It may not be defective, may be power or even just the way the lights are hitting them vs where your others are, but I’d give the adapter and cable a try just to see. Too many strange things going on and seems like they could all be explained by the cam not getting enough power.
Okay I got an extension cord and went around to most of my cameras with a new wyze adapter (one that came with the new cameras I bought) as well as the new 6ft cable. I tried plugging in my cameras that were flickering/purple and I didn’t notice any changes. Then I tried several of my old 5V phone charger adapters and old wyze chargers as well… they were all between 1amp and 2amps. On most of the cameras I didn’t notice any changes. On two different cameras, however, with two different adapters (one Wyze 1amp, one Kodak 1 amp) they seemed to stop the purple temporarily only for it to slowly come back over the course of several minutes… You can see it getting more purple as time passes. I thought it might have been because it was getting darker but it was already pretty dark and there were street lights.
Here is one of the videos (I had to cut it down because of video limits here). By the way when I recorded from the cam it cut off sound but I do have sound in the original playback so that’s not a symptom.
If it doesn’t play you may need to download
All together I tried about 7 wyze adapters and 6 or so other adapters. The 2amp chargers didn’t seem to help so I don’t think it’s a power issue. Another thing I noticed is that turning on lights close to the camera snaps them out of the purple … it pretty much only happens in low light situations. But turning the lights off, brings it right back.
Me turning the lights on and off in auto mode. (If it doesn’t play you may need to download)
I’m starting to think the heavy purple is an issue with the calibration/sensitivity of the image sensor. Someone else has posted some night pictures with low light and no IR, and they had a slight purple hue too. I tried it on a couple of mine and in really low light without IR, I see a bit of purple in any direction that a tiny bit of light is coming from. I think that’s just an effect of these starlight sensors in low ambient light.
But none of these are as severe as some of the ones you’ve posted where it is heavy purple all over the image. So I’m thinking yours were just bad and the many tweaks that Wyze has made to night vision sensitivity on the newer firmwares has just brought it to light. When you change a setting and the purple goes away for a while, that is just the sensor resetting and re-adjusting. When I turn IR on or off on mine, or a regular light on/off, they will show very bright then gradually darken back down, so I think as yours re-adjust the purple comes back.
If you opened a ticket with them long ago and it was never fixed, you may be able to convince them to replace the cams under warranty. You’ve been waiting for them to fix the firmware, but they never have, and now they’ve forced you to use one that makes the issue much worse. Worth a try.
I would be curious if you take one of the cams that works ok (not solid purple overlay) and swap it with one of the really purple ones, does the issue follow the cam (definitely a camera problem) or does the new one start having the issue (some strange lighting issue in that/those areas, there are plenty of non-visible light ranges that can affect cameras). But understood that may be too big of an undertaking “just to see”.
I’ve swapped out some of my camera’s for newer purchased v.3 cams and tested the others. I want to note that all of these cameras were on the 139 firmware when purchased. After the OTA update, all of these cameras are going purple in low light situations as well. Sometimes they flicker, sometimes they don’t. I even factory reset and updated the firmware manually afterwards and they still have problems. The trigger seems to be extremely low light situations. Some will turn the nightlight on, mitigating the problem somewhat, but others will continue to show the purple. I intentionally turned the night light off on all of them for the last couple of days and most were purple all night the first night, and some seemed to come out of the purple at certain points the following night. I’m not sure why. The cameras in better lit areas don’t have this problem so I’m not sure if those cameras are effected or not. I’m guessing they are, but the light never gets so low that it happens. I’ve submitted logs to Wyze and they are probably going to help me replace some of the cameras but I’m not sure if they’ll do just the new ones or the old ones as well. Since it seems like a firmware issue, I’m not sure if replacing the cameras will even help. I’m wondering if any of the V.3s come installed with a default firmware that is newer than 139, because the update seems to cause issues? Is is possible I’m just using the cameras in an environment where the light is low, but not low enough for the night light to automatically come on? Perhaps someone else can put one of their v.3’s in a dark environment and turn off the night light to see if they get the same purple.
Sounds like maybe the latest firmware has made some “improvements” to night vision that ended up causing issues in certain light situations. If all of your v3s are doing it then it is unlikely replacements will help. They wouldn’t come with anything newer than the current released firmware. You could try enabling beta firmware, but probably better to wait for them to resolve and test the issue.
I’m not sure if you can downgrade to like 1 or 2 levels back and still be able to connect (not sure what the earliest version that supports the latest security protocols is), but I believe you said it did this on even older firmware?
