I currently have 41 Wyze cameras (yes, forty-one), with the newest one being a Pan v4 that I got to replace my Pan v3. I hate the v4 so far for these four reasons: 1) No time lapse, 2) Can’t turn off auto-tracking/return to first waypoint, 3) It randomly decided that all four waypoints should be tilted about 20 degrees lower than what I had set them to, 4) Requires Chrome to view on a computer.
I’m hoping all of these issues will be fixed via firmware updates. If I hadn’t thrown away the box already and rewired the power (due to it using a straight USB-C pigtail instead of a 90-degree micro USB connector), I would have put the v3 back up and returned the v4. Sigh. I mainly used the v3 as a weather cam and often made time lapses of thunderstorms forming, etc.
While I was already using Chrome on my home computer, on my office computer I reserve Chrome for work stuff, Firefox for personal stuff, and Opera for webcams and live streams (it’s my “window” to the outside since my office has no windows).
Speaking of time lapse, it would be cool if (when using continuing recording to MicroSD) it were possible (with any camera) to do an after-the-fact time lapse. Just tell the camera what date/time to start reading the SD card and what date/time to stop, and make a time lapse by reading every 10th or 30th (or whatever) frame from the card. Even if this process was slow (even real-time slow) to conserve camera resources, it would be awesome.
This has also been mentioned in multiple Forum topics. One of my personal annoyances with it (as I’ve described elsewhere) is that unless I work around the behavior the camera will return to its Home Waypoint inconveniently while I’m trying to access the microSD card slot.
I haven’t seen that one described before. What happens if you recalibrate? If that’s not taking care of it, then I’d definitely open a Support ticket about that.
There’s a whole topic about this, as well. I’ve personally been able to view Cam Pan v4 in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge on both Windows and Linux, which is what I’d expect because those and Apple Safari are the only officially-supported browsers for Web View and have been for some time. I’ve tried Opera (which is Chromium-based, like Chrome and Edge) and see that it fails with Cam Pan v4. Mozilla Firefox is hardly worth trying because it’s unsupported and has always failed when I’ve tried to view Cam OGs with it, though it does work for some other Cams (and I say that as someone who likes and uses Firefox a lot; it’s my default browser on Android devices). If you want a dedicated “window” browser with this camera, it’s probably going to have to be Edge (and I say that as someone who still has Microsoft browser distaste as a result of all the Web sites and applications that used to work with Internet Explorer only).
The “after-the-fact time lapse” is an interesting idea. Although I haven’t personally attempted this, I imagine it’s currently possible to create something like that using FFmpeg or other tools on the video files from the microSD card, but that’s not as convenient as having something like this built into the app would be, especially given the ways and locations some people mount these things, where physical access to the card isn’t convenient. I don’t recall ever seeing that idea submitted to the Wishlist.
I am also experiencing #3 issue as described above. Camera will randomly decide to tilt 20-30 degrees for no reason whatsoever, and then it just stays there.
That’s weird, and I wonder how you have it mounted and if that has anything to do with its changing orientation. It shouldn’t, but that’s one of the details I’d share when reporting it to Wyze. The Cam Pan v4 I’ve been playing with is mounted upside down with its included bracket and I haven’t seen this kind of random positional change. The way you and @rholloman are describing it seems like something I’d be inclined to log and then report to Wyze Support in a ticket.
I also wonder if there’s some movement within its field of view that’s causing it to move position and then fixate in that different position, like what some users have been reporting with Cam Pan v4 and parked cars. Whatever is causing this, I think you both are describing something that shouldn’t be happening, so I hope you’re both reporting it directly to Wyze to get it on their radar for replacement and/or future fix, because this seems like something they should be working on along with the time lapse feature and other improvements that are apparently intended in future updates.
I just went through and recreated the home waypoint. This time I told it to calibrate motor (I hadn’t noticed that option before). We will see if that helps it retain the Waypoint without drifting. I had tried calibrating previously using the app but nothing seemed to happen. If you click the gear icon, the “Pan Cam Controls”, there is a “calibrate” link a the top, but it doesn’t do anything. It’s like they meant it to be a clickable link but it is not.
Now I wonder if you’re experiencing a platform-specific bug with that. I don’t use iOS/iPadOS, but on the Android Wyze app that was released a couple of days ago (3.7.6.699), I’m able to recalibrate the camera’s motor positions two ways:
From the Cam Pan v4’s Live Stream screen, I select Pan Control ➜ ➜ Calibrate Motor ➜ Calibrate.
From the Cam Pan v4’s Live Stream screen, I select Settings ➜ Pan Cam Controls ➜ Calibrate (the green text to the right of “Calibrate Position” that does look like a link, as you described).
Both are working for me and put the device through its calibration dance. If one of those pathways isn’t working for you, then I’d first check your app version and update if necessary (the latest release supposedly fixes bugs in the Android and iOS apps), then log it and open a ticket if that issue persists.
I’m on the latest version of the app as far as I can tell 3.7.6(2) is what’s showing. I am using an iPhone 11 and iOS version is 18.6.2. The first option you mention is available in the app, but the second option does not work. The “calibrate” button is green, but it’s not clickable.
Yeah, that seems like a bug in the current app to me then, and I don’t use iOS, so I don’t have any way to test it. I should add that even on Android when I tap that Calibrate “link” the camera does its thing as expected with no confirmation, unlike how tapping the Calibrate Motor control on the Live Stream screen pops up the confirmation dialog where I have to tap Calibrate again for it to continue. (I really wish they’d be more consistent across different areas of their UI. )
In addition to logging and opening a ticket about that, I’d also consider posting a note in the announcement topic for that app version to see if other iOS users can replicate and maybe get this on Wyze’s radar.
