My cam had been offline for 12ish hours. And this happens a couple times a week. The cam is outside and the wifi modem is indoors on the main level less than 10 feet away from Wyze. The camera frequently loses connection and does not reconnect. And this is not due to an internet outage. I have 2 Blink cameras less than 5 feet of the Wyze and Blink has zero connection issues.
The difference is, on the rare occasion the wifi goes down and Blink loses connection, Blink let’s me know it’s offline and when wifi comes back on, Blink automatically reconnects. Wyze does not.
To solve this, I now have Wyze plugged into a smart plug so I can use the app to power the cam off and on and then it reconnects.
I started with a Wyze outdoor plug but that would lose connection as well. So I tried a Kasa outdoor plug. The Kasa never loses connection. So now I don’t have to go outside and unplug it to reconnect all the time.
1, Wyze has a wifi connection issue that my other devices do not.
2, Wyze app does not, but should send me a push notification telling me it’s offline. It seems like a basic request especially since it goes out a lot.
Half is a Wyze problem sure. I feel there’s something else that is also going on here. I’ve had a Wyze outdoor plug in use for 5 months or so about 25’ away through multiple walls and it didn’t have any issue that made me think about buying something else.
Wifi quality is also determined by the router / AP. There can also be router / AP stability issues that affect one thing more than other things or one thing and not other things.
The Wyze outdoor plug may also have QA issues from the factory.
Other things might affect is also like one plug having an antenna in a different place.
But, manually power cycling is a lame way to go. I understand you’re doing this as a workaround but you should solve it in other ways. I can’t get behind the manually power cycle something constantly idea. I leave these cams go without power cycling them, and when I open the app, they’re working.
If you need to keep them running all the time if the app still gives up today, try using the Alexa plugin with a schedule to auto bring the Wyze cam back up hourly or whatever. You won’t ever have to power cycle when you get a good setup.
This request has been made repeatedly for years as an active Wishlist item. Feel free to contribute your comments and vote in that topic:
I can relate. My first Cam Pan v3 would frequently and irritatingly lose its Wi-Fi connection even though it was only a few feet from a wireless access point with no intervening walls, so I resorted to the same solution: I used a Wyze Plug that allowed me to power cycle the camera in order to get it back online. Eventually, Wyze released two different firmware updates that specifically addressed “Wi-Fi connection stability”, and that has seemed to resolve the issue for me, so having current firmware is the first thing I’d check.
Having said that, Wyze has posted some firmware updates in recent months that have been supposed to improve or add new features but have also introduced bugs in the process, so I’m suspicious this may have happened again (especially if you’re current with your Cam Pan v3 firmware). I’m not saying that it has happened, but I wouldn’t rule that out as a possibility just yet.
I also wonder about power at your camera’s location, both what’s being delivered to the camera (from its power source) and what’s being delivered by the outlet itself. I’ve read elsewhere on the Forum that Cam Pan v3 can be finicky because it has higher power requirements than other Wyze camera models (because of its ability to pan and tilt), so anything that activates the motors can cause issues if the power available to the camera is being used to make the camera move. That’s reportedly part of the reason some people have problems when they use non-original power supplies or cables.
The second part, the outlet, might be trickier to figure out. I’m suspicious of that because you’ve already had two different devices (your Cam Pan v3 and your Plug Outdoor) experience issues, presumably at the same outlet. I think it’s great that the Kasa plug is working for you, and I’ve also had good experiences with Kasa/Tapo/TP-Link products. If there is an issue with that outlet (and I’ve experienced problems with outdoor outlets before), then I wonder if the Kasa plug design just has more resilience in its ability to recover from outages or power fluctuations at that outlet.
I’m just speculating here, and I agree with @SeaStream that constantly power-cycling seems more like a temporary troubleshooting-type work-around and not a long-term solution (though it’s certainly something I’ve done short-term in the past). I don’t know if any of this will be helpful to you or not, but I hope you find a workable lasting solution at some point.
I will check the outlet. I didn’t think of that. I DID order another Wyze cam that’s being delivered today. I will try the new one in a different location and see if I have the same issue.
Just weird that the Wyze cam and the Wyze plug have issues but not the Kasa plug or the Blink cam. But I see your point. So thanks.
I know power cycling is a temp work around. And I don’t mind it. I mind not knowing if my cam needs it. We all get busy and we shouldn’t have to babysit the cam and constantly check if it’s online. I don’t understand why they aren’t listening to an off-line notification request. It seems so simple.
I agree. It’s frustrating to try to pull up a camera to check a feed or event and find that it’s not responding. I’m having a similar issue with a (non-Wyze) garage door opener Wi-Fi hub, where I’ve recently placed a Tapo Mini Smart Wi-Fi Plug so that I don’t have to drag out a ladder every time I want to cycle its power. It’s another temporary solution where I think I’ll eventually replace the power supply, but it’s the same thing: The hub should be online and operating when I expect it to; I shouldn’t be seeing an “offline” message when I open the app to check on the status of my garage door.
