Frequently loses Wi-Fi

I would imagine that teleporting might also have a not insignificant effect. :astonished:

Why do you think Shatner talks the way he does?

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Thanks for the Sonoff info.

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Bones was right to be skeptical!

I highly recommend a FREE Wi-Fi signal app like Wi-Fi SweetSpots to check with your phone if the area you’ve placed the camera is getting a reliable signal. You can watch a real-time graph of the throughput from your phone to your router at any location, and you might be surprised how much that will tell you.

Also it’s worth mentioning if you find the app useful, I think they have a $1.95 option that is essentially a donation.

Beyond that, my experience has been the Wyze products give up on attempting to reconnect FAR TOO QUICKLY after a disruption, compared to other brands.

You can also view the RSSI in both the camera and most routers/access points to get an idea. Try to keep it higher than -70 on both ends, but I do have one that sometimes goes as low as -73 and rarely disconnects.

The issue with wifi scanner and site survey apps is they use your phone’s hardware, in reality a true site survey is done with the exact hardware you’ll be using, hence looking at the values from the camera and your router.

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You took the words out of my mouth. None of those apps give you real results. Phone hardware and antennas are way more superior than any WiFi cameras. No wonder the phones cost ten times more than any camera out there.

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And if you’re running a mesh or other multi-AP network, your cam and phone may not even be connected to the same AP even though both phone and cam are collocated.

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That’s a whole other can of worms :slight_smile:

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I have been praising TP-Links Deco mesh routers here lately. Not that I am any less satisfied, but thought I would mention something else. If you open the choice “Online Clients”, you can sort them any number of ways. When you have named the device by a meaningful name, like you are using in the Wyze app, you might notice that they are missing. Hmmm, where did they go? Scroll down to the bottom of the list. There’s another section, yep, below but under the Online Client choice. This section is Offline Clients. I can figure why the put Offline under Online, instead of breaking it out separately. But that’s not my point. Below the Online, this list of Offline are not really offline. Mine shows 50+, They are there. Some ( alot of them are Wyze). Which confirms what we see often, Wyze devices do not maintain a persistent connection. They sort of drift in the ether somewhere between online and offline. Why? I wish Wyze would do two things. 1) Stop this, 2) Tell us why they have been doing that all along.

All my wyze cams maintain a constant connection to multiple servers on the internet, I don’t think that is the issue. Even if that wasn’t the case, they’re connected to wifi and the AP portion of your router knows that, but isn’t necessarily communicating that to the active/inactive client list display.

Each router manufacturer uses their own method for determining what is “online”. Many of them just watch for ARP requests/responses, and devices that maintain a constant connection and don’t need to open and close new ones frequently won’t send many of those, unless something specifically asks them to. I bet if you ping the camera, it will move back to “online” relatively quickly.

Asus had a similar issue, their solution was to “gratuitous ARP” scan the entire LAN subnet every time you bring up the client list. It works, but it isn’t terribly elegant.

Part of the problem is the client list you’re looking at isn’t based on physical connection (i.e. is it connected to the wifi AP portion of the router or a physical switch port), it is a totally separate thing. In my asus even before they fixed it, I could go in and look at wifi client status and those will obviously always show online, even if they’re generating 0 traffic were showing offline in the client list.

So while wyze could have their cams all ping something every 60 seconds or whatever to help them always show as online in various routers, it isn’t really their problem to fix (and many would not like that behavior either). I’m not familiar with the UI of that mesh system but there may be a separate screen where you can look at wifi client status which should always show them online. You could probably script some device that is always online to ping scan your network (or even just ping your cameras) every minute or two also.

Here’s my experience with this problem —

I had bought a Cam Pan V3 to replace a “V1” that stopped working. I could not get the new camera to stay connected for more than 10 seconds. It would at least try to reconnect, but that was spotty. I kept getting “Unstable network” errors, it would lower resolution, connect for a few seconds and then stop, …

It was located outside, about 25 feet from the wifi access point that was placed behind a window facing the camera. The V1 had worked fine in that spot for over a year, and the Wifi Analyzer app on my cell phone showed good signal strength.

I spent quite some time online with Wyze Support, and while she was very responsive and thorough, we couldn’t get it to stay connected, so she processed a replacement. That replacement worked the first time and has been working for months, without losing any connection that I noticed.

They didn’t want the old camera back, so I tried it inside and it stays connected just fine when closer to the router. I let it run for about a week without problems. But we don’t want any cameras inside the house, so it’s not much use to me.

So it seems to me, in my very limited sample size, that there is some variability in wifi performance in that product line.

PS - Other than my initial problems, I think that camera is great, especially its night vision. Even with the IR LED off, it has much better vision than the old V1 with its IR on. But with the IR on, it’s almost like we’ve got a spotlight in the yard.

My thoughts as well …its been so long since the V3 disconnect issues have been reported and yet it would seem they are really not making any progress with the wifi drop problem .
Power-cycle the camera’s …yeah , right , 2 of mine need 25 foot ladders to even reach them and our winters are 6 months+ long and often 40 below !
How about you Wyze-guys come and power cycle the camera’s for me …I’ll hold the ladder .
I’m also quite suspiscious of firmware updates , they have made the Cam-OG interface much less user friendly and buried a few once easily-noticeable option’s behind several once-unnecessary clicks ! Why ? The only reason I can think of is to dupe new users into thinking they need cam-plus to see the events . They are digging into the very pockets of once loyal Wyze cam purchasers by slowly making the original free and friendly interface more difficult to navigate .
Cam plus is not necessary , The only advantage may be the P.C. display option but…One can get the display on to P.C. screens with other free methods .

[Mod Edit]: Fixed post formatting issue.

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