I’ve had a number of issues with my Cam Outdoor, and I’m on the verge of returning it. I really want this to work, but I’m at the end of my patience. Here are my issues after 24 hours of initial setup: events are not being generated consistently, and now, not at all; when events were working regularly right after my initial setup, they stopped working completely after I installed the free one-month trial of Cam Plus; I’m getting “Error (code 05)” (and sometimes code 06) when I attempt to view the few videos that were actually generated from events (I opened a ticket on this); manually starting a recording crashes the app on occasion; on two occasions today, the app on my iPhone froze the entire phone where I couldn’t even force power it down as I normally do (eventually, the phone rebooted). As a software and hardware senior director for a large networking company who has overseen numerous product development cycles, I have a lot of experience troubleshooting and resolving these types of issues, and I generally don’t give up easily. I’ve searched through the forums for any esoteric clues to what might be going on, but to no avail (yes, for both the base and the cam, I’ve uninstalled, reinstalled, reset, rebooted, power-cycled, installed the latest firmware, turned off event filters, created a detection zone, and so forth, none of which resolved these issues). I’m usually the person that mocks reviewers who chronically complain as I’m doing now (typically, I dismiss them as luddites or malcontents…haha), but now I’m in the same boat! Anyway, if there’s anything obscure that I might be missing, please do reply (I know I’ve included a number of issues here, which probably makes it hard to offer suggestions; perhaps I have faulty hardware?). My best guess is that recreating this will be hard to do since I’ve tried so many different things (including using, and not using, a microSD memory card in both the base and the cam). Thanks in advance for any further recommendations. Cheers!
All I know is that the PIR (body heat) detection method of the Outdoor model pretty much requires a human being to be standing or moving within 15 feet of the camera in order to trigger an event clip. Therefore if they are mounted indoors and pointing out a glass window they will probably never alert to anything. While this can be an unexpected nuisance, the Outdoor cam largely ignores squirrels, moving shadows, snow, car headlights, etc., when used outdoors.
Sometimes it’s best to turn stuff off and put it in a drawer for a day and return to it at another time.
Thank you for taking the time to reply, @oldgeek! Your observation about the PIR was really helpful. My camera wasn’t able to pick up people walking along the sidewalk because it was too far away, so I experimented with various distances and discovered that this camera isn’t for me. Events are occurring more often now, but are still sporadic. Also, the recording of some events misses the front-end of the event and records only the back-end. One of the trends I’m noticing in the industry is the lack of proper technical documentation and customer support, much of which could have explained all of this in a better manner. It’s all sadly part of cost-cutting measures more and more companies are taking.
Love the comment about walking away for a day; it’s SO true!
The V3 camera is great if you can get power to it outdoors. The downside being the possibility of unwanted alerts at times, due to shadows moving, snow storms, squirrels, headlights sweeping across the lawn, etc., based on pixelation being the motion detection method.
Epilogue here: after educating myself through this forum and watching YouTube videos on the WCO and its intended usage, I’ve decided to keep the camera given that it’s now working as designed. The app is no longer crashing, and the errors I previously mentioned are rarely occurring now. During my research for a camera that meets my needs, I don’t recall reading that the camera does not operate behind glass; that was not my long-term intent, but before I mounted it outside, I wanted to ensure that it was properly set up. Unfortunately, I placed the camera on a window sill inside and expected to get notifications via motion on the outside (but not via PIR). I now have the camera mounted outside, and it works just fine now. To be fair to Wyze, I felt compelled to follow up with this reply, and I would gladly endorse the purchase of the WCO. Thanks!