I have a new cam v4 that’s maybe a week old. It was on my deck watching my driveway and the color night vision was worrying fine. I put another cam in that spot and moved this v4 to my backyard. I put it in during the daylight and it was working fine but as soon as it got dark it only shows black and white night vision. If I cycle through the night vision modes the color comes back for a few seconds but then reverts to black and white night vision.
The camera is in a special mount that helps cover it against the weather so there’s a chance the front plate is covering the night vision. But I have no idea where the night vision sensor is. If I can figure that out and open the areas where the sensor is it might fix the issue.
Any ideas?
There is no night sensor, it goes by the amount of light being “seen” by the standard camera lens.
Note that “color night vision” actually means night mode=off. I’m guessing the new location has less ambient light so it is switching. You can confirm by changing night model to “off” and see if it switches back to color (which if there isn’t much ambient light, will be pretty dark).
I tried it with both the back light on and the back light off and it didn’t seem to matter.
But I did turn off night vision and it seems to work now.
Are there any side effects for turning off night vision?
Only that it may be too dark for the detail level you want, you’ll have to see if it is sufficient like that or if you’d rather have it switch to black and white / night mode.
The IR LEDs (if that’s what you meant by backlight) only come on when night mode is active and help brighten the black and white image. But they can also reflect off things so might not work well with the enclosure you have.
I have one other issue now.
The outdoor Wyze power adapter is short by about 2 ft. I did order an outside USB micro to micro extension cable but that is 20ft long. It is connected but there is all this extra cable I had to wrap up and I had to use electrical tape to temporarily weatherproof the connection from the extension cable to the camera. So I need to find a 3 ft extension and something to weatherproof the connection. If need be I can use heat shrink to weather proof the connection.
Any suggestions for a cable?
You should be able to find micro extension cables in any length you want on amazon.
As far as weatherproofing the connection, a bit of silicone/dielectric grease on the plastic/rubber part where the two mate together, then wrap it in electrical tape has worked fine for me. But you can get the heat shrink that is intended to be weatherproof, it usually has some dielectric grease or some other sealant inside of it. Probably a bit more elegant solution but obviously if you want to disconnect it you have to cut off the heat shrink and redo it later.
Personally I do the grease and tape on all my camera connections (at the pigtail behind the camera). The rubber boot just slides back and forth so get some grease in both sides and then wrap it in tape.
Just don’t get the grease into the actual USB pins/metal parts.
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I was actually surprised how well the night vision works on these cameras. Mine are set on auto. There is one we have that is downstairs and thought maybe we left a light on when it was showing the video in color at night.
As for extension cables, I have used 2 of them for other outdoor mounted Wyze cameras. The connectors fit pretty tight together and I didn’t think it needed any extra weatherproofing.
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My experience with anything outdoors (even normal AC extension cords that stay plugged in a long time) is even if water doesn’t get in and short something out (which is a lot more possible with something like micro USB where the pins are so close together) it will eventually corrode. I’m just in the habit of weatherproofing every connection outside. Even coaxial cable and the like, a bit of grease on the threads and/or one of the rubber boots makes years of difference. Humidity and moisture do just as much damage as rain, they just do it more slowly, and like to start presenting as intermittent strange issues rather than sudden death.
Of course with stuff like IOT cameras, their lifespan may be the determining factor before water infiltration becomes an issue anyway. Whether it be the electronics just having a short lifespan, or new versions and models constantly coming out and replacing old, suppose it is less of a concern.
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