Tagged this as OG but my Panv3 and regular v4 are doing it too. Looks like the latest app update has introduced a notification when the cam is offline and back online. Rebooted my wifi just now and got notifications for all of them (unexpectedly).
People got one of their wishes.
Funny thing is, my app updated on the 19th. My cams have done their weekly reboot a couple times since then and no notification, so it seems to know to ignore intentional reboots. Under the options in the app there is now a “device connectivity notifications (pilot)”.
I’m assuming probably discussed in a release thread but putting here for visibility too.
Only drawback I’m seeing is there doesn’t seem to be a way to silence them during certain times without totally disabling all notifications. Normally I just have my outdoor cams silence overnight and the ones inside my doors I leave on. Not a huge deal, my internet/wifi rarely goes down even overnight.
I agree that this isn’t an app-specific update, at least not specific to app code installed on the mobile device itself. I think it’s another indication of how dependent app features (including UI elements) are on an Internet connection to the Wyze mothership. Even on app version 2.50.9.512 I can navigate to Account ➜ Notifications ➜ Push Notifications to toggle this on or off.
I’d be more inclined to think that it’s a time/timeout-based feature: If Wyze servers can’t contact a Cam within a given time frame or number of heartbeat attempts, then send the offline notification. That’s just a guess, though, and is perhaps something that could be tested with “accidental” disconnections by hard-restarting with power cycles.
I’ve seen it discussed in a few topics:
…and, of course, the Wishlist:
There are probably others, but that’s what comes to mind. I think the “hotfix” topic would be considered a “release thread” since it’s in Wyze News.
I realize now the alerts this morning had around a 35 minute delay.
~2:45AM took down my DHCP server to do some changes (cams wouldn’t have known or cared, still online, they have a 30 day lease time).
-3AM cams did their weekly auto reboot, at which point they would not have gotten an IP and would be offline
~3:38 I rebooted the AP and switch to force all clients to renew their DHCP
-Right after the reboot but before it came back online I got notifications on all the cams being offline. I realize now this was just coincidence, they’d been offline about 38 minutes
-AP and switch back online at ~3:41AM
-Notifications that cams back online at 3:41AM
So around a 38-39 minute delay for the notification. My theory is that’s to give the cams enough time to hit the 30 minute reboot timeout and attempt to reconnect before notifying the user there is an issue.
But I just did another test with a single Cam
-Unplugged power at 10:46PM
-Still no notification at 11:37PM
-Opened the wyze app to see if that would trigger it, but no
-Even toggled that new feature off and back on, still nothing
-12:01AM gave up, plugged cam back in
-12:07AM, no notifications (offline or online)
I frequently see delays in all kinds of notifications and haven’t deliberately tried to test response times recently. I did see the offline notifications recently for the Cam OG that I was testing for offline spotlight function after I completed my test and took that down. I think it happened within minutes—didn’t think it was >30 but I wasn’t really expecting it when I saw it and don’t know how long it had actually been since I shut it down.
When I did shut it down, I navigated to its Live Stream screen and tapped Turn Off first before unplugging. I don’t know for a fact that this helps, but I figure it’s probably better for the microSD card so that the camera can finish any pending write operations before I cut power. I would think that would be an indication of an intentional user action—like the reboots mentioned previously—and I received the offline notification anyway, which is another reason I think they’re probably based on time.
I imagine, too, that this sort of thing could be useful for shared camera situations, like when some users have reported spouses or roommates turning things off. If the owner account has these kinds of notifications enabled, then the owner should get a message about a camera going offline even if a shared-access user “intentionally” turned the Cam off.
Normally I do the safe eject SD before pulling power, but since this one is motion only, I just made sure not to trigger any motion. I wanted to simulate a true “outage” without any recent app activity etc.
Honestly would not have expected intentionally turning the cam off to trigger a notification. The reason you give is a valid one, but for most it might be annoying. Though I can see it either way.
I find notifications in general to be all over the place. Just, on Saturday I had to install the railings on my stairway and it unplugged the camera. I receive an almost instant notification. Sometimes, I’ll walk by some of the cameras and I’ll get notifications within minutes and sometimes as late as 15-20 minutes. I think it all depends what mood the Wyze servers are.
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