Is your Wyze garage door controller working? Mine randomly opens my garage door in the middle of the night

Well, that’s terrifying.

Hi!

Many thanks for your reply! The v3 camera’s firmware is 4.36.9.139. I can’t tell what the GDC’s firmware is because the app doesn’t see it (If I go to Account / Firmware Update, all of my cameras and other Wyze gear is listed but not the GDC). It doesn’t show up under Accessories or when it occasionally does show up, if I click on it for more info, it says something like “Whoops, it’s not being detected, please call Wyze support". Wyze support suggested I just keep power cycling the GDC until it shows up…

After Wyze sent me another GDC under warranty, I plugged this one in and it automatically found a firmware update which I applied. I believe it was over version 20.

Regarding logs, here are the numbers: 610091, 596789, 574282, 568495, and 566991. I would submit a log every time support asked for it.

Please see attached pics.

Thanks,

David

Have you tried unplugging the GDC from the Camera and plugging it back in to cycle it?

I would also consider going through the setup again for the GDC. Or have you done that before?

Yes, I have tried power cycling the GDC this way about 47 times. I have also hard reset the camera and re-setup the combo about 3 times. No change.

Thanks,

David

Hi David,
I don’t see firmware for the Garage Door Controller listed there either, I so see it here under device info for the V3 that is connected to the Controller (assuming the controller is showing up for you here)

SJ

Hi David,
I recall when I went through the pain of setting my device up I had an issue with the Micro-USB splitter,

If all else fails, try swapping which micro-usb connector feeds which device (it worked for me!)

The instructions said something about keeping the controller as far away from the camera and/or the garage door opener due to potential wireless interference. Not sure if your camera and controller being so close together is contributing to your issue or not.

This video says to keep the camera further away from the Garage Door Opener, not sure if that is contributing to your issue or not:

SJ

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Thanks! I will relocate the GDC and see if that helps!

Thanks,

David

Relocating the GDC about 18 inches away from the v3 camera and garage door motor seems to have worked. The GDC started showing up in the app and responding. Wow, not sure what to say…but thanks for the suggestion! That was driving me crazy!!! Wyze, train those reps!!!

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Thanks for posting the pic of your setup.

Glad to help.

SJ

I spoke too soon…A few hours later, the open/close button is missing again…uggggg!

I have unplugged the GDC for now. I can’t have my garage door randomly opening in the middle of the night. It’s freaking out my wife!

Thanks,

David

Do you have an rules setup to auto close your garage door? I did, and when I moved my camera (to put a micro-SD card in it), It took the camera out of calibration, so that when the auto close rule ‘fired’ it ‘pushed’ the button to close the door (when it was already closed) cause it to open, stay open, then fully close about 44 seconds later (I removed that rule for that reason).

Does your door open, then close when it does it’s random closing, or just stay open?

SJ

I have a rule that closes the door at 9pm every night (in case one of the kids leave it open). It has auto-opened twice. Once was at 5pm when I was in the garage. I closed it myself. The other was at 2am something in the morning. Video shows it opening and when I woke up in the morning, it was shut so I guess it shut soon after it opened??? Wyze is going to send me a 2nd RMA GDC so hopefully that does the trick. They said they don’t have replacement splitter cables.

Thanks,

David

I don’t claim to understand what the GDC will do, or what the rules will do. But please remember something about nearly all garage door openers. They are not designed to recognize open or close. The remote or the wall switch simple send a signal. That signal tells it to run. If its open, its going to close, closed, its going to open.

Not that it matters with what you are doing, but we likely will see 'smart systems" when we get to Homelink 5.0.

Back to the show. I have not seen the app or the controls, since I don’t use Wyze GDC, but if you can test. If you can, try using the app to open, if its already opened and see what happens. If closed, try closing to see what happens. I predict, its going to simply do whatever a signal sent to it performs.

When my Garage Door opened for 44 seconds and then closed when my rule fired to close it I deleted that rule.

