I’ve been having similar problems. During the day it was working fine but when I checked it at night before bed, the signal would start dropping and hit zero. I’d have to go restart it in the app. Yesterday it dropped to zero and the doorbell went offline. There needs to be a switch in the wiring in the exsisting chime that I could access to turn off the power for a short time before restarting. My electrical panel is outside the house and there is no way I’d be going outside during a rainstorm, etc.
I’ll do it this time but if it happens again, the old system is going back in. If it needs to be reset to factory and I have to wrench it off the wall, it’s outa here also. I had high hopes for this but it goes off or doesn’t ring in the house and I’ve missed people at the front door. Looking like a sign going on top that will say “KNOCK ON DOOR”!
I wanted to share some insights into this problem and a solution.
Note this is only really valid for the case where you lose connectivity due to bad signal,… I have no solution if your doorbell is defective or not wired properly… my advice is those cases is fix that problem with RMA or an electrician! now back to the signal issues.
When the doorbell doesnt authenticate to the app (actually the cloud but for simplicity we will say the app), or slowly goes from high bit rate to 0 and then disconnects, the usual culprit is signal but not the signal you think… it is not that the doorbell cannot receive commands, its that it cant communicate back to the network. This is usually caused by having a far distance to antenna, or lots of brick perhaps on the wall where the doorbell is. You see, you can’t simply say “my phone has lots of signal standing next to it” or “the doorbell shows full signal”… what you are seeing there is the device’s RECEIVE signal. Not the TRANSMIT signal. You need both to be high for the doorbell to work. So if the doorbell or your phone while standing next to the doorbell shows a lot of signal strength, thats great, thats half the battle. now you need to deal with transmit issues. You phone has a large battery and therefore modestly powerful as a broadcast device. So you phone can be far away from the antenna of the modem and still connect back. This is a pure function of the power of the device. the more powerful the device in terms of amps, the stronger broadcast signal can be created. the doorbell cam uses the low power 16v doorbell transformer. It is also tiny. it doesnt have the transmit power your phone does.
try another experiment. go onto your doorstep with your phone. verify you can surf on wifi. walk away from your home. notice how long and how far you can go and your phone still thinks it’s connected to your home wifi. and it is, technically, but only in 1 direction. Your home wifi router is powerful and can transmit much farther than your phone can. it means that your phone will see the router for quite a long distance away, but the phone will not be able to talk back to it because it doesnt have the transmit power to basically transmit back to your house. so our phone thinks its connected to wifi because it can see the signal, but sadly it cant talk back… this is the same as what is happening when the doorbell degrades. It is almost always solvable with a repeater/extender near the doorbell. reboots give false hope because that first connection is misleading… it cannot be sustained and you might get 1 or maybe max 3 frames before it craps out. dont assume reboot is the fix. the fix is improve the transmit signal of the doorbell. since we cant take it apart and put a bigger antenna in it, nor give it more transmit power, our only option is to put an extender nearby. the exterior brick on my home creates a real problem for my doorbell as it absorbs a lot of the signal from the already underpowered doorbell and mine is so bizarre that if the coat closet door is closed (mirrored door), it reflects the signal nicely outside, but when that mirror is gone, it does not. Now I know it is not the mirror but rather the very flat surface that makes a perfect refraction angle. anyway, to anyone with issues, you really need to invest in a wifi extender near your front door. not so much to improve the braodcast signal to the doorbell, but rather to improve the receive signal from the doorbell.
that’s only part of my solution by the way.
Another funny problem happens at my place when the power goes out. upon restore, the main modem wifi is online first. so of course the darn doorbell connects to that. its too soon! the little extender needs a bit more time to create the mesh network and its too late once the doorbell syncs with the main modem wifi! for this, you have to power cycle the doorbell AFTER the extender is fully rebooted. and this is a pain if the breaker your doorbell is on, includes other devices. i dont want to power everything on the circuit down, i just want to power down the damn doorbell transformer. so i put a simple single pole light switch on the transformer! LOL yep. now to reboot the doorbell cam, i just toggle the “light switch” in the basement. this only powers down the doorbell, not the other devices on the circuit. you could put the lightswitch on the 120v or the 16v side of the transformer, it doesnt matter. for me it was easier to put it on the 16v side and just break 1 leg of the connection through the light switch. thats it! reboot of the camera is easier for the now somewhat rare occasion that I have to do that. you could probably get fancy and buy a remote light switch so that you dont even have to go to the basement/power panel. i realize this is barely different than just toggling the darn breaker, but in my case i have some other items on the circuit that are kind of a nuisance in a breaker flip, so I prefer to just toggle the transformer in this manner.
works well, simple to do. any kind of single pole switch would work, try to stick with heavy gauge if you can help it, like at least 18ga. dont go down to the tiny tiny gauge or the power loss may be too great.
