Everything You Need to Know About Your v3 and UCTRONICS Micro USB/ETH/PoE Adapter

Cameras
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Much has been discussed and written about PoE adaptation of various WyzeCams, most notably the v3. I’ve consolidated what I have learned along the way and provide it here for anyone wanting to give it a shot. It works and is a very Windows friendly solution as well.

Follow the attached instructions for your easiest and best chance for success.

The method described leaves the OEM firmware intact and fully functional with absolutely no modification to the camera itself. Everything is done from an SD card and is easily undone by simply removing the card. It doesn’t get any easier.

UCTRONICS Adapter Setup.pdf (715.2 KB)

The much- maligned UCTRONICS adapter is by far the best adapter solution with a fix now available for adapters that were shipped with a manufacturing flaw. That solution is attached below and takes five minutes to implement.

UCTRONICS - Realtek Guide rev_A.pdf (371.7 KB)

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This seems good. Does this seem good? Seems good to me.

I won’t be doing it anytime soon but I sure appreciate the granular effort. :+1:

Report back if you try it, I’m curious… :slight_smile:

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Works well for the V3 (without mods to firmware), less so the Pan V1, V2. The regular v2 works well too, but requires a USB A adapter and modifications to the firmware. Further, you are relegated to older firmware since newer ones have security changes which prevents the loading of the wz_mini_hacks software.

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Thanks, WildBill. :slight_smile:

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I’m the one who conducted the field testing for UCTRONICS and authored both PDFs. Consider this thread my ‘report back’. LOL

Bill (among others) over on GitHub came across the possible MAC address issue with the UCTRONICS adapters. I engaged the UCTRONICS folks who became very interested in investigating the matter after various troubleshooting results from GitHub efforts were presented for analysis – even though it was primarily just a problem with WyzeCams running the complimetary wz_mini SD card firmware.

The intended market devices for these adapters would typically have the abiity to generate random MAC addresses in the absence of one (or perhaps for security reasons). Such applications would not necessarily indicate there was even anything actually wrong with the adapters.

Long story longer, UCTRONICS subsequently discovered the programming omission by Realtek and that it was indeed the likely reason for so many ‘bad’ adapters being returned through Amazon – primarily just from the WyzeCam wz_mini Github folks. Even so, they still stepped up to address the issue.

As a major supporter of these adapters in the presence of so many folks having issues with them when every one of mine worked fine, I sorta ended up as the domestic field tester for UCTRONICS. I had their complete support – including being provided with suspect adapters for testing, the Realtek programming tool to correct the MAC address problem, and ultimately the authorization to put the Realtec programming tool guide together for public distribution.
(Oddly, they had no convenient access to WyzeCams for their own testing. Evidently I was their next best option. LOL)

Anyway, the Realtek tool worked perfectly for the handful of adapters I programmed with it. Many others have revived their dead adapters with it as well. A major problem solved for the beleaguered UCTRONICS adapter for use with a WyzeCam running wz_mini_hacks. Yay!

That said, I was of the very strong opinion there was still another problem involved with getting the adapters working with WyzeCams – the wz_mini README instructions for initializing one in the first place – hence the ‘granular effort’ of putting together the detailed explanation of what’s actually involved with successfully getting one up and running in several minutes instead of hours of head-scratching wondering why ‘plug and play’ isn’t working just to toss it in a drawer or return it thinking/claiming ‘bad adapter’.

The coolest thing is this is a very Windows friendly process where so many of these types of, shall we say…, enhancements(?) require Linux chops and command line experience.

If you’re reading this on a phone and find it interesting and possibly useful, hop on a PC and download the PDFs from the first post if you want to learn how to easily hot rod your v3. My guess is your next stop will be here:

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@pogesmit was critical in getting these fixed and working, otherwise we’d still be looking for a working adapter.

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Pogesmit is the prime mover in the U / Wyze caper. -Djokovic

Well done, fellow tech guru! :wink:

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Seriously, good work. :slight_smile:

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Still curious. :slight_smile:

Anyone have a take on why this effort hasn’t generated more enthusiasm thus far?

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First, 'preciate the kudos. It became my mission in life to avail every v3 owner of the very realistic possibility of experiencing first hand a rock solid 1080p RTSP stream at ~22fps/~250kB/s for days on end over a PoE connection without a single dropout. The mission continues…LOL

But seriously, I just stumbled across the project some time ago from various references here on the Wyze Forum in the RTSP Beta thread as an RTSP alternative for those who weren’t happy with the Wyze offering – which I still also use with wz_mini, btw.

As an off-shoot and culmination of other projects designed to “supplement” (ahem) stock v2 and v3 performance, the wz_mini-hacks approach just seemd like another attempt at having more fun with the platform by the already existing developer/hobby hacker Linux crowd on GitHub. While this particular project is well beyond any previous efforts in just about every respect, it still just sorta lingers on GitHub.

And even though it has been mentioned here on several (many?) instances in different threads, when folks see GitHub and ‘hack’ in the same sentence, most reasonable readers automatically also think ‘Linux’ which usually translates into ‘way over my head’. ‘And isn’t hacking illegal anyway?’

This thread is the first effort (that I’m aware of) intended to provide exposure and clarification of the project to the basic ‘point and click’ Windows audience of WyzeCam users. The developer actually designed and packaged the distro in a handy .zip fie for Windows users to simply download, decompress, put on an SD card, and plug into a WyzeCam to get up and running with a USB/ETH PoE connection for RTSP and any number of other supplemental performance features for your WyzeCam…, all without touching the existing functionality of the OEM firmware or kernel. And while there’s a little more to it than that, not much. I thought, ‘What the hell?’ and gave it a shot. Piece o’ cake with basically a mouse and an SD card. Seriously.
You DO need to follow a few directions, but the README is pretty clear on the installation as is the PDF in the first post of this thread.

The biggest stumbling block (and initial disappointment) of the project was the hype surrounding its capability to provide hardwired PoE functionality. That was a big deal and got everyone all excited. One problem. How? The ‘List of Working LAN Adapters’ thread on the GitHub project page speaks for itself in both ingenuity and frustration. The only magic bullet was the UCTRONICS Micro USB to Ethernet PoE adapter, but it seemed to present all kinds of problems for many folks. Some probably legit from early production QC issues, some probably self-inflicted by users simply not understanding how one needed to be integrated with the camera via the wz_mini firmware. Regardless, the USB/ETH aspect of the project seemed to become a boondoggle until the recent effort to get to the bottom of the UCTRONICS adapter issue has essentially gotten us here now. It will be interesting to see where it goes, if anywhere. LOL

So go download wz_mini, grab a pair o’ shades, roll the top down and enjoy a new hot rodded v3. Let us know how it goes.

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It is sad that this no longer works on newer firmware releases. :sob: