Night vision flipping on & off repeatedly at dusk/dawn

I occasionally see a problem with night vision flipping on & off repeatedly. This may go on for 2-5 minutes, and I have noticed the issue on 3 out of 4 of my cams so far.

Two of my cams just did it for 5 minutes in sync, even though they look out different sides of my house (one front, one back). One of those has a front yard light in sight, the back one has no lights in sight. I haven’t noticed a problem with the front cam in the 11 months it has stared out that window. The rear one is a new cam, and shows the issue much more regularly. IR lights are off on both, so it isn’t a reflection issue.

The third cam shows the problem less often than the back cam, and does have its IR lights on.

Wondering if the developers can fix this in software, or whether I have a hardware issue. For instance, do they need to wait longer in the software before they determine whether they need to switch modes again? Or maybe turn on night vision at one darkness level, and turn it off again at a different, brighter level? Or maybe both?

I did report the issue under Account>Help & Feedback>Report an Issue just now. I would recommend anyone else having this issue do the same. This is a bug or malfunction, and shouldn’t be considered a wishlist item IMO.

This is a YMMV item. I have some cameras that will do this during certain times of the year, or different weather conditions affecting ambient light. There is a Wishlist item, but I will try to bring this back up with the devs.

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You might want to try pointing the camera just slightly differently. That may be enough to make it stop.

@Newshound
The click-click-click is a known shortcoming in the camera firmware. It’s been reported to Wyze and a bug was opened on this issue last year. I’ve sent them logs and videos of my cam going click-click-click, and a developer responded on Dec 6th that they were “working on resolving it”. Since then, nothing but clickets (that’s the sound the IR filter makes as it flips back and forth in front of the sensor). What’s needed is some hysteresis in the detection algorithm that determines whether it’s ‘night’ or not.

It’s dependent on the illumination level, and occurs mostly at dawn or dusk. I’ve also found that it’s influenced by the type of lightbulb in the room nearby (incandescent vs LED vs CFL).

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Hope this gets resolved soon. All the unnecessary mechanical activities taking place within these cameras will certainly shorten the life of these products.

If it is happening to you, Gwen has asked us to submit tickets with logs attached within 2 days of whenever it happens (Account > Help & Feedback > Report an Issue). I submitted logs yesterday for 3 out of the 4 cameras I have set for night vision. Those flipped on and off @ dawn, with the worst one doing it for 4 minutes.

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This is still happening April 2021. What’s the call here? return it? firm ware update?