It appears some Wyze V3 camera are not doing well in wet winter weather and are building up some water inside. After taking the camera inside and waiting many days it is not clearing up. Hopefully this is a rare and unusual situation.
Thankfully Wyze without hesitation has sent me a replacement camera. I have two units outdoors for many months and only ONE of the units failed.
I know with changing humidity you may see this sort of thing for a few hours or a day or two. But how many have seen it continue for weeks like I did and not clear up? I am wondering if this is very rare or a bigger issue?
If you take a good Macro image of your camera lens you may see water inside it as I did with mine.
You should contact Wyze and have it replaced.
Again I am very happy with Wyze wonderful support and hope that this will just be a rare situation.
Hi KAE4560, as I mentioned in my last post I already have had them replace the camera under warranty. I am trying to understand how common this type of occurrence is when you have your camera outside and exposed to the elements (rain and snow).
So are yours exposed to receive direct rain or snow or are they under some sort of shelter? If they are exposed to rain and snow hitting them on the regular and have maintained sharpness that would be great news.
Half of my cameras directly exposed to the elements have the same issue. I suspect the IP rating does not hold up over time as they took a few months to develop the same issue as you. Days inside does not fix it.
Ok so I disassembled the camera that has a foggy picture.
I now know what happened to mine and likely others that have had this issue.
Water didn’t get inside the camera and the IP rating of the camera didn’t fail. The lens that no doubt Wyze is sourcing from someone else itself failed. The water got inside the lens elements themselves.
The water or condensation is in between the lens elements and with a fully removed lens it is not on the back or the front of the lens itself. It is not on the CMOS sensor it is in between elements of the lens that should be sealed by the company that makes the lens.
So likely some of them or maybe many of them are just poor quality lenses. The outside lens element is exposed and water is getting around that element and getting inside.
So the QA problem is on the lens supplier and not Wyze.
Interesting, perhaps the adhesive is going over time / temp cycles which may mean a whole lot of issues down the road when used outdoors after some time. It is a Wyze quality issue though as they designed and qualified that part for their application.
It is not a wyze seal that failed. It is the lens itself that they are sourcing from a third party. I assume the third party said the lens are waterproof and they are not. The water is getting behind the front glass and getting inside the lens housing and not entering the camera itself.
So the solution is for Wyze to source a better quality lens.
But as they are replacing all bad cameras it maybe just better for them to do that then for them to increase the cost with more expensive lens. Replacing some small percentage of bad cameras maybe more cost effective a solution than using a better lens.
Seems semantics to me, water got in where it should not so they have an IP issue. Also if one of the 10,000 parts in my Toyota fails it is a Toyota problem, not that specific part vendor although Toyota can certainly go back to them for relief. If is up to Wyze to verify the parts they select meet their design, and make sure quality control is in place for part deliveries. Perhaps this lens was designed for exposure to the elements and UV, maybe not.
Reefer I agree and Wyze didn’t blame the lens company they replaced the whole camera.
I have seen Toyota continue to replace faulty parts with new faulty parts that also break. And finally when it is out of warranty it becomes the customers problem. That maybe the end result here… But hopefully my new one will continue to work.
Had a good rain the other day and the camera above had issues connecting for an hour or two after the sun came out, had error 27 and other issues. Then maybe it dried out because it started working again.
Another camera did indeed get water in the lenses and it is 1 year 3 months old, so no warranty…
It did dry out and seems somewhat alright for now,
If the water got inside the lens you will get certain areas within the viewing area that are foggy where the water spot inside the lens dried. Mine was not completely foggy, just certain areas.
I’ve had 4 cameras all fog. Fortunately Wyze replaced them all, but I’m not certain these V3’s are actually waterproof. Anyone have more than one fog? Every V3 I’ve had outside fogs after a rain.
I had a couple more fail so am probably up to 75% of my V3 that are outside fail, anywhere from 6 months to a year or so. Spots form inside the lens and gets cloudy and never dries. Clearly an issue if out in the elements as something is degrading over time.
Interesting to stumble across this. I had the foggy image problem show up on a couple of my outdoor V3s. Looking thru a macro lens, I noticed that the lens was full of cracks. It’s either the lens itself or a coating on the lens. This is deep inside the camera. Regardless, the image was degrading to the point where any sun in the image was foggy and blown out. Thankfully, Wyze did replace them.
