| I earnestly searched this forum to try and find an existing solution before I create this post, to save us all some time. Alas, here I am (I also spent about the same amount of time formatting this text for readability as I did writing it. I hope it helps.). |
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| First, I’ll give you the Ultimate Question (Abridged), but to actually solve this problem you may have to read the Series of Events and Ultimate Question (Unabridged). |
| Ultimate Question (Abridged): |
| Is there a way for me to simply reconnect a physical bulb to an existing ‘app bulb’ (after a reset and the physical bulb is now blinking green)? If not, what is the easiest way to get this bulb back to its original settings - back into its place within my existing Automations and Shortcuts? |
| Technical Info: |
| I’m using an iPhone. |
| Firmware for CB4 when issue began: “Up to Date”; Latest Version: 1.0.2.56. Current Version: 1.0.2.56. |
| Series of Events, and Ultimate Question (Unabridged): |
| The light (Color Bulb 4, ‘CB4’) is on (along with five other Wyze bulbs - three colors, two whites.). |
| I’m in a different room than the bulbs. The power to the whole house goes out, then a split second later comes back on. |
| All the other lights return to their previous setting. This light is the only one that is now set to full brightness and temperature. |
| Which is weird because the ‘Power Loss Recovery’ setting for all the lights is set to ‘Turn light on,’ not ‘Maintain previous state.’ I checked after this occured. |
| I would guess this might be because the power went out for such a brief moment that the rest of the lights may have not even fully lost power. I can’t say for sure since I wasn’t in the same room as the lights when it happened. |
| I want to change the light brightness and temperature back to its original setting, but due to the power outage, the wifi router reset, and for the next couple minutes none of the lights are visible on the app. |
| So I turn it off manually with the switch on the fixture, to wait until the wifi comes on to change it back. |
| Wifi comes back, the lights are now visible on the app, so I go to turn the light back on manually so I can then change back its settings on the app. |
| So, the light is still off. Then I twist the knob switch (which, for the record, seems unique in that it takes two clicks to turn it on, and two clicks to turn it off. Perhaps that is connected to this issue). So I twist it for two clicks, and it comes on immediately to a ‘blinking green,’ like the kind I associate with when you reset the bulb. |
| On the app, CB4 shows as ‘offline,’ and does not respond to any changes, such as powering on, or changing brightness, temperature, or color. |
| I go to ‘Add Device’ > Bulb Color > [Pick Device], which at first shows two other bulbs marked with a green circle, which is weird because only CB4 is blinking green. |
| So I don’t pick either of them, to avoid causing another problem. |
| I troubleshoot that for a bit. By one of my measures (which included turning the bulb off and on while in the ‘counting down while it waits for you to select a bulb’ phase and hoping it makes itself known) I get a third ‘green circle’ bulb to show up on the list, then disappear. While its visible, I check the last few digits of its MAC address. I back out and go to ‘Device Info’ for CB4. Its MAC address has same ending as the third one that appeared. So I get it to reappear again in the ‘available bulbs’ list. I select it and press the ‘next’ button, and the bulb switches to a blue-colored light and the app shows a ‘loading’ screen, which ‘loads’ for at least thirty seconds before I lose hope. I figure there’s an issue caused by the fact that there is already a bulb added with that MAC address, and it will never stop loading (this loading would usually take only a split second). |
| So I go online to look for an answer. |
| I have been unable to find an answer or solution anywhere I’ve looked. The Wyze site ‘Support’ AI helper chatbot with the question “how to get light back after power outage” and get not enough information (a link to full details at a webpage which says it was last updated 5 years ago [https://support.wyze.com/hc/en-us/articles/360057223951-Power-Loss-Recovery\\]), the Bulb Color FAQ ([Link omitted due to in-post limit]) and Troubleshooting ([Link omitted due to in-post limit]). This Forum. Reddit. The closest answer I find among all of these, which still does not solve it, is a Reddit post from four years ago ( Reddit - The heart of the internet ). |
| Ultimate Question (Unabridged): |
| At this point, it seems I would have to delete the existing ‘app bulb’, then re-add the physical bulb into a new ‘app bulb’. My concern is that I would then have to manually update all of the Automations and Shortcuts that I had made for it. |
| Is there a way for me to simply reconnect the physical bulb to the existing ‘app bulb’? |
| If not, would you please make that possible for the next time this inevitably happens? |
| And in the mean time, what is the easiest way to get this bulb back to its original settings - back into its place within my existing Automations and Shortcuts? |
| Please let me know if you have any questions that would help you better solve this issue, and thank you to anyone who helps. |
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(Disclaimer: If any words or grammar seem out of place, it’s because I’m using voice to text with an earbud that constantly mishears what I’m saying)
I have this thing happen relatively frequently because my kids flip the lights on and off repeatedly.
