers don’t knock out ALL camera recording, including local recording, so easily.
  • If the camera loses connection and reboots, and it still doesn’t have a connection when it comes back up, it should not reboot again immediately in a never ending continuous cycle. Fibonacci the interval so it waits a little longer each time the reboot fails.

I think if even some of the above considerations are implemented with this new feature, then this will be a really awesome thing we can all be fairly excited about!

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These are all great points.

I’m am guessing Wyze will choose to simply retry the network/server connection periodically rather than fully rebooting the device. This will prevent SD card from stopping during this reboot process.

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Yes… definitely good points. What they SHOULD do is to continue to record to the SD as noted, and just try to reconnect to the SSID and/or re-issue the DHCP request to get an IP address in the background, depending on where the process is broken. It is not a difficult problem, but you’re right - the “kill the fly with the big hammer” answer of just rebooting may cause other unintended negative side-effects. The problem for me hasn’t been with the cameras as much as the plugs, so I didn’t have the same concern. My issue is that I have a heat lamp for a pet which stops working completely upon an Internet outage and never recovers without being unplugged and re-plugged so the SD card issue to me didn’t exist…

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