Pan Cam 2 flash from SD error

Cameras
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Trying to recover a potentially bricked v2; unsure if there is a hardware issue.

tried several recovery_wcp2.bin files in the repo (all available versions), added to root of SD card

Power off>insert card>hold reset down>plug in camera>release reset ~5sec (light is purple).

currently, camera cycles from purple light to red light with no status change (waiting several minutes)…
HOWEVER
Earlier today I did see it attempt motion I believe only in one direction until it reached limit…, then stopped all motion and maintained red status light.
I am unable to recreate this event.

I’m assuming the red light is indicative of failed hardware.. but not positive.

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Did you try different cards? 8mb or less…

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WB!

I did try two different 16g cards, formatted EXFAT, bin file names cleaned up as appropriate.

Other notables…one recovery file (cannot recall which) will show the indicator as purple after holding the reset button while powering on (then default to resting at solid red).

.. I have been able to get to to respond physically to other flashes (eg camera moves following reswt/flash effort).. Seemingly unable to rotate left of center (I. E., camera wakes, centers vertically, pans all the way to the right (excessively, as if it is attempting to move beyond past its stop) then back to center.. Pause, a quiet ‘click’ to resting at solid red.

When this function happens, it seemingly writes two new files to the card (recordings and time-lapse), but files are empty.

Lastly… I noticed that the camera appears to have attpted to connect to my wifi (Google nest wifi pro noted ‘HL_PAN2-d03f27c0cc7’ joined the network early last evening… But if reset, how is/did it retain login info to get that far?)

… So… I’m somewhat thinking that the camera is still holding setting prior to it’s failure, and unable to clear them regardless of flash/factory reset attempts..

I’ve tried factory resets with both card and no card, am’d am unable to get anything other than a solid red status light.

It’s not the end of the world by any means… I will break this camera in peices before I scrap it :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

4

Three things come to mind while reading this:

I think you’re doing the right things, including copying the file to the microSD card’s root directory for flashing, and not the folder that the article incorrectly advises.

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Try formatting as an 8gb partition. Some cameras are very picky about the size of the card.

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Crease-

Thank you! my responses below:

  • likely a typo in my response
  • help center article does not appear to address the ‘purple’ color (red and blue?) before stalling to red.
  • I thought I had seen some preference from the forums… but trying again this morning I’ve gotten the camera to flash to ‘purple’ status light with both 4.49.11.8391. and 4.49.3.4054; which then toggle to solid red…unlike last night, I at least got a mechanical response when the cards were formatted as EXFAT?

I’ve done both copying the .bin file over to the SD card (and renaming to recovery_wcpv2.bin); as well as unzipping the download file in the sd card and deleting the .zip once extracted (which does not require me to rename the .bin, strangely…) I wasn’t sure if there was some unintentional packet loss.

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I’ll have to do some research on that; partition appears to be greyed out on my mac’s disk utility for the card reader.

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I noticed the same thing about the status light article, because it has that section that mentions “Red and Blue” but doesn’t really explain it, and then the article about manual firmware flashing says this:

  • The status light will appear solid purple as both the red and blue lights will be on at the same time.

I think all that’s needed on the microSD card is the .bin file extracted from the .zip file, and the filename for the .bin file appears to be correct in the archives I’ve looked at so far, so I think you’re doing the right things, and I’m not sure what else to suggest. I’ve read some of @carverofchoice’s posts about his experience with reviving cameras that otherwise appear to be dead or bricked, so I wonder if he has other ideas.

9

I appreciate the genuinely curious that are active on this page; thank you, Crease.

I’m going to try to format as FAT32 and partition a 2g volume on my SD card with a PC (as opposed to previous attempts with the MAC.

I’m curious to know if there is any understanding as to the files the camera appears to load onto the SD card when trying to flash with a recovery .bin with an EXFAT formatted card (again, the camera mechanically responds); the files ‘time lapse’ and ‘recordings’ seemingly had files named as dates (if I recall, 24072024 or something along those lines); however I believe the camera had been down for some time prior to that date..

VR

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I think the things you’ve mentioned are part of the directory structure that the camera’s firmware (whatever firmware it’s using, whether it was just flashed on previously delivered via OTA update) writes to the card when it initializes. For instance, I don’t have a Cam Pan v2, but looking at a card pulled from a Cam Pan v3—which has received only OTA updates—I see several subdirectories in the root directory:

.ota
alarm
log
record
time_lapse

If you use a camera’s Timelapse feature, I believe that the information that the camera needs to run and save the time lapse recording (start, stop, and interval times) and the resulting recording itself are stored in the time_lapse folder/subdirectory. The record subdirectory is where regular microSD recordings are saved, so if I have microSD recording set for Continuous then I should see within that subdirectory a collection of subdirectories with one for each day named by date (e.g., 20250327 for 27 March 2025), and within each of those 24 more subdirectories to account for the hours (00 through 23), and within each of those 60 different 1-minute .mp4 files (00.mp4 to 59.mp4).

