Notification for power failure

Hello, I have Wyze cam v3 , I wanted to ask if by any way , if anyone turned the power off for any reason, like he/she doesn’t want to be caught by the camera, is there any chance that the app on my iPhone notify me that “ power turned off on your camera “ !! So I’ll be aware that there’s some unusual thing happening.

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Welcome to the forums! There is a current wishlist topic that requests this feature. Give it a vote to help it along!

In the future please search the wishlist section to see if something isn’t already there for a feature request. Thanks in advance!

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More involved than you think. First of all, the camera has to have battery backup (separate from the normal USB power source) so that it can report a failure. Next, your WiFi needs to have backup power. Next all pieces of your internet (routers, switches, modem, etc) needs backup power so that it can stay up in order for the phone to be able to send the message. You do have control of al of those (except the camera), however what you have no control of in most cases is your internet service. If an outage affects more than your house, you may find that your ISP looses power to something in between their office and you. For example, ANY time there is an area power outage near my house, my cable based internet fails instantly.
Now if all you are looking for is an ability to be notified any time your camera looses connectivity to the Wyze servers, you really don’t want that many notifications. Unless you set the delay (in other words how long an outage must last before notification) for a fairly long time, you will be amazed at how often there are short duration signal drops.

Most of that isn’t really necessary. All you need is for your app (or, better, a Wyze server) to periodically page the device, and report if it has been unresponsive after X pings / seconds / minutes.

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That was what my second paragraph said.

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Rather than wait forever for a request to Wyze, like dark modes simplicity in coding but Wyze being to busy with their next product release…

This is a ready to go solution…
Power Failure Detector with text & email

You will need a battery backed up router/WiFi for this to work

And you’re still dependent on your internet staying up during a power outage.

And my last sentence states that requirement :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:


I do it a different way with a script running on my FirstNet Router that uses the I/O port on router connected to a wall transformer/relay. When relay trips the I/O port script sends SMS from modem.
And it has a 21 hour battery currently:
Battery Backed-Up 14 V3 cams and Internet Communications

Thanks for replies. But , if we think simply about it , maybe someone just unplugged the cam , came from an angle that is not covered by the cam , do whatever wanted to do , after that turn it ON again, in this case , I’ll never know about what happened, unless there’s something like the “ ping “ between the cam and the Wyze server, so that when the cam been unplugged, the send-receive with the server will interrupted and so send a notification to the phone app

Here’s the problem with that. If you set the timeout for the Wyze server to send you a notification based on a hearbeat failure (can’t use ping) short enough to be useful, you will be inundated with notifications. If you set the heartbeat failure long enough so that it is not constantly notifying you of outages, it will not be overly useful.

I think anything around 30 seconds or higher would be fine.

Is there a possibility that the camera could detect that it had been powered down for some period of time? e.g., if it timestamps continuous recordings and/or events, then when it reboots, couldn’t it check the time stamp of the last event and provide that status somewhere - or conversely, provide an “up time” status?

For me, I want to do a long time-lapse, and I want to know if there was a power outtage (while I am away from home) so that I know I need to restart my timelapse.

How about a simple “app checking the camera for its status, and when it’s offline, notifies you” - I think it’s that much simple than all your smart text there.

Wyze has had over 3 years to do this, they are likely not going to do this.

Out of curiosity, does Reolink notify you if power or internet is lost to the camera?

No, not directly from the camera but possibly through the NVR will need to check. Didn’t look as I use a different method.

All my important connected devices are pinged by the router and if they fail to reply to 20 consecutive attempts I will receive a text message from my cellular router with info on which IP has gone off network.

Also have multiple cellular routers running VRRP so one will take over for other and text about failure from primary router.

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Neat!

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Running multiple Advantech ICR-3241 cell routers that allow app you can download or create, modify, etc to your needs.

Node Red is mostly used for the ping monitor.

Edit: decided to check it, text output below

Request IP of router :heavy_check_mark:

Unplugged power :heavy_check_mark:

Restore Power :heavy_check_mark:

Unplug Wyze cam✔️

Reconnect Wyze cam :heavy_check_mark:

In network terms, there’s no “network offline status” unless either party to the connection explicitly sends a disconnect command.

Without seeing that disconnect command, a connection is always assumed active, unless either end decides that the other end isn’t responding within a duration that it expects. Choosing that wait duration is the issue. If wait is too short, you might kill an extended operation. If you wait too long, people will complain.

You’d have to allow the app to run in the background and use unlimited battery which nobody would like, and even then your phone may still snooze it when it needs memory for other stuff.

Their servers could potentially do this, as mentioned by others they’d need to configure a timeout that isn’t too short to cause false positives or too long to be useful. I’m guessing if they did implement that, it would be for subscribers only.

But there are other ways to monitor internet status (which could be power, or could be ISP/router/etc), plenty of free tools out there (I used to use one called uptimerobot). But that will tell you the status of your internet, not your power. If your internet goes down but power is up, there would be no way for it to know the difference.

Around here, my power company will text me when an outage is detected in the area. Doesn’t happen often, but maybe check if yours has the same feature?

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