I have 14 pre-2021 plugs. Of those, four are always plugged in.
Yesterday morning, they all went offline. Per Wyze support docs, I tried factory reset and re-add on all of them. No luck after a couple of hours.
I put my iPhone into Airplane mode: no luck.
I swiped the Wyze app out of memory and re-launched: no luck.
The plugs are in a wall outlet - no surge protector or other in-between devices.
Plugging one in, it slow blinks. I hold the reset button, it rapid-blinks, I go through device add and put my phone on the plug’s WiFi, then add device hangs for a while and then fails.
@Wyze, seeing that you say in the above post that this is an app issue you’re aware of, and that v 3.2.6.1 just shipped a couple of days ago (this is what I have on my iPhone) is there yet another issue with pre-2021 plugs in this new app version?
NOTHING has changed on my end. The plugs have been in the same outlets for over a year.
This is very frustrating. I used to have several Wyze cams (indoor as well as outdoor with the base stations) and I got rid of those after their constant unreliability. The plugs would randomly stop working too every few weeks (slow blink, rules for on/off no longer worked) but usually unplugging and then re-plugging the plugs would work. No more.
But with this latest “is it an app update that rendered all my plugs non-functional?” issue, I hope Wyze can answer reliably with what’s going on here. As I’ve said before in older posts here, Wyze has great ideas, but the reliability and consistency of all its products that I’ve tried renders them basically toys that should not be used for anything important.
AFAIK iOS does not let you disable 5GHz WiFi or force only 2.4GHz. I did disable cell, made no difference.
As I said… nothing has changed on my end. No new WiFi, no new iPhone (I have had my phone for over a year with the Wyze app on it), nothing else changed except the new Wyze app version from 4 days ago.
In the meantime, I also dug up an old iPad to try an older version of the Wyze app. That one can’t even log in anymore (“Error contacting server”) so maybe Wyze has also changed its login endpoint? Yet another frustration dealing with this company’s products.
@p11, I suspect @WildBill’s suggestion may be at least part of the solution, just based on my own experience with various IoT devices (from non-Wyze manufacturers). I’m using Android but recently had an experience where an original Plug seemed to conk out after I added a new access point to my network (so the Plug issue may or may not have been coincidental):
I think the key is going to be to make any 5 GHz network connection completely unavailable to your iPhone so that it’s forced to use a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi connection. That’s what I’ve had to do in order to get many IoT things online and configured. Once the device has been setup, you can re-enable your 5 GHz Wi-Fi so that your phone (and other things capable of using that frequency) can be happy.
My guess is that the iPad might have a pre-v2.45x app version. Note this:
I appreciate the suggestions. However: nothing has changed in my home in months. Only the Wyze iOS app version.
Looking at the previous Wyze forum article I linked, Wyze said then it was an issue in their app they are aware of.
If the only way to deal with Wyze is to literally reconfigure my WiFi to disable its modern features (like 5GHz) then this isn’t a serious platform. It’s a hobbled toy, a conclusion I’d come to anyway after this latest of many, many misadventures and frustrations over several years of owning Wyze plugs and cameras.
I have also configured many other IoT devices. I have never had to go into my infrastructure and disable, say 5GHz or apply other limits.
Pending any sort of helpfulness from Wyze about whether their just-released iOS app version introduced an incompatibility with pre-2021 plugs (all of which I had on the latest firmware), they’re unplugged and the last of my Wyze stuff that will be headed to electronic waste disposal unless they somehow become usable/useful again.
Yes, I’m frustrated. There is a lot of promise in this platform at a reasonable cost but it just seems this company has never gotten their software (whether on device or app) to be truly solid and “set it and forget it”. And I’ve spent many. many… many hours over the years unplugging, re-plugging, resetting, the Wyze stuff. Far more than with any other device platform I’ve run.
Oh well. Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll give it a few more days to see if Wyze responds or someone has a suggestion that doesn’t involve hobbling something that hasn’t changed in a long time.
I skimmed it. It’s in the Beta category, and the initial post is over a year old. The app has been through many revisions since then, so I didn’t spend a lot of time with that particular topic.
As I mentioned, this is a temporizing measure to force the phone onto a 2.4 GHz network, because the bulk of IoT products I’ve used to this point don’t support 5 GHz, and they struggle with the Wi-Fi hand-off from the phone if the phone wants to be on a different frequency that they can’t use. That’s where the hang-up has been in my experience, and, in fact, many IoT device manufacturers (in their literature and/or app setup workflow, at least those I’ve used so far) are explicit about the fact that the devices can use only 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and that the phone must be on the same network that it’s trying to connect the device to, though some don’t go so far as to say that the phone must also be on the 2.4 GHz network, which seems like kind of an important detail to omit when I suspect a lot of people operate their 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks with the same name. (I realize that I’m using “network” somewhat loosely here, and I think IoT manufacturers often do, too. I’m not saying that I approve of the ambiguity, just that I’m trying to illustrate how vexing dealing with this stuff can be.) Once the IoT device has been configured to authenticate to the 2.4 GHz network, the 5 GHz radio on the gateway/router/WAP can be re-enabled.
What I’m describing has been my all-too-frequent experience with IoT device from various vendors connecting to ISP-supplied residential Wi-Fi gateways with 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks operating with the same SSID. It’s frustrating, but I accept it as a temporary hiccup because, although my phone preferentially attaches to the 5 GHz signal (when it’s available), the IoT devices are incapable of communicating on that frequency.
I share it because discovering that on my own was an exercise in aggravation, and I hope that this knowledge can save others some frustration in the future. It’s worked for me, so that’s what I’m reporting.
I don’t have any of the Wyze gadgets that speak 5 GHz. I would expect that disabling the 5 GHz router radio would be unnecessary with those.
This is really such a common issue with iot devices that my router has an option that when selected temporarily shuts down the 5ghz band for 10 minutes to allow devices to connect to 2.4. It automatically brings the 5ghz back up after that 10 minutes.
If your setup doesn’t have that option, just temporarily stop the 5ghz band and then re-enable it once your device is connected. It doesn’t require permanently turning off 5ghtz.
I don’t know, either, but I haven’t really had a need for a while to do much beyond my ISP’s gateway…except that I did recently add a second wireless access point (with wired backhaul).
I appreciate the screenshots, too. I don’t know if Wyze’s routers do this or not, but it seems like a smart feature that’d be worth implementing for an IoT company that’s also doing networking equipment.
I agree. I stumbled across it when I had to reconnect my first Gen Echo. I don’t remember where I read it, but I was glad I did. They totally buried it in troubleshooting.
That’s good to know. I wish it said “5 GHz” instead of “5G” because of the confusion that seems to cause with some people, but it’s still cool that they included that feature. Thanks for sharing!
I’m surprised this is such a mystery. It’s a well known issue with IoT devices which is why many routers have the function to temporarily disable 5gHz networks to allow them to connect.
