I got a problem i cant seem to figure out and there is no clear answer from what I can gather here in the Forums, but I am severely disappointed with the V3 pan cam.
If I set a DZ, it is constantly changing and never saves the same DZ for long. I am not sure if this is because of the Shadows and moving sunlight throughout the day, but this is really annoying, As i use this camera to keep tabs on the dogs.
I then tried using just PanScan, and sure enough the way points only lasted about a day, then the camera decided to start doing whatever it wanted it and it would only show the walls of the inside of the house. not sure if this was the lights and shadows again. this again is not good since tracking now doesn’t work, and wont track any movement in the house.
what am i doing wrong? what settings do I need to make?
In my own experience with Cam Pan v3, setting a Detection Zone doesn’t seem very useful to me if I also want to enable Track Motion or Pan Scan, because the zone will move frequently (since camera’s view will move). What I’ve found useful is to enable Track Motion and set Waypoints and then select one of these as the “home” Waypoint for the camera’s view to return to once the motion that initiated the tracking has ceased.
The other thing I do is have an Automation (formerly Rule) that runs one night per week to reset the camera’s position and restart the camera, because Cam Pan v3 has a documented tendency to drift away from its set Waypoints over time.
Others here might have different experience/advice, and I’m thinking specifically about @dave27 and @K6CCC.
If you could share your current settings with screenshots (or describe them in more detail), then that might help us to provide you with better assistance. As a new user, you’re going to be limited to one image per post, but if you spend some time interacting here on the Forum you can get past that limit pretty quickly.
Hi @Crease thanks for the help. i will certainly try these settings. I think the DZ wont work as you said due to the changing in lighting throughout the day. I will try the settings you mentioned I didnt realize you can set one of the way points as a home position. I will look into the automation also. I have another camera i want to set up outside and I hope these solve those issues I am seeing. Thanks!
Detection zone on a pan camera is essentially worthless because the camera is subject to moving and the detection zone is fixed in the frame of the camera image at any given time. In other words, if you block out the most lower right corner of the screen, that block will generally not be looking at the same thing.
If you run Pan Scan only, the camera should only rotate between the locations set. If you have Track Motion set, the camera will do it’s best to track whatever motion it sees. However that may leave it pointed at almost any position (think tracking a bug either in front of the camera or worse, walking across the lens).
BTW, some people have expressed concern about using Pan Scan causing excessive wear to the drive system. I don’t know how warranted that is, but it’s certainly possible. Personally I do not use Pan Scan on any of my pan cameras. I move them around at times and some are set to track motion.
Just to be clear: There isn’t really any sort of “home” label for the Waypoints, so I don’t want to leave you with that impression. The way I use them, I establish their positions on a particular camera to get the views I want and then, on the camera’s Live Stream screen, I tap the Waypoint where I want the camera to park and spend most of its time (until Track Motion detects something and initiates camera movement; I’m not using Pan Scan). This is the Waypoint the camera will return to when it’s not tracking motion, so it’s what I’m calling “home” for lack of a better word.
I really like the versatility of the Cam Pan v3, and the features make it suitable for a lot of different applications, but I think that some of those features don’t play well with (or entirely negate) others, so you might just need to spend some time fiddling with it to see what’s going to work best for your use cases.
Got it. This makes absolute sense. I ended up doing that this morning. Took off pan scan, and turned off the detection zone. But did not turn on tracking. I will mess with the position of a waypoint and I will just leave tracking only on in that “home” position as mentioned. If that works I will then make sure that on days the wife works from home it’s not panning all the time driving her nuts. That may be the winning for me for now. Thanks so much for those suggestions.
I’m not sure what you mean by that, so I want to be clear (I hope): When I talk about having “tracking” enabled, I mean that I tap on the Track Motion control in the strip beneath Cam Pan v3’s Live Stream pane (you might have to swipe left on the strip to see it) so that its icon is green. I leave Pan Scan—two buttons to the right of that—off (grey or white). Everything else in the strip is its default color; only Track Motion is green (enabled).
In the WAYPOINTS section below these controls on the Live Stream screen, I set three different Waypoints (what I use to cover a specific room) and then pick the one that is most likely to see the most motion so that the camera can track from there and also return to that point when motion ceases. That’s the Waypoint I tap before I leave the Live Stream screen.
In Settings ➜ Detection Settings, I have Motion Detection Sensitivity at 50 (I think that’s the default), Detection Zone set to Off, and Motion Tagging enabled (I believe @K6CCC hates the green boxes you get with Motion Tagging).
Set this way, the camera still captures (and tracks) plenty of motion events from people and cats moving through that room.
Sorry about that. I set it up just now to the way you mentioned and it works great. Especially for when the wife is home. I have it set to just tracking, with one of the way points as the main viewing area. It picks up movement there only. Which I like. So far the camera hasn’t moved at all from that “home” position. When we leave the house I can always turn the pan feature off to ensure it’s cycling through out all the waypoints would like it to scan. Your suggestions have worked great so far.
I think you mean turn Pan ScanON in this case, and I like that idea. I was thinking that you might be able to do that with an Automations Shortcut, but that doesn’t appear to be possible at this time. That kind of feature has been requested in this Wishlist topic, though:
If you’re interested, you can visit that one, click the Vote button above the initial post, and add your own comments or ideas. I don’t know where Wyze is on making progress with any of those requests (it’s a huge topic), but I think a lot of good ideas have been contributed there, and I hope to see some action at some point.