11

same issues with formatting the card via PC; FAT32 makes the light purple.. EXFAT mechanically moves the camera, faulting red after adding the below linked files to the card

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I am unable to play the mpeg file (quicktime or vlc player)

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I wonder what the 28.mp4 file is at that size. Maybe only part of the minute? The 1-minute files I see on my card are a few thousand KiB each in size. I wonder what a utility like MediaInfo or ffprobe would tell you about it.

I would guess that the date you’re seeing on the recording and the files/folders corresponds with the firmware’s build date, so maybe this attempt was with the 4.49.3.4054 firmware? Based on posts I’ve read from @grapefruityoda about other Wyze Cam models, I imagine that the camera is using the firmware’s build date as an indexing time point until it’s able to establish a connection to the Internet and set the clock’s time via NTP.

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Yeah that seems to be the case. I double checked with firmware 4.49.3.4054 build date for Cam Pan V2 should be ~March 8 2023.

When the camera is flashing a new firmware, it will record for a few seconds before restarting again. I’m guessing it recorded before it had a chance to sync to NTP server to the correct time.

@coco607 Just to double check, make sure you are powering the Cam Pan V2 with a 5V 2Amp power adapter.

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14

You are extracting the files from the zip, right? The instructions say to copy the folder which isn’t correct. You need the bin file.

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@grapefruityoda yep; while note wyze it’s 5v 2a.

interestingly enough, I moved to a much smaller sd (64mb), formatted FAT16 (limited due to the size… working with what I have handy here) and tried to flash a .bin.

this time, I got the purple program, a mechanical reset pans right, ‘strains’ (slips?) at physical right stop, pans left but again does not want to travel left past it’s center/forward facing position.
fewer firmware folders posted over, no video attempt.

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all to say, this time I got the blue light, and mechanical.
perhaps there is more to the SD card attributes than I thought previous..
eg in my testing:
EXFAT (16g) gives me mechanical reset, but no programming/purple lights.
FAT32 (16g) gives me purple lights, no mechanical reset
FAT16 (64mb) gives me purple lights and mechanical reset
(all resets have the same pan/center issues)..

@WildBill may be on to something regarding the card size and formatting (FAT32/2g)?
all the same, I may be totally off compass… but I’m at least getting different/new results.

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Just to be sure, you are copying the .bin file from the directory to the sd card root, yes?

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I don’t have a lot of new stuff to add here that wasn’t already offered by the amazing advice above, but I do want to add some support for a couple key points even though it’s already been mentioned:

No, sometimes camera flashing doesn’t work right with exFAT for some reason. Switch it back to FAT32 with cards 32gb in size or less. That has a higher success rate. It’s not that exfat never works, but flashing fails a lot more often with large cards in exfat.

As @WildBill said, some people have reported that flashing continually failed until they tried an 8 GB partition. I’ve never had that problem, but I know some people who I trust have said that definitely made a difference for them in some cases.

I have flashed dozens and dozens of cameras. Sometimes it’s finicky. Let me share a couple key points when a camera is not immediately taking the flash.

Sometimes, what you need to do, is after you initiate the flash. Wait a long period of time. Just leave it plugged in and act like it takes something like 30 to 60 minutes for the flash to be effective. Then go back, and try to go through setup again a Long time later. If it doesn’t work, factory reset the camera by holding down the reset button for 10 seconds and then go through setup again. There have been times where the firmware flash seems to have failed, but then I wait a long time and then it suddenly worked. Other times, the firmware flash seems to have failed, but I restarted the camera and the setup process worked after a restart. A restart. Then there were other times where the firmware flash seemed to have failed, but doing a factory reset, worked and brought the camera back. So sometimes, it seems like the firmware flash failed but it didn’t necessarily fail. But if you keep trying to do the firmware flash again, you may keep having it not work because maybe it is working every time. But it needs you to eat their wait a while or reset it or factory reset it first. It’s dumb, but I promise that has for sure happened to me sometimes, though it is very rare.

There was one device that I thought for sure must have been bricked, I tried flashing it dozens of times, and it always failed, and I thought I was insane because I kept trying the same thing over and over again but kept getting the same result, but then once after dozens of attempts it randomly worked, SO thankfully I can continue to pretend I’m not insane yet. I’m not saying it’s worth it to try flashing the same device that many times, I’m just saying it worked for me one time :sweat_smile:

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18

I believe so; albeit I’m not a mac expert.. I did not see the file '_MACOSX until I extracted the zip on a windows machine.
here is a screenshot of the file in on the card prior to flashing attempt (zip file moved to SD card>unzipped>zipfile removed (leaving only .BIN)

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19

I appreciate all the tips from this group!
for the moment, I’ll leave the camera plugged in with it’s current flash attempt.
I’ll do what I can to report back resolution on this…or what may have become of the parts and pieces :wink:

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