Cameras cant be view without internet

Cameras
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1

I have CamV3 & PanCam V3
I have said this before and many didnt understand or believe me but they are inaccesible if the internet goes down.

Let me explain further.

All cams are on the same wifi at home.
If the power is on, and wifi is on, but the INTERNET goes down, you CAN NOT access your cameras.

Its like they have to go out and back in to view cams.

Why cant that be remedied?

If you struggle to believe me, go unplug your main feed from your internet router, and stay connected to wifi, and try and view live feed from the cameras.

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2

To establish the connection to the camera REQUIRES internet. Once the connection is established and if your phone and the camera are on the same LAN, then you can watch the stream locally without Internet.

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3

These are cloud cams. They require internet to function properly. As @K6CCC mentioned, if you’re already authenticated and connected, it should continue to work (for 30 minutes, until the cam reboots to try and restore internet).

4

This morning I disconnected the main internet feed and stay connected to wifi.
Struggled, never gave me camera view

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Connected to wifi, so are the cams.

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Eventually they gave up, less than a min.

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The cams immediately struggled. Nothing came in.
This is sad

Here is why I think this is sad.

Here is a scenario:
Let’s say you are in the basement or storm shelter and bad storms are coming.
You have generator backup and the power is NOT going out.
Your home WIFI stays connected, but the internet goes down.
With these cams, you will be blind even if connected to wifi.

5

That is the way they are designed. As Dave said, they are a cloud based system.

If you need local only connectivity, you need a different system.

Analogy: You bought a Toyota Corolla but your need is a 4x4 truck. Wrong vehicle for the need.

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6

If you are already connected to the cam it should stay connected when you disconnect internet (if you’re on the same subnet/wifi as they are). At least until it hits 30 mins and reboots to try and establish connectivity.

But obviously functionality will be limited.

7

*Ahem. I have gotten on my soapbox about this several times.

Wyze needs a hub the cameras connect to, then the hub connects to the internet. When the internet is offline, the cameras can still be viewed because the hub controls them, not the cloud.

As an example of how this works in another ecosystem, my smart home runs under Hubitat Elevation. It is a hub connected to my router, if I cut the coax at the pole and lose internet, I can still turn the lights on and off, lock and unlock the front door, and anything else I can control with the internet working. The only time the internet is needed is for updates and if I want to control things away from home. I have full local control because everything connects to the hub.
Getting Wyze to adopt this will require every camera have a firmware update along with a bunch of headaches.
Perhaps a v5 bundle with a hub…

8

If Wyze required a hub I would not have bought them.

It wouldn’t solve anything anyway, the app is what needs to authenticate, if you’re already authenticated, the cams work fine on your LAN with no internet (until they reboot anyway). If not, having a hub won’t fix it.

If you want an offline/closed circuit camera system, get one of those. Lots of them out there.

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