It may just be that whatever lighting situation you’re in is just right on the edge of some threshold where it has to change to night vision to get a good picture. The purple is probably the sensor over exposing the low light image a bit too much, where if you had night mode enabled it would switch to IR.
Or maybe some sort of bug that when you disable night mode it is still “auto” moving the IR filter into place, but that would be strange (you’d be able to hear an audible click when it did that too, and even if you watched the footage, the purple would come in very quickly in that case, not gradually).
I will say I’ve never seen this purple hue (maybe a very very slight one around the edges when it was totally pitch black) on my OGs in low light without night mode on, or on my Panv3s. Maybe they’ll replace some/all of your cams with v4s or OGs or something. Or maybe you just need to let night mode kick on as needed?
It could be something totally random like the LED streetlights in your area or on someone’s nearby house are putting out a wavelength that confuses the image sensor.
Yeah I’m thinking it’s probably a change they made as an improvement but in limited situations, like mine, it’s worse. Part of the problem though is that night vision mode doesn’t always trigger when it should so some cameras are stuck in this purple haze. Some do trigger to night mode, and that’s what I would prefer to happen ideally… over the purple haze anyways. I disabled the night mode just as a test so I could see how they reacted over the course of the full night. I’m not sure if it’s the lighting in the area but that may be a possibility. However, last night some of my cameras went to purple and then came out of it, But the night before they went purple for practically all night. If it was the LED streetlights, why wouldn’t it have continued the whole night like before. Could it be the moonlight maybe?
Additionally, I don’t think downgrading the firmware would help because I’ve noticed it has done it with the 4054 firmware and the newest firmware. I didn’t stay on the other two for long enough to make note if they did it but I think the change was made during 4054 and everything after that was probably impacted.
There has been a feature request to add “turn on night mode” as a action in the rules. Not sure if/when that will happen. For cases like yours that would help have a reliable switchover.
Does the v3 have the “dusk” and “dark” settings for night mode? If so have you tried dusk to see if it switches over more reliably?
Seems like the purple is related to some sort of auto exposure or color/hue adjustment that is probably getting confused by streetlights or like you say moonlight, maybe a combo of the two. Our eyes can’t see anywhere near the full spectrum of light the camera can, and what we can’t see is probably affecting how it does that auto-adjustment.
“Seems like the purple is related to some sort of auto exposure or color/hue adjustment that is probably getting confused by streetlights or like you say moonlight, maybe a combo of the two. Our eyes can’t see anywhere near the full spectrum of light the camera can, and what we can’t see is probably affecting how it does that auto-adjustment.”
That sounds likely… hopefully they can fix it. Apparently they are going to send me one new camera (for now) to swap with one of my existing ones to see if it’s just a bad batch or something. I have a feeling they are going to see it happen on the one they send me as well and then who knows what they will want to do.
I did see the dusk settings and I did try them out before but I don’t remember if that was reliable or not. I need to do more testing. I’m going to do a timelapse of two of the cameras tonight so I can see exactly what’s happening all night in a short clip. After that I’ll probably try the dusk setting again.
If you aren’t reliant on Cam Lite maybe they’ll send you some v4s as replacements (can always dream).
Well I do use Cam lite but it’s mostly because I think Cam plus would use too much data. At the properties some of my cameras are at, I have limited data usage but lots of motion events. I’m not sure how customizable Cam plus is with Cam 4 cameras and whether it would allow me to limit the data/uploads. Cam Lite, seems to work well enough because of the lower resolution, 12 second limits, and cool down periods. However, at home, where I have the purple problem, I don’t have the restrictions so I think Cam 4’s might be okay for this location, I would just need to upgrade to cam plus.
I’m not familiar enough with the two, I believe both use data for doing analysis, and I thought the clip length was the same, but maybe not (I know Cam Unlimited as it is now called will keep recording as long as there is motion, up to 5 minutes, not sure if Cam Light does that). Not sure the different in cool down periods either.
If you want to keep the Cam Light, might make sense to try “dusk” setting and see if the cameras switch to night mode better. Though Cam Plus seems reasonable, I think $100 a year for unlimited cams or like $1.xx per month per cam when you buy yearly. I’ve lived without it and tweaked things so they work well, I really only want to be alerted if someone comes up my front steps to the door, other than that I can review footage if I need to find something (most of my cams overlook busy areas so even AI detection would cause a lot of alerts).
