I’m done with Wyze!
We’re out of the country and 4 of our devices are offline.
We unplugged everything and restarted the modem before leaving just to be on the safe side yet this happens and there’s nothing they can do excepted to ask someone to get into your house to troubleshoot or to say: " I know that you would like to rectify this now. We don’t have a perfect network so sometimes this instance happens. " and give you a $5 dollars gift card. What the heck are we supposed to do with a gift card when the service were paying for is not even working??
If anyone has a suggestion forwn alternative company that would be great. We’re over this BS.
I used to get offline devices when I first installed Wyze a long while ago. I upgraded my router and only got them occasionally. I installed non-Wyze Smart Plugs on all my cams so that I could power cycle my cams remotely. It worked well. As my Wyze device load grew, I added a daily power cycle to all my cams.
Then I upgraded my router again last year. Since then, 100% device uptime across the board, shut down all power cycle schedules, haven’t had to power cycle an offline cam since. 70+ Wyze devices and growing.
I solved my offline issues by supporting them with a WiFi network and router that would treat them with the respect they deserve and not keep dropping them.
I had the same experience. I used to have slower internet speeds and a very old access point, but since then I have switched to starlink, T-Mobile home internet, and Wyze routers, and have had 0 offline issues since.
I know everyone is so tired of hearing that it’s their WiFi, but the reason it’s said so much is because it’s true! Most cheap WiFi routers or even older high end routers aren’t designed for this load
That is true. But today it isn’t about the age of the router or the cost. It’s all about the programming black magic that the manufacturer slams in there to try and fool the user into thinking it is the fastest, most powerful router network on the planet. Some of the most expensive and most powerful mesh routers today that can support a bazillion devices do that by throttling, metering, juggling, and rearranging devices on the network. It is a digital shell game all the time and it all favors the faster streaming devices on the 5GHz and mods 6GHz bands.
I had a guy who was assigned as my driver when I was stationed overseas. He was one of the biggest, baddest, strongest, fastest, fittest specimens of pure physical talent I have ever uncountered. I sent him back less than a week later and told my Personnel Officer to find me a new one. He was one of the dumbest they had ever sent. Couldn’t tell time if it wasn’t digital. Counted on his fingers to do math. Couldn’t navigate his way out of a wet paper bag. And the radio… Don’t get me started on trying to train him on how to use SINCGARS.
The point… It can be the strongest, fastest, newest, most powerful router on earth. If the little microprocessor brains on the inside aren’t programmed to do exactly what you need them to do, you have a very expensive paper weight. No one wants to believe their router isn’t capable because they paid so much for it and the Kool Aid they drank when buying it said it was the biggest, baddest, strongest, fastest on the planet. I always have to giggle when I see the word “Gaming” right in the title too. Guess how many Gaming routers are installed in enterprise installation applications. Zero. Because that isn’t what they are made for.
I had the exact same experience as you. I tried everything I could think of and used to blame Wyze. I detailed things that I found that helped make a difference in this thread:
But in the end, I got everything to work nearly flawlessly and concluded it wasn’t actually directly Wyze’s fault like I thought.
To OP: Having said that, different brands’ cameras may work better with different environments and protocol situations. Some people have found the following alternatives to be similar to Wyze:
Xiaomi (they have even historically used some of the same suppliers), but some people don’t like that they are totally a Chinese company.
Reolink
Yi
Tuya Smart Life (they’re more of a platform that is open to lots of brands)
Eufy
Blink
Arlo is known for high quality and reliability, but maybe not budget friendly
Personally I would recommend learning a bit about Home Assistant and look into some compatible with that.
But I do have to caution you that all of the above have their own problems and few of them are as transparent or listen to anything users say, etc. The grass isn’t always greener. I have some of the above, and I have tried or researched several of them. There is a reason Wyze remains my primary camera company. And all 40 of my Wyze cams have been extremely reliable after I made some adjustments to my network. But I’d recommend taking it slowly moving to anywhere else until you’re confident their own deficiencies are tolerable for your use-case. Or…look into what on your network/router/isp, etc could be contributing to the offline issues, and ask why there are some other people don’t have the same issues if it is for sure 100% Wyze that is the problem…it would stand to reason that everyone should experience that, and not everyone does, so what is the difference?