I, too, hate the Pan V4. Mine never goes back to the Home Waypoint. I have mine mounted on my garage, picking up the tar and chip driveway. The camera is constantly trying to focus first on the blacktop, then on the stones embedded in the blacktop…. This makes the resolution appear to be SD.. I hope that Wyze fixes these defects in a firmware update.
When I finally looked at my camera again to go calibrate it, it was back to where it was supposed to be for all four waypoints. I hadn’t touched a thing. I considered that the mount could have shifted, but two of the waypoints are panned about 180 degrees in opposite directions, so a shift DOWN of ~20 degrees of one of those two should have resulted in a shift UP of ~20 degrees for the other one. But all four were down by about 20.
Yep, these cameras seem to have a mind of their own. I have noticed that if smart track is enabled the tilt problem seems to be worse, but it will happen eventually whether that is enabled or not.
Yeah, I had seen some of the other discussions, but wanted to put my issues all in one place. I left an Amazon review with two stars with the same details. I’ll go back and add stars if/when some of these problems are resolved.
For #3, by the time got around to calibrating the camera, I discovered that the waypoints were correct again. I hadn’t changed anything.
For #2, got to love that it will often start returning to the home waypoint before it can even finish getting to the waypoint that I’ve tapped.
The very first time I ever used the time lapse feature (I guess that was with the v1 cam), I wondered why it didn’t work in the “after-the-fact” way. (Or could be done either way.) It just seemed so obvious, but I assumed it was too hard to code or required too much RAM or CPU. It would be super cool if you could start a time lapse in the past (say, at 3pm when the current time is 4pm), and have it go into the future (say 5pm). It would read from the SC card until it catches up to the current time (which might be 4:12pm by the time it finishes with reading from the SD card), then start processing from the live video. I’ll add this to the wish list (both after-the-fact and after-to-before-the-fact”).
It’s definitely highly inconvient to remove the SD cards from some of my cameras.
Yeah, for sure, which is why I’ve voted for Wishlist items requesting direct local network access to the content on the microSD cards. I like being able to access the 1-minute video segments from the Cams, but pulling a card means that I’m no longer recording continuously with a given camera unless I swap in another card at that time. If I could just map the card as a network drive, that would be ideal.
I get it. Others have done the same thing. I think that can lead to a visibility problem, though, when the discussions are so scattered, so specific issues may not get the attention from the community and/or Wyze when several people are saying the same things across multiple topics.
I’ll definitely report it to Wyze if it happens again, especially if I can reliably reproduce it. It was night time when it happened, so I’ll try to remember to check it at night in case lighting or IR mode has something to so with it. I’ve been too busy this week to pay it any attention.
Nighttime is a whole new adventure with this camera. It can’t find a waypoint in the dark to save its life. Just try setting some new waypoints in the dark and see how it goes.
I don’t know what kind of logic they use to set/find waypoints, but it seems like it ought to be dead simple to me. Record the exact position of the motor and the exact position of the camera tilt and that’s it! But they seem to be trying to do some kind of visual recognition of what its looking at, and it doesn’t work consistently.
So far I haven’t had the ~20-degree drop happen again, day or night, but will keep checking. I did the calibration procedure a couple of times, so maybe that cleared it up for good.
Thanks. Yes I do have one, though crease gave great answers already.
I hate this too, though they confirmed it is coming soon.
I personally like this, but a lot of people hate it. It’s my opinion they should make it optional, not mandatory (if you set a home waypoint and you have a home waypoint, but if you delete the home waypoint then you don’t have one)
Yeah, in this case you need to recalibrate it. My recommendation is to set a scheduled automation once or twice a day (maybe late evening and then early morning) with the action being to recalibrate. That will fix the issue. I’ve seen the drifting happen and recalibration fixed the drift for me. Other people have reported that scheduling a recalibration or reset position keeps it perfect. Though I haven’t actually used the automation to reset position, so I’m not 100% certain it’s exactly the same thing as recalibration.
Yeah, sometimes the web portal will work on the other browsers. I have used it on Firefox and Edge sometimes in the past, but I usually use chrome since that’s what Wyze tests it on since it owns the largest market share. You might be able to use it on some of the other ones sometimes. I have definitely been able to sometimes. I was just now able to view the pan v4 in brave browser. Firefox isn’t working for me at the moment.
Yes, I’ve done this with VLC and something else in the distant past.
Looks like a lot of other people are reporting the drifting issue. I think this is something that they will need to resolve in a firmware update since it seems to be a consistent drift downward, they should be able to compensate for that based on some of the things they talked about in the AMA for this camera. For now, I think the to main workaround is to set up a scheduled automation that runs a recalibration at least once a day, if not more often. That has resolved it for me when mine has drifted. I’m glad they included the calibration as an action in the automations this time. I believe they named it reset position. I think that is The same thing as a recalibration. I’ve heard reports that it helped. I personally usually just manually select recalibration once in awhile.
I think that’s a good suggestion and one that I hadn’t considered, though I’ve been using a weekly “Reset Position” Automation on Cam Pan v3s to compensate for Waypoint drift since sometime last year. I just haven’t really seen drift or the camera stuck in an abnormal position with Cam Pan v4’s current firmware—at least not so far—so that hadn’t really occurred to me. Thanks for adding that!
)
