I’ve seen a lot of questions about the cam pan v4 not returning to the exact home waypoint, and I may be having a similar problem. I noticed that my camera was not in it’s home position, so i tried to recalibrate and move it back home. However, about 15 minutes later I noticed it was pointing straight down. Recalibration did not help (the camera moved left to right but stayed pointing straight down), manual pan controls did not help (I could move left to right, but not up-down), and trying to move to the home waypoint didn’t move it either.
I confirmed that the firmware and app are up-to-date, and I tried resetting the camera from the app. That didn’t help. Unfortunately, I am not at the location (will be away for a while) so I can’t physically pull the power (I have my other Wyze cameras on remote controlled plugs, but I didn’t get a chance to put this one on a plug before I left).
Does anyone have any suggestions what to try next? I’m hoping this is just user error with getting a feature of the pan cam conflicting with another, rather than a broken motor or something like that. This is my first pan cam - my other 2 cameras are regular cam v4’s.
I tried Wyze support and opened a ticket (but is that really any support when the chat drops as soon as you move away to follow the troubleshooting steps they suggest?), so I’m hoping they will eventually get back with suggestions.
Apart from the typical stuff ( Settings ➜ Reset, Settings ➜ Restart, Settings ➜ Pan Cam Controls ➜ Calibrate), I’m not sure what to offer as “safe” suggestions if you can’t get to the Cam and physically interact with it (power cycle, etc.). Sometimes users will ask a neighbor or family member with access to the location to go and power cycle something, but I don’t know if that’s an option in your situation (may be worth trying if it is). I think users in several other topics[1][2][3] have also been waiting for an answer for this, so if you’re feeling adventurous you could try the public β firmware that was announced today:
That doesn’t say that it specifically addresses this problem, and Wyze’s release notes are often sparse and vague, but to me this seems like a problem that’s probably going to be resolved with a firmware fix, and this beta may be a start.
The problem with doing something like this is that if this firmware version hoses something else then you’re stuck away from your Cam with no way to try to salvage it or to attempt flashing an older firmware version, and to date Wyze has not made downloadable firmware available for Cam Pan v4 at the usual location, so you’d be stuck on the beta until the next OTA production channel firmware is released.
You might just have to wait this out until you can touch the Cam again.
@Crease thanks for your response. I think I’ll hold off on trying that beta firmware for the reasons you said.
I’ve accepted that I will have to wait until I can get back to the location and get hands on the camera. And I’ll get a remote plug for it - just in case…
I think a smart plug is a good idea for the future. I don’t routinely do this for my cameras, but it’s something I did for several months after I got my first Wyze Cam, which was a Cam Pan v3. That one had persistent connectivity issues after I got it, and I routed its power through a smart plug because I got tired of going to the Cam to power cycle it every time I tried to access the feed and found it offline. Eventually they released some firmware updates that resolved those issues, and that Cam has consistently been my bettery-behaved Cam Pan v3 (a second one I have is a problem child).
I say all that to say that I think Wyze will probably solve this calibration/Waypoint issue at some point with firmware, but it may take another update or two before that happens. (I’m guessing.)
For whatever it’s worth, this seems promising:
Unless problems are identified with that beta firmware version, I’d expect that to graduate to the production channel within a couple of weeks, and then (depending on how they phase the roll-out) that could take an additional few weeks before a given user actually sees it available.
in my experience with this problem, I have found setting an automation to restart the camera temporarily solves the issue. It will return to the desired home position after the restart. You can choose how often you want to restart the cam(s) by setting up automatons for different times of the day or night.
I have followed the discussion from @ronl4625 and hope / believe that he is on the right track of finally resolving this whenever the firmware update is released. I don’t do Beta releases ( ).
For the interim, I have decided to turn off motion tracking and have added another camera to cover the area that is not in view of the Pan V4 without motion tracking.
Equally important to me, is the ability to set the Pan V4 camera image resolution to 4K rather than “auto” as I have strong 5 ghz wifi coverage for my cams. I want to utilize that 4K image resolution as much as possible.
A number of us have been doing this for years with Cam Pan v3 because of its Waypoint drift issue. My Cam Pan v3s restart and reset their positions weekly via Schedule Automation. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the solution to @rharper’s problem.
My understanding is that Cam Pan v4 always shows “Auto” when a user loads the live view in the app and that the Cam is supposed to use the highest resolution and bitrate supported by the current network conditions with this setting, regardless of what on-screen resolution a user has selected previously. One of the PMs mentioned this several times in a product launch AMA[1][2][3]. There were also mentions in that discussion about a “dedicated 4K mode” but without any real clarification about whether that’s a user-selectable option or not. The implication seemed to be that “Auto” tries to use 4K resolution and the highest bitrate allowed by the Cam’s Wi-Fi connection at a given time without any particular user intervention to try to force a 4K selection, but I think Wyze could do a better job of explaining this, because there still seems to be quite a bit of misunderstanding about it among users.
Correct. I tried restarting the camera through the app and it didn’t help. I may be able to get someone on-site tomorrow and have them physically pull the plug. Hopefully that does the trick.
An update on my problem… I was able to get someone to go onsite yesterday and got the camera back up and pointing where it should. I had them pull the plug and initially it didn’t seem to make a difference. The camera rebooted and stayed pointing down. The person walked around and I could see the camera trying to track them, but not moving from where it was. I finally had them give the camera a nudge and that seemed to get it back on track. Maybe it had moved into a position and got physically stuck against something. I don’t know. But for now, it is back where it should be and doing what it should.
Just to be extra cautious, I will add the automations to reset position/restart the camera and when I go back I’ll buy a remote plug.
Another update to my issue. I had added the automation to reset the camera position weekly. I am back on site and for the past week or so I have had to manually run the automation a couple times because the camera was pointing upwards and not coming back to home. I updated to the latest firmware yesterday and I hope that changes the camera behavior. I’ll also set the automation to run daily (just in case).
You are not alone! my cam pan V4 randomly parks it self looking at the sky, when the “home” waypoint is looking horizontally, I’m also going to raise another thread about the amount of times i get “Unable to load this event”
).