Either way, sorry to hear of your frustrations. It’s insanely annoying when this happens. I’ve been there. I hope you find a solution one way or another to meet your needs.
I have my cameras rebooting daily and some of them still go offline.
What I did is have all the cameras connected by a single extension cord which branches out to other extension cords to connect them all up. That single extension cord is then plugged into a “smart” plug so if I see one camera offline, I can turn it off for a moment to get the one offline to power cycle. That usually fixes the camera offline issue.
But yes, seeing a camera offline on nearly a daily basis has gotten way past old.
Ah, in this case, my primary hypothesis is that your cameras aren’t getting sufficient constant power. I’m not sure which smart plug you’re using, or what gauge wire your extension cords are or how long all your wiring is, or all the factors involved here including which other outlets are splitting up the power, etc, but we are dealing with an initial limit of 15A if it’s on an indoor plug, and that 15A drops fast along the length of each cord and split and may not be distributing evenly.
When the cams aren’t getting their minimum dedicated constant power, they can sometimes work fine for short periods, depending on the cam and settings and what it is trying to do at various times, but when one or more needs more power, a single one of them can knock them ALL offline from an uneven low power distribution.
Long cords are a frequent reason people’s cams don’t work right. Doing it with several cords on the same line is just asking for frustration, especially if the wire gauge number isn’t optimal.
I’m saying it’s fine to do if you don’t mind, but I’d avoid blaming Wyze for connectivity and performance issues in this case.
You might add Lorex to your list. I have not used Lorex, but have heard good things. That being said, I am very happy with my Wyze v3 cameras. Probably because my strategy is not updating firmware on mission critical cameras until I read positive comments on this forum. I will update camera firmware early on cameras that are in less important locations for testing.
With Wyze you have to determine where you fall on the spectrum of “Early Adopter” and “Stable Operation” to determine your satisfaction with Wyze.
It’s not all cameras which are going offline all the time. I am using the Wyze smart outdoor plug, and the Walmart green outdoor extensions. The cameras going offline was long even before I did the extension cords. In fact there is one camera not on that network of extension cords which would go off every three days. It it is in an area which is not as important to me so I would tolerate it going offline. I finally have it rebooting daily, and it is no longer going offline. Even the smart bulbs go offline on occasion.
Amps don’t drop on an extension cord. Volts might but a couple volts out of 120 is not an issue.
15A on a branch circuit is limited by the circuit breaker which is there to protect the wiring from overheating & starting a fire.
Maximum amps on the Wyze AC power adapter is 0.25A AC. There is zero drop on any length of extension cord even if you have 10 devices on the same cord.
NFPA 70 details everything.
I had the same offline issues with my new Cam V3 which is now a secondary camera. It kept going offline for the first few days. There was no pattern & I tried everything from different power cords to no power cords. I have an eero mesh wifi & have never had a problem with the primary Cam V3. Wifi signal strength is the same for both cams. All of a sudden, the new cam decided to remain stable & I have no explanation as to why.
This far, no mention has been made of which model cam is being discussed here for its chronic offline behavior. There is one specific model that comes to mind that is notoriously suspect.
If power supply issues have already been tested and ruled out, the only remaining theory should be explored and tested.
Exactly! The very same thing happened to me. When I got home their idea to troubleshot was unplug and get it online and they think they’ve solved it… Nope just reset until the next inconvenient time !!!
I was having the same problem, it turns out, if you are not in the US or Canada, it has no way of adjusting the time. What was happening with us is I was scheduling for the time in Mexico and it was turning on and off For the time in the US. I have to set all of my switches to US time as a result. They should mention that somewhere in their crappy data. I’ve never seen such poor instructions on a product in my life.
So…from this thread, many fix their off-line cameras by changing their router. That’s great. How about a list of what routers work well with Wyze products?
Here’s what I did. I have two houses. One is a summer home that is quite remote. To keep everything working there I put in 7-day programmable timers on each device or group of devices, router included. The power-cycle the devices once a week, in the middle of the night. This has vastly reduced off-line issues. In fact, the camera that doesn’t get power-cycled went off line, and stayed that way until the site lost power, then it restarted and came back.
