We lost internet (thanks Spectrum) for a few hours. I have no recordings on any of my cam’s SD cards for that time period. Everything is set to continuous.
There are approximately 16 v3 cams and 3 OG cams.
Once the internet came back, the recordings start at that point.
I have a lot of Wyze products, but if these cam issues aren’t fixed, the lot is going on eBay.
As many of you know, I used to be right at the front of the Wyze parade, touting their benefits and recommending them to anyone looking for a camera.
Sorry to see. I moved to the back row of the parade after recommending friends get on the Wyze bandwagon and seeing them encounter issues. Still not sure why I see no problems.
I heard a theory that cams record without internet that still have power. I guess your findings proved that theory wrong.
The stopping recording on the OG is a known issue, but unless you also lost power at the same time, the V3 cameras should continue to record.
I know for fact that the V2, V3, and V3 Pro in my truck continue to record when I drive out of range of my WiFi every time I leave my house.
According to Wyze, the OG should continue to record even after 30min of internet outage, but it starts to save the recordings in a different place on the microSD so you will need to physically remove the microSD to view the videos.
I just did a test with my V3. I turned off my network at 2:35pm and turned it back on 6:34pm. Once I turn back on the network and I log back to my camera to view playback and I get hit with “No video at the selected time”. I can only scroll footage 2:35pm to 3:09pm.
I remove the micro SD card in my V3 and I inspect it.
There’s a folder named 20240409 and everything seems correct, but the last file is at 3:09pm.
There’s another folder named 20240309. Within it, there is 00, 01, 02, 03 and 04 folder that is basically the missing four hours footage.
Within the 00 folder, the first file is named 39.mp4 and the video plays with the following time stamp 2024-03-09 00:39am.
If you have an internet outage that lasts more than ~33 minutes, then you can’t access the previous footage within the app. You need to remove the micro SD card to play it back. The camera is unable to save the recordings in a correct place. For some reason, it saves within a folder one month back starting at 12am as shown above.
My V3 is on 4.36.12.9357 beta firmware. Could it be a firmware related problem? I might try flashing older firmware and test again.
I will be away from home for several hours this evening and I will test again, but in the past, I have been away from WiFi for many hours and never had a problem with recording stopping on any of the cameras in my truck (a V2, V3, and V3 Pro). Might add one of the V4 cameras as well since I do plan on putting that into the truck.
Yeah, I had some friends confirm this on their SD cards. The OG does continue to record to the SD card, but I Believe it loses the date/time stamp during the downtime And since it uses that as part of the file name, it starts saving the files to a different file name that isn’t in chronological order with the previous and next files that were online with the correct date and time. So in the app it looks like there’s a gap for that time period because the file structure wasn’t used with the same naming convention in chronological order, so the app doesn’t know that they belong in that gap. But if you remove the SD card, the recordings are actually still there On the card.
So on the bright side, the recordings are still there. , apparently the ogs have the date and time only when they are connected to the internet and nothing internally keeping track of the date and time. So Wyze needs to add time locally to their freertos based cameras like they have with their Linux based cameras.
I just did a shorter test with my V3 and flashed it back to 4.36.11.8391. I turned off my network at 7:55pm and turned it back on at 10:15pm. I can confirm that to be able to playback all the footage within the app.
I am beginning to think the new 4.36.12.9357 beta caused this issue. I might do the same 2 hour test to confirm if I am able to flash back to the beta firmware, but I think they paused it due to other issues. I have a few more V3 in that beta firmware, but they are not as accessible.
In the meantime, I will do a longer 4 hour test by shutting down network with 4.36.11.8391 firmware.
I just did a longer 4 hour test with the 4.36.11.8391 firmware. Yesterday, I turned off the network at 11pm and turned it back on at 4:37am. No problem with the footage and I can play it all back within the app.
Since they paused the beta roll out, I had to test with my four V3 cameras that had the beta firmware already on my main network. I turned off the network at 5:10am and turned it back on at 7:10am. I am only able to view the playback footage until 5:45am in the app. This beta is confirmed to be a bug. I am going to report this in the 4.36.12.9357 beta thread.
it depends on many factors, for example load on camera, sd card.
try disable internet, power cycle camera and then tell us whether camea records.
i know some weather apps on amazon fire tablets can update weather even when there is no internet.
so perhaps these cams also check for surrounding ssids or bluetooth or other devices and retrieve for example date and time. if they can retrieve date/time they record, but if they determine environment change they stop recording.
