Connection Timed Out problem with all Wyze Cameras

I certainly don’t know, because I’ve never tried to delete a Wyze account, but the Help Center article I linked to above describes a multi-step process that requires confirmation, so it reads (to me) like it’s truly obliterating a user’s account even from Wyze servers. It would be good to get some confirmation on this, though, especially for someone who may have had an active Cam Plus subscription at the time.

I created and deleted a test account to try out sharing my cams (to see how it looked to the recipient). I didn’t have Cam Plus but I don’t recall any hoops to delete it, pretty sure it was just an “are you sure”.

But even if you delete it, factory resetting the cams supposedly releases them from any account or subscription (with the exception of the Outdoor from what I saw in another thread). But I’m thinking maybe that’s not the case when there is an active Cam Plus subscription.

@EBD123 when was your subscription set to expire? If you were paying a month at a time, who knows maybe it will work once the month is up?

Gotcha. Like I said, I’ve never done it myself. I was just going by the Help Center article. It’s possible the article is inaccurate. That happens more than it should.

That’s also my understanding, even with a Cam Plus subscription, which is why I think the situation discussed in a recent fix-it-friday became such a big deal. (Many posts in the July topic are related to this; also see this topic that sparked it if you’re interested in more detail about that.)

So they potentially added a security feature to lock cams to an account until removed from the account, but neglected to account for when someone deletes an account without deleting the cams first? If so, obviously the account deletion process should delete all cams before deleting the account.

Wonder if anyone cares to confirm they can’t add their cam to another account while it is still in their primary account… It would be a nice feature (surprised it wasn’t from the start) but they need to address this potential oversight.

I don’t know the answer to that at all. :man_shrugging:

As a non-subscriber (at least so far), this issue hasn’t affected me, but I certainly commiserate with Cam Plus subscribers who thought they were paying to have access to events captured in cloud storage even in the case of stolen cameras, and I don’t have any idea of the timeline for having that feature reinstated (or if it’s been done already).

Dave,

I forgot that I had 2 Wyze cams v2 in my garage for over a year from when I added my V3 cameras. I tried connecting them and they were able to connect to the Wyze app with no problems at all.

I am going to call Wyze and have all of my cameras from my previous account unlocked. How dare they do such a thing. Even after talking to Customer Service technical support, they should have known that after I mentioned that I mistakenly deleted my account and couldn’t reconnect any of my cameras.

Thanks Dave

Thanks Crease

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I’m really glad to read this. Thank you for taking the time to post an update!

I was paying monthly and I will look on my CC to see if I am still being charged, even though I was told they didn’t see a CamPlus account for me.

It isn’t necessarily a smoking gun, we know from threads about ISP router issues that different cams are impacted differently when an ISP is blocking something or has a firmware issue.

Does your (or someone you know’s) cell plan include hotspot? What happens if you bring up hotspot on your phone and try registering the cam via that wifi network? You could even go as far as turning off your home wifi and naming the hotspot the same thing, then if it does register successfully, switch back and see if it still works after (maybe it is just the registration getting blocked somehow).

But I do suspect that it is somehow related to the MAC being registered to another (phantom) account. Whether it is Cam Plus or just any account, who knows.

I don’t have any v3s but I have a couple models I’m going to try adding to another account without removing from the first (even have a separate phone I can try it on). I’m curious if some sort of protection has been added. Though I don’t have Cam Plus either so it may or may not be a useful test (though I would like to know if my cams are protected and if I would lose even the still frames they save to my account, a couple of them are reachable due to the angle I wanted them at).

I definitely believe the MAC address has been locked from being able to be used. I’ve taken pictures of all of the cameras labels showing the MAC addresses and will call Wyze again on Monday about my cameras being locked.

Well, in my case, both a Panv3 and an OG can be added to a new account with just a factory reset. They disappear from the original account. But when reset again and added back to the original account, all thumbnails come back (similar to what Cam Plus users reported, they could see all their cloud footage again) and they also get re-added to automations they were in before. Settings are lost though.

So whether they’ve rolled out some security thing for certain cams like the v3 only, or if it is for Cam Plus users only (or if there is no such security feature), not sure. But good to know mine will be useful to someone if stolen :slight_smile:

Maybe if it is only for Cam Plus yours will be able to be re-added when that subscription finally expires. Who knows. But if you have a chance, try the hotspot thing, never know.

I know you mentioned you have a second router, not sure if that is daisy chained off the first router, if it is, that won’t tell you anything as it could be the first router causing your issue (does it happen to be an ISP owned router, potentially the XB7 from Comcast/Rogers?)

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Dave,

I only had the new doorbell cam v2 on CamPlus, all of my v2 and V3 cameras were recording to the micro SD card.

OK that points less to it being a locked MAC issue (unless that is something they’ve implemented for the v3 but not my models). What is your main router - ISP owned?

It has to be a Mac address lockout because I purchased the doorbell camera v2 a few weeks prior and now I can’t connect that doorbell camera back to my phone. Again, that happened right after I deleted my account from my phone.

Newer cams use a different protocol than older cams (and connect to different servers), and have had issues with certain ISPs/Gateways. Just seeing if that might potentially be the problem. It could be your ISP added stuff to their blacklist after the last time you added a cam (now they can’t contact the registration server or one of the many other servers they have to connect to). Either that, or they’ve added security to those two models of cams but not my two.

Not saying you’re wrong, just might make sense to rule out another possibility. We do not know if there is even a such thing as MAC lockout, only that it is something that may have existed at one point and people want it back.

Another possibility is it isn’t a “feature” per se, when I added my cams to a second account, it removed them from the first. So it could just be the system is attempting to delete them from the old non-existent account when you add them to the new one and getting stuck there. In which case, who knows if they can even find where it is “stuck”. At some point you’d hope the system would clear that out, but that’s anyone’s guess if that happens or how long it would take.

I know you had v2 cams that aren’t working now and v2s that are working now, but maybe those v2s that were sitting on a shelf had older firmware on them. I realize everything is pointing to it being related to the cams being “stuck” on your old non-existent account, and that does seem a feasible explanation. Just figure in the meantime, may be worth a try.

Just wondering… In the wyze app, have you tried Logging Out of the app and then logging back in?

I have the app on a bunch of devices and sometimes, on no device in particular, the app will load, but the camera feeds time out. So i log out of the app and close it. Then STOP it (on Android), clear the cache, sometimes the data as well, then run the app and log in. I have found that it always seems to work for me. It also fixes the issue on my Fire tablets as well (10, 10 Pro, FireMax 11).

What I can say for folks to understand what I am going through, is to go into account in the Wyze app and tap delete. After you finish, try to log into your Wyze account the next day and then come back to the forums and let everyone know what happened.

I understood that you deleted the account.

By deleting your account, their system might have a sort of waiting period on re-adding your devices as a sort of safety to prevent fraud like someone stealing your cameras and trying to register them under another account.

My question was just to see if you had tried what i recommended first before deleting your account and was aimed at others who may have encountered the connection timeout issues like you did.

Hello DC,

Sorry for the reply I sent, I thought you were from Wyze and I wanted someone from their office to do the same thing I did and experience my frustration with not being able to use my cameras again. At this point, the cameras are bricks as they are useless because they can’t be associated with any Wyze account. If a customer complains about a problem, the company should imitate the problem to see if there is a resolution, no one from Wyze has told me that they have deleted their Wyze account from their phone with cameras connected and after 24 hours were able to use that account or those cameras again with another created Wyze account.

Thanks for listening, and again I am sorry for my reply.

Ernest.