Even though this was caused by me, when I moved the camera which took the camera out of calibration, I lost confidence in ever using that rule again. (The rule should of recognized that the camera was out of calibration, and not fired, IMO)

I would consider using that rule again if it would use my Wyze Entry Sensor that I use to detect when the door is fully closed or 'Other than fully open"

Your issue doesn’t sound the same as mine (out of calibration camera caused my fully closed garage door to open, then close for a total of 44 seconds of being open.)

I have a non Wyze security camera in the back of my garage that caught the entire 44 seconds of a non closed garage door.

If you get things working properly again, make sure you never bump or move your V3 Camera that is pointing at the QR Code…,or you too will have a garage door that opens… then closes when you least expect it to. (if you create a rule to auto close)

SJ

That is a really bad failure case. I just don’t think the garage should be opening at all accidentally. It sounds like what Wyze is doing is just checking for a QR code every once in a while, then activating the garage if it doesn’t detect it.

This sounds clever but also means your camera has to be awesome-pants and depending on how that QR processing is handled it could break unexpectedly. And, based on davidmac27’s report, it’s not being the 99.999% reliable you’d want for a product that literally opens a giant door to your home :wink:

The fact that it can fail silently doesn’t help.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the mechanism but either way, “randomly opens garage” would be a showstopper if I were on the Wyze dev team. Hope the issues get tracked down quickly.

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150% agree with that statement. It should never just open on it’s own like mine did EVER.

Wyze just added a feature that shows text of the status of the door as 'Garage is Closed" or “Garage is Closed”… and tonight… it’s stating the wrong status… as the picture shows it’s clearly closed (this is the 2nd time I’ve noticed this issue)

I opened, then closed the door and it changed to “Garage is Closed”

It Appears that the GDC’s ability to determine if the door is open or closed is challenged.

Which, as far as I can tell from my experience, could cause the door to open when it shouldn’t open.

Perhaps a Wyze Camera V3 and a QR Code are not the best tools for this type of job.

Maybe mounting my camera on the bottom of my garage door is contributing to the system being knocked out of calibration? I noticed in my video that the camera moves/vibrates when the door opens/closes. Is that enough to uncalibrate it?

SJ

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That is a correct statement as far as I am aware of… push the button, Door Opens if Closed, Closes if Open.

The Issue I have, is, if I tell Wyze GDC to close the door if left open on a schedule, and the Wyze GDC can’t determine it’s closed, so it opens it, just to close it. Then we have an issue.

SJ

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I know nothing about GDC but I will say I’ve seen some garage door openers experience quite a few vibrations so I’d expect the camera to move. If it’s only attached at one point probably fairly quickly on that axis. If two attachment points then it might take longer but still all those hinge points on the camera wouldn’t be impervious to vibrations.

So I don’t think it should cause enough vibrations to throw off alignment but maybe?

If Wyze is solely using a QR code to track the state of the garage then that camera would want to be in a super stable and close to the code position (my guess), with the code well-lit in even light. But of course that would work against the natural inclination to place the camera so the whole garage door entrance could be seen.

Neat challenge but based on the finickiness I’ve had during setup with getting certain cameras to read a QR code brightly lit 12 inches in front of the camera I would say… on the face of it, doesn’t sound completely reliable.

Finicky and security are words I don’t like together :smiley:

So far the errors have only happened at night time or darkness?

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My door opened in the middle of the day, due to my self inflicted ‘damage’ of moving my camera to insert a microSD card without realizing that I need to re-calibrate it.

The Rule fired, it opened the fully closed door, only to close it again 44 seconds later.

SJ

Ah, that would match how I would characterize the errors I’ve been hearing about here.

QR Code acquisition loss causing the Wyze system to believe the door is open. So movement, mis-calibration and darkness (likely causing visual artifacts) would all cause a failure in the way you describe. The door opens, system realizes the door still isn’t there, then the system closes the door.

QR codes are supposed to be pretty robust when being read but seems like their system isn’t robust enough to compensate for the variance.

I wonder how much testing Wyze did of the QR code at various distances and in under different lighting conditions. If the system allows initial calibration too close to failure-state conditions then that tolerance means we’re probably going to hear more complaints about this.