If you decide to go that route, keep an eye on Home Depot, the OGs are on sale for $20 online and probably lower in store (if they have any left) as they’ve been on clearance for a while. I’m really happy with mine, the interface is a bit different but not drastic. I don’t have time lapse but I’m not sure if that is a camera feature or a subscription feature.
I have several V.2s as well… 5 or so… I replaced them with V.3 a couple years back. The image is just a lot better on the V.3, especially at night. That’s why I’m annoyed that one of the best features of the V.3 is ruined by a firmware update.
I don’t remember about the time lapse, I hardly use it.
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You are correct. Cam unlimited uses way too much data. I am in a similar boat, at one of my properties I only have 1Mbs upload and four cameras that killed one modem and crashed the replacement for nearly too weeks until a power outage rebooted the modem. I tweeted the cameras sensitivity to about 25% and it seems to help if I only view two cameras at the time on a calm day, with not much tree and shadow movement. Lower sensitivity also means that something or someone has to be really close to the camera so it triggers notification. Kind of useless if you ask me. Previously on Lite I had the sensitivity at 50% and had no issues with all four cameras.
Yes both use date, however Unlimited will upload up to five minute chunks where Lite only 12 seconds and cool down for five minutes. Unlimited has no cool down, so if there is motion for ten minutes you get two five minute clips.
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So I thought I’d give another update. Wyze sent me another Cam V.3 for testing. I installed it where one of my other cameras was giving me trouble. It came with firmware 139. I kept that firmware and just installed a memory card. I could not view the camera with the old firmware but I was able to review it after I upgraded the firmware 2 days later. Here is a comparison of the firmware before update and after update.
Firmware it came with.
The New firmware (the night light set to auto kicked on at 1:30 am).
Then I tried setting the nightlight to auto with the dusk setting last night and the night light came on at 12:30am. So to answer your question from before @dave27 , changing the nightlight to dusk doesn’t help.
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Very odd. I don’t have a v3 but it looks like they have done something in firmware that isn’t dealing with low light well and also isn’t switching to night mode when it clearly needs to. What if you angle the camera down a bit to eliminate that bright spot at the top, does the night mode switch on at dusk then? I’m guessing you have other cameras where that may not be a solution, just curious on this one.
Unfortunately there is no rule to switch to night mode at x time (including dusk as calculated by your zip code) - it has been requested as a feature but haven’t seen any update on that. Maybe they’ll send you some OGs or v4s to replace the v3s (well I wouldn’t hold my breath, maybe a partial credit towards new ones). @WyzeLi or @WyzeDesmond any thoughts on firmware fixes for this? I’ve seen a couple other posts with similar complaints.
@tacomaguy20 you could potentially try rolling back to an earlier firmware but I think you said all the versions after the really old one you were running were doing this? In that case, probably not an option.
After they sent me the new camera they closed out the ticket for some reason. I guess maybe they thought that would resolve the problem, but I have 8 of these cameras (with the pink issue) so I’m not sure on that logic. I opened a new ticket with the updated details and pictures and video showing the difference in picture quality so I’m waiting to hear back. Nothing yet. As far as adjusting the placement, this is as far as i want to go with the angle. It would be nice if the time could be set when the nightlight comes on so hopefully they do that.
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They responded to my new ticket and just told me that their engineers are working on it and they don’t have a timeline for a fix… total crap. They’ve had 6 firmware updates to fix this problem because I submitted a ticket back when 4054 came out and the problem is still happening. I’ve chosen to run my cameras in black and white mode for the time being. I am emailing them back that this is an unacceptable long term solution.
This thread is long and I forget, was it you that had some cameras that do it and some that don’t (from Home Depot or something), or is it all of them?
I would certainly stress the fact that you opened the original ticket(s) when they were in warranty and since they have not fixed it, you want replacements.
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The originals I bought from Home Depot were doing it right away I noticed. The ones I bought elsewhere were not, However, I think that may be because of low lighting. The Cameras from Home Depot were put in low light situations and the ones I bought elsewhere were put in locations where there is always light. I think that is the difference. I not sure the cameras are actually defective. I think it’s completely a firmware issue (with the low light triggering the purple hue and not turning on the night light).
I bought 4 cameras from Costco recently and 3 of them I installed at home are doing it, the one I placed at another property with good lighting is not. Wyze sent me a new camera to test and I swapped it with one in a low lighting situation and it’s going purple as well … (but only after updating the firmware). So replacement cameras I don’t think would work… at least not the V.3s. I think the solution is a firmware fix, increased lighting (kind of defeats the purpose of an automatic night vision IR lights though), or different cameras entirely that don’t have the low light issue.