It’s stupid we have to do this, but it’s the only work-around I’ve found to keeping Wyze products on-line.
I have the indoor camera Wyze OG I get constant alerts and go look and it’s an advertisement to pay for a subscription - I can’t even see a short clip without interruption first of advertisement to buy a subscription of Wyze of wyze monitoring - I was told to put sd card in it & it should be fine - NOT TRUE AT ALL. It’s a joke - it’s a tacky looking service if I put sd card in the camera and can’t even just use sdcard monitor things myself without Wyze constantly sending me FAKE ALERTS - Causing panic then we’ve ignored real alerts because we get so many fake alerts that are just advertisements to pay monthly subscription - WYZE Cameras are not worth getting - WE WANT A CAMERA FOR THE DOOR OF AN APARTMENT- THAT IS ALL - the first 2 weeks it did what it said it would do - I didn’t want subscription - that’s when WYZE STARTED SENDING US ADVERTISEMENTS buy subscription to see video clips -WHAT A RIP OFF TACKY COMPANY - very misleading about what it will do - WYZE MAKES SURE IT DOES LESS AND LESS AS TIME GOES ON TO FORCE PEOPLE TO BUY SUBSCRIPTIONS OR BIY MORE CAMERAS.
Consumer protection Canada and USA will be contacted and we will let them hear about this SCAM.
The store we got it at will also get to hear about see the pictures or screen shots of advertisements fake alerts that knowone needs after midnight - during the night - so Wyze must monitor my activity if I’m awake all night -I could see different colour light on front of camera at times-wondering who is looking at my activity or who is viewing through my camera - it did not work when needed in june 2023 when 3 people came into the place - all day nothing. Unable to view content pops up all the time - it’s nothing but stress causing gimmicks to buy more from WYZE -you can’t get a person ever in Canada for support - it’s Philippine call centre that don’t seem to care - gave me false info.
Sorry I’m not the bad guy here - I paid for a camera that takes sd card and not a camera that is constantly used to suck customers into buying more junk of Wyze.
If I wanted monitoring I’d get local security camera here through cable tv companies or local security company - also think it should have a peel and stick mount to the ceiling or wall option - I’m not into drilling into the walls or ceiling. I want it to view the entire door and handle and bolt lock and floor by bottom of door in case an envelope is under my door on the floor - to alert me.
So this camera system and WYZE gets a
It’s going to sound bad. I have been quite critical of the UI, reporting detail, lack of advanced controls, and overall depth of “tweakability” for the advanced user; but for 100% connectivity uptime on every single device (70+) and great coverage, it has surpassed every other router I have owned. Wyze Mesh Router Pro. 3 nodes.
Wyze does tend to use in app adds a bit to aggressively IMO. But, there are some things you can do to minimize it and still get decent performance from the OG.
Without Cam Plus, you are never going to get Video Uploads to the server. You may have gotten those in the Free Trial period, but the Basic non-subscription package is thumbnail snapshot uploads only and there is a 5m timeout imposed between uploads.
If you have the Sensitivity on the cam high, you are much more prone to get false Motion Detections, which then starts a 5m timeout that may lead to missing real events. The OG is quite sensitive to changes in lighting causing the pixelation shading changes that will be perceived as motion. You may need to turn that back a bit.
To avoid as many unnecessary popups as you can, turn off the In-App notifications in the Account → Notifications settings. Also do not click on any of the features that require Cam Plus. These aren’t marked, another feature I wish Wyze would add, but you will quickly learn which features are CP required.
The reason an SD Card is so useful without a subscription is so that you can review video of an uploaded Event Snapshot if you wanted to. When you view the Event Snapshot, there is a button at the bottom of the SD Card for “Playback”. That takes you to the SD Card recorded video so you have the opportunity to view the motion that caused the Event Upload. You can also then Record that video to your phone’s Gallery. There are also no timeout cooldowns imposed on SD recordings.
Wyze isn’t monitoring your cam. The status light on the front of the cam is designed to change to Red when you are viewing the Live Stream or when the cam is experiencing a motion event and uploading it to the server. Personally, I find the light annoying. I turn them off on all my cams. I want people to believe it is recording 100% of the time, which mine are.
