Foggy image - possible hardware solution

Actually it is quite doable just take care with the wires, antenna, speaker etc…

Yup the wyze cam is doable. I was referring to expensive weather sealed DSLR lenses likely being too difficult for the average person to disassemble and clean.

I should image on the same difficulty level as watch repairs

Anyone know what IR wavelength the camera sees at?

Another solution could be to potentially do the following:

  1. Replace IR Switching holder with a standard M12 mount (NO IR Switching) with the correct hole spacing for the Wyze PCB board.
  2. Paste a small circular IR filter to the back of the lens with a 850nm bandpass with a few dots of epoxy.

The IRC41 BP filter below would block 650nm and above, and would let a small amount of IR light in at 850nm to be able to keep night vision. The biggest perpetrator of the reddish image usually happens from 650nm - 750 so this might work. The image might still be slightly pink in strong IR light (super sunny pointing directly at it), but better than with no filter at all.

This filter or cheaper equivalent: IR cut-off filter

It’s 850nm. I purchased IR emitters at that wavelength and they light up my yard nicely

Anyone here have take apart instructions for the PAN SCAN to do the lens cleaning?

Just picked this off the Reddit site: Disregard, I found the two screws hidden on the back of the unit and was able to remove the case. Hope that clue helps you

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Undesired consequence of cleaning/tossing the glass disk…at night more light is making it to the sensor and night vision no longer automatically triggers with the same amount of ambient light. (This camera has very limited placement options and I have no control of the ambient lighting.)

I’ve cleaned the dirty glass disk on 2 cameras and completely removed it on a third and haven’t experienced any loss of switching to night vision as it gets dark at all. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t mind if mine switched even a little later/darker. When mine switch, both indoors and outdoors, the streaming image is still bright enough in color day vision. I watch my outdoor one switch most every evening since that one streams to two wall mounted tablets 24/7 365.

The camera I took the disk out of will still automatically switch if it gets dark enough. The problem I have is that my placement area always has a bit of light. Before cleaning the camera that “bit of light” was not bright enough to to stop the camera from auto switching. After cleaning the camera thinks the area is too bright now and does not switch automatically. It’s too bad there isn’t a schedule I can set for the camera to change modes based on time.

Did you ever wonder how that glass disk gets dirty??

Well, this problem was discovered and this thread started last November and unless I missed it, which is possible, there hasn’t been any answer at all from Wyze. If that’s the case and they haven’t given an answer after all this time, that’s unacceptable.
There has been a lot of speculation in this thread and some others ranging from a factory assembly problem and the glass disk being dirty from the factory, all the way to some sort of chemical gassing from the materials inside the device.
Of the 3 cameras I did, 2 were really bad and one was just slightly dirty and passable as is. The foggy image on the bad ones was most noticeable at night with the IR LEDs on. During the day it wasn’t as noticeable until I cleaned them and realized what I had been missing with image quality. So with my cameras 2 out of 3 being really dirty and a 3rd being acceptable without cleaning is a big problem.
I also have 2 Pan Cams, but those seem fine with the image quality so I haven’t opened those. I also have a black V2 still in the box as a spare that I recently bought, but I haven’t tested that one yet,

Probably the most concerning issue isn’t the foggy lens, rather the silence coming from the company regarding it… I for one would like the company to 1. Acknowledge it and 2. Explain their actions regarding it.

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I agree. Maybe they fear if they acknowledge it they’ll get overwhelmed with returns if word gets out? There are probably very few customers overall that have seen this thread and even fewer that have actually made the repair since it’s just this mainly this thread and maybe Reddit. I don’t know, but the Wyze Cam is, or at least was their flagship product and what put Wyze on the map so getting it the best it can be should be top priority. The image improvement is like night and day on some of the more dirty lenses, so a lot of people are missing out on A much better quality image.

We can only hope… Stay safe

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Too funny! I needed a good laugh today. My wife would kill me too, she got frustrated with me when she heard it a few times during the initial setup. :slight_smile:

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Here’s my take. This is just a dustcover to seal the sensor (not optics related). I removed both and everything got better as everyone else described.

To me it looks like outgassing from the foam, the rubber, or the glue or oil that only showed its ugly face in Mass production, but not in development. If this is a startup company, there might not be an extra development budget left to change their entire process, glue type (and factor in the shrinkage rates) and requalify the entire lens module for optics performance, thermal performance, and the same testing for the entire camera for the V2 version, especially if they are currently developing a V3 version that will soon replace it. This becomes even more relevant if you’re selling your product for dirt cheap, and you know a software fix isn’t possible.

Anyway…my $0.02. Cameras are tricky. Maybe they don’t have enough staff to divert resources like an Apple or Samsung would. I think appreciate what we have (pretty good) and hope it gets better in the next version.

When I took apart mine the glass disk was pretty cloudy. I decided to toss the disk as well even after I cleaned it. Years ago I put the cheapest UV filter I could find on a ~$500 telephoto dslr lens to protect the lens. I was travelling at the time in London and and noticed my photos were not as sharp and kind of hazy. I figured the poor results were probably due to a combination of the heat, pollution and the long distance I was shooting from. I eventually took off the cheap UV filter and the image quality went up a huge amount. I inspected the uv filter carefully and it looked totally fine and clear before trashing it. Low quality glass, even when clean, can sometimes have a significant effect.

My concern in removing the glass is what if the apparent outgassing that clouded the glass hasn’t stopped? That would mean it is now simply transferred directly to the more delicate sensor.

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If your camera is more than a few months old I don’t think there is any significant out-gassing. In fact, I don’t think it was out-gassing in the first place. I think they were put in dirty. Two of four cameras I disassembled had a dirty lens. Furthermore, the two smaller lenses in each camera were clean. The lenses that were dirty didn’t look like out-gassing deposits to me. The “dirt”, whatever, was too un-uniform. On one lens the “deposit” was only on half of the lens.
I left the lens out of one camera, it made it arguably a little sharper, but I did notice a distinct color shift, more noticeable at certain times of the day. I’m sure somebody thought there was a good reason to put in the lens.

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