Something you may have discovered with the smart plugs is that you can have them automatically turn on when they’ve been off for a certain amount of time. The Wyze, Kasa, and Tapo apps all allow you to do this. With Wyze, it’s Rules; with Kasa and Tapo, it’s Automations you find in the Smart tab of the respective app. You can basically script an automation that says something like “when this plug has been turned off for 20 seconds, turn it back on”. I do this currently for the Tapo plug in the garage as well as for a Wyze plug that I can use to cut power to a smart washing machine with flaky Wi-Fi (and that one has been in place literally for years because the manufacturer refuses to address the problem aside from telling me to power cycle it at the breaker or getting behind the thing to unplug it and plug it back in). I like it because I can turn the power off and move on, not turn the power off, wait x-number of seconds, and then turn it back on again. Because these things are also linked to Google Home, I can just ask Google Assistant on a smart speaker to turn off whichever plug, and I have corresponding automations in Google Home that chime and announce when the power to a particular plug has been restored afterward.
Many of us do this same trick, with the WiFi smart plug. Many of us have been doing it so long that we forget to mention it to people with the like problem.
I don’t know your exactly situation, and I am not disbelieving you. However, you mgith try this next time. I would guess you first select the camera and open the view to it. - and find it does not respond. If so, try this once or twice to see if it makes a difference. Close the app. (Do need to log off), but close the app. That does not mean just close the window, use your smart phone’s cnoice be it ios or android to close the app. Then open it again and go to that camera. The question is; did closing the app to “get a fresh start/restart” help with that camera? Notice, I didn’t even ask if it showed offline. Sometimes this matters on mine, and its easier to close the app and open again, than go the the WiFi plug’s app and turn the plug off, then back on.
And most of us that do this WiFi plug thing, don’t use Wyze WifI plugs. They have their own set of problems.
Xfinity gateways are not known for having great wifi. They have a few small, low gain omni antennas in them. Plus if your house has aluminum siding, aluminum vapor barrier, chicken wire plaster, etc etc the signal will have a very hard time making it outside. I have two Pan v3 cams outside, and a good Asus router mounted up high on the second floor. I’m surprised at how good one of them stays online even with very borderline signal. It does disconnect sometimes but reconnects (and when it reconnects the events all show up and obviously the SD card recordings are there). I’m not blaming that camera at all, with the distance from the router and my aluminum siding, I’m surprised it isn’t more intermittent. My router is also like 7 years old and the wifi chipset is starting to fail. I plan to probably go to the RT-AX88U Pro at some point, it has 4 external 2.4ghz antennas on it. Any router that supports 4x4 on 2.4ghz is going to give the best coverage on the band these cameras use.
You can either try moving the Xfinity gateway to somewhere that it has line of sight (or close to it) through a window to the camera, plus try to get it up higher, either on top of a shelf or on a floor above, or buy a better router. You can use the Xfinity gateway in bridge mode, or just get your own modem and stop paying their monthly fee.
They’ve gotten better (the tall skinny black Arris ones were awful coverage wise, and the new ones do have very good throughput and better coverage than the old) but yeah, not fit for this purpose. If you want a lot of coverage and distance, a good router with external antennas is the way to go.
What I’m calling the Smart tab is for that middle control in the strip along the bottom. If I tap that and then tap the upper-right , I can then select Smart Actions and create an automation similar to a Rule in the Wyze app.
What I like about these—in contrast with what something like Google Home allows—is that automations (in the Wyze, Kasa, and Tapo apps) triggered by a device can be self-referential: If turning a switch ON initiates an automation, then that same automation can act on that switch and turn it OFF. This is exactly what I did for my sister and brother-in-law, when they got a 3-pack of Kasa switches to automatically turn on and off outside lights based on sunrise and sunset (and which they set up to control in Google Home since they were already using that) and then had one switch left over after I installed two for the exterior lights: I put the third switch on the circuit for a bathroom exhaust fan and then set up an automation in the Kasa app so that when that switch is turned on it turns off after 10 minutes.
I agree however my Eero’s have been great, At home I have it in my office which is at the far back of the house and the signal reaches the cars in the driveway at the front of the house. At the cottage it reaches the dock in the lake which is about 100 feet away.
I feel so stupid, I never clicked on that little cloud at the bottom of the screen. For some stupid reason I alway thought it is the cloud subscription
Thanks for enlightening me, gotta go and play with that
thing to unplug it and plug it back in). I like it because I can turn the power off and move on, not turn the power off, wait x-number of seconds, and then turn it back on again. Because these things are also linked to Google Home, I can just ask Google Assistant on a smart speaker to turn off whichever plug, and I have corresponding automations in Google Home that chime and announce when the power to a particular plug has been restored afterward.
Smart tab is for that middle control in the strip along the bottom. If I tap that and then tap the upper-right 
, I can then select Smart Actions and create an automation similar to a Rule in the Wyze app.