Great post. It clearly helps highlight the poor design of this product. All of the potential solutions, their time/labor and expense just to make a doorbell work demonstrates the overall ridiculousness. Haven’t tried the newer, more expensive one so I can’t speak to its overall performance or if they addressed the basic weaknesses in the original design. But the overall execution of this particular product to perform basic, consistent functionality has been a fail for too many people.
This is a good idea. I just had to reboot my doorbell camera again, and now it just stays on for a few seconds, then goes off. Might be broken. But having a switch on one leg of the transformer line is a good idea.
My front doorbell product is the ONLY one going offline frequently. Just now, 11/25 1:41p - ALL other cameras, plugs - all online. Front doorbell w/camera? Offline and will not connect. Nor are able to post “login” for Customer support to see.
Is anyone having this frequent issue? Not safe if camera is off. Is this not a correct comment? If you have this issue & found a solution that is outside of: unplugging (connecting directly from front doorbell wiring which has NO problems w/out Wyze), retry router off/on reset, etc. Then definitely pass on your fixes & hows. I’d appreciate this very much.
Anyone find a solution to this? I am on my third doorbell now and Wyze is now pointing their finger at the number of devices on my network (only 23) plus upload speeds with my ISP (Frontier FIOS). Both ridiculous claims to simply avoid saying they designed an inferior product. All my other Wyze devices have NEVER had connectivity issues over 2 years. Doorbell just won;t stay connected for more than a day or two. Only a power cycle gets it to reconnect.
Really tired of their excuses - how about a fix??
On my 3rd doorbell as well. My last one would power on occasionally but would stop working once someone pressed the button. Maybe the 3rd time will be the charm but I doubt it.
This is a very interesting comment. I’m wondering if it is slight change in voltage causing the issue. Someone hitting the button might cause this. I’m not convinced this has anything to do with signal strength and connectivity.
My first one had connectivity issues. The 2nd one had entirely different issues. I love most of my Wyze products (and I have a lot of them) but I’m convinced the doorbell isn’t quite ready for primetime.
My doorbell cam is the only one that goes offline frequently. V3 indoor and an Outdoor battery cam all work fine and on the same network. After power cycling the doorbell at the breaker box it will connect and work for a few hours or a few days but eventually just goes offline again. Just doesn’t work very well.
So the question remains - with so many people having issues with the doorbell, why doesn’t Wyze address the issue??? Really losing my faith in their abilities and product
I talked to CS several times. The same answer all the time “out of warranty” even if complaint was before the last date for the expiration OR did you reset OR did you disconnect & reconnect OR plz provide a picture of the “MAC” then we can evaluate…
Now AFTER I disconnected the unit twice it took several tries to connect. NOW the Chime unit cannot connect nor be recognized. I’m starting to really think I am spending too much time on this. The one thing that keeps me going is I really do like Wyze. I have several cameras and love them.
I received my replacement doorbell cam and it is working great. The first one could not download any videos, but just a still photo would show up.
This new one is showing long video. Maybe because they gave me 2 months of CAM Plus.
Will keep you updated.
I talked to CS several times. The same answer all the time “out of warranty” even if complaint was before the last date for the expiration OR did you reset OR did you disconnect & reconnect OR plz provide a picture of the “MAC” then we can evaluate…
Now AFTER I disconnected the unit twice it took several tries to connect. NOW the Chime unit cannot connect nor be recognized. I’m starting to really think I am spending too much time on this. The one thing that keeps me going is I really do like Wyze. I have several cameras and love them. Outdoor plugs? Now that’s a whole new can of worms. That’s now failing…