As you’ve noticed the way the various features work on the pan cams can be pretty confusing. Honestly I still don’t have it totally figured out after 18 months, I just know that detection zone doesn’t really work with pan/scan or track motion on. Since mine record 24x7 and I do not have them set to give me motion alerts, it doesn’t matter for me, the “detection zone” just gives the camera a “home” position to return to if you move it manually in my case.
But long story short, detection zone is pretty useless when you’re using “track motion” and I’m guessing it is similarly useless with pan/scan. But like I said, it is nice to know if you move the camera manually and forget to move it back, the DZ will force it to move back to that position.
Note the Pan v3 does suffer from a bit of “position creep” where slight tolerance variations in the cameras cause it to think it is somewhere slightly different than where it is. For me, a weekly automated reboot (which resets it back to its home spot) is enough, for others they do more frequently.
Hello sorry for the late reply! And yes. Meant to say turn the pan on. lol. My apologies. So funny enough, we left the house to play pickle ball, not sure if in the time we left and the house got dark, the camera lost its position again, and it was aiming towards the ceiling. When I got home I did a quick reset and it went back to the saved pan waypoints. This really is aggravating, and unfortunate that it won’t work properly. As one of the main features I wished worked was that it would pan on the floor so I could see what the dogs are doing when we left home.
You can clearly see the saved waypoints versus where the camera was pointing when we got home. For that matter, if someone breaks In we have no chance of it catching someone walking in the house. .
You have both track motion and pan/scan turned on. Track motion will often track lighting changes. My guess is when you went in and turned on the light, it tracked up to the light. If you wait 10-15 seconds it should return back.
If it is getting stuck like that, it may be defective, but I think you’re just seeing normal motion tracking. If you don’t want that behavior, stick with pan/scan only (or no automatic motion at all).
Also note that swiping on your screen while viewing the camera will move it, so sometimes people do that by accident and don’t realize it. That’s one of the reasons it is good to set a detection zone, that will cause it to return back to that position after a while even if you manually move it.
I’m slowly figuring out that these features are kind of useless sadly.
I’ll have to make automations to have the camera reset, as unfortunately it seems it will looks track of where it is at frequently. At first I thought it was a a DZ zone issue when shadows lights etc changed, but I think it’s just the camera itself, as pan mode is also terrible and never keeps the waypoints I set. Oh well.
It sounds like you may have a faulty camera, maybe the gears are slipping?
If you tap a waypoint, does it go where it is supposed to, or somewhere else completely? If it goes where it is supposed to, then it is likely just a matter of figuring out which settings/features are conflicting with each other (maybe delete it from the app and factory reset it to clear out anything you’ve been toying with and start over). If it goes somewhere totally different, exchange the camera.
My Panv3s creep a tiny bit over the course of the week, but they are constantly tracking motion all day, and always go back to “home” or within a small margin of it. I find the tracking feature extremely handy, even though occasionally it will track rain or headlights etc.
Honestly I love the Panv3s, I do wish I could use detection zones along with track motion but for the $30 I paid, I can live without that given how great they are otherwise. I was a bit shocked at how well they work for the price. I think part of the confusion is that “detection zone” is for logging events, and does not impact what will cause the camera to start tracking. It would be nice to have a “tracking zone” also.
Good point on maybe a faulty camera. It does not return to the waypoints.
In the picture I posted in a prior comment (where it’s pointed at the ceiling) if I go back and tap on the saved way point. It would not return to that waypoint position selected. It would move in the direction, but pointed at the ceiling still and no where near the actual waypoint.
Maybe it is a faulty camera. I will contact customer service about this again.
Yes it definitely sounds faulty. If you want to be sure, you can fully reset it (delete from the app, then do the factory reset on the cam by holding the setup button for like 15 seconds), then re-add it to the app, use a different name from before to make sure it doesn’t take any of its old settings. Don’t enable anything other than just creating a single waypoint.
Move the cam manually all over the place then tap the waypoint. If it doesn’t return to that position, it is faulty. If it does, try leaving just “track motion” enabled for a day, and from time to time try to return it back to the waypoint. It may only be slipping occasionally. If it still returns to the way point reliably after a day or so, it was probably just a combination of settings that were confusing each other and you can set it up again (I can give some hints on the best way to do that). If it doesn’t, it is faulty and needs to be swapped.
Thanks for the great suggestions. I’m gonna do that now. I just looked at the app again, and I’m looking at the camera now, and it’s back to looking at the ceiling again. I literally reset its home position about an hour ago. I’ll try your suggestion and factory reset it to see if that makes a difference for a day or two
I purchased a longer cable online to run the distance needed from the plug to the camera, what are the chances that maybe there’s some sort of voltage drop perhaps happening and causing this issue? Although I’m about 100% positive that the issue was there even then I had this sitting on a table with the original 6’ cable.
That was just a thought that popped up in my mind just now.
Settings ➜ Detection Settings, I have Motion Detection Sensitivity at 50 (I think that’s the default), Detection Zone set to Off, and Motion Tagging enabled (I believe 
).