Most of the time, I can ignore the green flashing light and it will eventually go back to the last settings that had and reconnect and function as normal.
When that doesn’t work, I just go through the setup process as if it is a brand new device. I don’t delete it from the app first because, as you mentioned in your post, if you do delete all of the app then it will either automations that were associated with it, or break them in a different way, or in some rare cases it creates what we call a ghost rule… A ghost rule is where an automation is not visible in the app anymore, but it is technically still in effect, so when you set up the device again from scratch, the ghost rule continues to run the automation and now it’s impossible for you to stop it, change it, delete it. There are only a small number of employees who have been able to figure out how to find ghost rules and remove them. So if you do end up deleting the device, I strongly recommend you disable any rules associated with it, and manually delete them before deleting the device. Ghost rules are rare and don’t always happen, but you don’t want them to happen. Anyway, back to what I do, usually without deleting the device from the app first, I just go through setup again as if I’m setting up a brand new device, and I usually try to name it with the exact same name that it used to have too. Once I do that, it almost always goes back to working again the same as it always did.
Now, there is an exception to the above. Recently, I had One or two original V1 white bulbs have this issue, and I went through setup again, and set up worked… Sort of… It said everything connected to my internet, and then right after that the bulb stops working as soon as I complete setup. I think they broke the setup process in recent app updates so that it isn’t always working correctly with some of the older bulbs. It would go through setup and complete setup and connect to the network and show up on my router and then refused function as if it was totally offline.
I explained the above experience because maybe there is something similar happening to you with the color bulb you are trying to reactivate. If you are going through the setup process and it is not finalizing the activation, maybe there is some problem similar to what I was experiencing.
Something that might work, if you are going through setup and not able to successfully complete activation, is that if you have Android, you could try side loading am older version of the app on your phone (ie: download an older version of the APK file from something like APKmirror, and install that) And see if an older version works better for setting up your color bulbs. Maybe they just messed something up in the process for setting up the original color bulb and nobody has noticed because all of the color bulbs they sell now are a newer second version of the color bulb which runs a little differently. So it’s rare for somebody to set up the older first version color bulbs now and maybe somebody just didn’t notice the setup problems? I’m reaching here, and maybe totally wrong, but since I had a recent experience where a bulb was not successfully setting up (even though It’s Wi-Fi Radio was clearly working for me to go through setup and tell it to connect to my router), I am thinking that there is some kind of bug either in recent app updates or the way the server functions. But not many people have reported these kind of issues, so I’m still trying to find other examples so that Wyze will believe me that it’s not an isolated incident.
Anyway, the summary is that usually if your bulb goes into pairing mode, you can just go through the setup as normal and it reconnects and everything goes back to functioning normally and keeps all of your automations. If it’s not doing that for you, then there could be some other kind of outstanding issue. Maybe the power outage broke something in the bulb. Luckily, they have a pretty long warranty on them of 3 years. You can call support to get it replaced, but they will first walk through troubleshooting including deleting it from the app and going through setup again.
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