I was trying to recreate a situation where the internet goes down while you still have power in the house. If the internet goes down for more than ~35 minutes and I don’t know about it, I won’t be power cycling the cameras anyways because I won’t be actively monitoring it. If I needed to review the playback footage for whatever reason then I won’t be able to if the internet went down.
Even if I needed to power cycle it so it records again, it’s still poor firmware design.
As I said yesterday, I had a V2, V3, V3 Pro, and V4 (all with the latest beta firmware) in my truck when I left for one hour and 40 minutes. All four cameras are set to continuous recording to the µSD card - each to a SanDisk High Endurance 256GB µSD card. Obviously all four cameras lost WiFi shortly after I drove out of the driveway. I did a quick look at the cameras last night and the V2, V3, and V4 cameras all had continuous recording while I was out to dinner. The V3 Pro DID stop recording about 30 minutes after I left WiFi coverage, and resumed recording before I could complete backing into my driveway…,.
When I leave work later this afternoon, I will drive close enough to the WiFi AP at work that has the right SSID and verify that all cameras are recording, and later this evening I will check to see what they did during my hour or so commute home.
V2 FW = 4.9.9.3006
V3 FW = 4.36.12.9357
V3 Pro FW = 4.58.12.9357
V4 FW = 4.52.3.9455
Android app version = 2.50.1 (441)
Hmm I would have expected your V3 to have the same issue as the V3 Pro to stop recording after 30min. I suspect Cam Pan V2 might have the same issue too if they are using the same firmware branch, but I am only basing this on their naming convention.
It’s good to know the V4 don’t have this issue so that is definitely on my list to buy.
I just did another 1 hour mini test. I turned off my network at 4:16pm and power cycled my 3 cameras at 4:17pm (1 camera with 11.8391 firmware and 2 camera with 12.9357 beta. I turned on back my network at 5:16pm. All 3 cameras let me playback in the app until ~4:17pm.
My other 2 cameras on 12.9357 beta can playback in the app until 4:46pm since I didn’t power cycle them, but the network was still off.
That means 11.8391 still require online authentication to match the micro SD recording chronologically so you can playback in the app. I can still confirm that the 1 hour recordings are still in the micro SD, but just named in a different folder so I need to physically remove it to play it back via computer or phone.
I can now see why there were people reporting the V3 can’t record to micro SD when there was an internet outage. If there was an internet outage before a power outage and the power came back on then you won’t be able to playback the recordings in the app even if the power came back on. Or similar situation where the power is out and comes back on, but the internet is still down.
When any wired Wyze camera powers up, it is almost a brick. Until it is able to check in with the Wyze servers, it will do nothing except connect to the WiFi that it is configured to use in order to find the Internet so it can check in with the Wyze servers.
So having the camera not doing anything after being power cycled while the WiFi is off is completely normal.
the least they could do is retrieve date/time from newest file and for example add one minute. that way browsing thru timeline would be easier even if after outage timestamp was wrong, they could mark outage for example with red color of timestamp font.
anyway testing only network outage is kind of dumb, the guy shoud test power outage.
Yes and no. A Clock is typically considered a separate device specifically designed for it’s main function to be to measure and display the time, which is not the primary function of a security camera or laptop, etc. However, a lot of electronics do function as implicit clocks. They typically synconize with network time servers, and we don’t commonly call them clocks, but yes, anything that tracks time can be considered a form of timekeeping, and that is what we need. Electronics sometimes do this differently, and many have dedicated batteries toward their timekeeping capability so that the time continues being accurate even then they are disconnected from the grid and power cords or are “powered down”…Most of the other cameras will track time correctly even when they lose their connection to the internet. I did recently notice that some of my battery cameras don’t though. They will actually start recording events for a second or 2 before the watermark timestamp shows up. I noticed it on the Battery Cam Pro and haven’t checked the others, but it could happen on more too. But all the wired cams have historically been able to keep the time even when they lose network access. I don’t know how Wyze has the timekeeping structured (there are different methods), but I think we all agree that they need to fix it to be able time-keep locally even when it goes offline and not be solely reliant on the server for the time tracking. That is the issue we need resolved and make sure this issue doesn’t spread to future products. It may be limited to FreeRTOS line of devices and not the linux line of devices, or it may just be the OG’s. But I recently heard someone mention something similar happening to them with new firmware on one of the linux based cams, so we need to make sure they address it ASAP before it continues.