After many months of flawless operation, my Pan Cam stopped working. I think it went bad flowing a recent update. It says it won’t connect. There’s no blue LED. But it is partially functional - when selected (using the Wyze iOS app), a single frame of video is captured and displayed, then nothing more.
Details of the misbehaving camera are here:
Having tried pretty much everything I can think of, I decided to try reflashing the camera with the current pan firmware from Wyze website (though the camera already reports that it has the latest: 4.10.5.111).
I followed the instructions for flashing: downloaded the posted zip file (containing 4.10.5.111), unzipped it, renamed the flash image to demo.bin, copied to the root of a microSD card, put it in camera, and powered up while holding the reset button.
The instructions say: “Hold the setup button, plug in your USB cable, keep holding the setup button for 3-6 seconds until the light is solid blue, then release the button”.
I did so. The led never turns blue. When the USB cable was plugged in, the led turns yellow. It stays yellow. I held the button for 5 seconds, then 10, 30, 60…
Never turns blue. Stays yellow the whole time.
As far as I can tell, the image in the demo.bin file did not get flashed. The camera reports it has 4.10.5.111, as it did before. The led is off (indicating, one would think, no network connectivity). Yet I can click the ON/OFF button to turn the camera off and on.
If I kill the app (iOS) and relaunch it, it goes through the usual connecting/authenticating cycle, displays a single frame of video, then stops. A few seconds later, it shows “Connection has timed out - error code 27”.
The iPhone is on the same 2.4GHz-only WiFi network. I’ve tried two different access point to rule out WiFi/router issues.
Since the camera fails to flash the demo.bin firmware image (a process which is not dependent on network connectivity), I am coming to the conclusion that the camera has failed (even though it does sorta work).