I have been disabling “notifications” in my Wyze Cam Pan v-3 as I don’t wish to be awakened by Woody Woodpecker when the Cam sees early morning (5:15 AM!) dog walkers and the newspaper delivery car. Every few days, notification is turned back on somehow and I have to turn it off again. What’s up with that?
Also, I have a 32 Gig SD card in that camera and it’s about 95% or more full. It’s set for continuous recording. When I attempt to check out the recorded video during non-event periods, I get nothing other than “no video at the selected time.” What’s also up with that?!
I have not had notifications self-activate before, so I can’t help you there.
However, I do have 2 Cam Pan v3’s, and I have seen the same issue with the SD card. Unfortunately it occurred last when we actually needed the recording - specifically the audio. The card appears to be - as you say - 95% full (or more), and continuous recording is enabled. The 12 second detections from my Cam Plus Lite subscription DO record events, but the SD card says “no video at the selected time”, no matter what time I jump to. Long way of saying “me too”.
I did ‘fix’ it by reformatting the card, but that obviously wiped any recordings. I will see if the ‘fix’ sticks.
Never seen that with notifications, but that setting is controlled by your phone/app and not the camera, so you can try clearing the cache in the app or even reinstalling the app.
Are you disabling notifications in the app or in your phone’s OS settings?
What kind of SD card? A 32G card that isn’t endurance rated will get worn out pretty quickly with continuous recording, at which point it becomes “read only” (if you’re lucky) and the camera will have issues with it. You can try formatting the card and see if it is able to and/or if it helps the issue. But I’d recommend getting endurance rated cards and probably go for 64 or 128G as those will also last a lot longer.
There is also an issue when you try to view SD card by linking from the “events” tab, not sure if that’s what you’re trying.
Thanks for the tip. I have six Wyze cameras of various types and all have been using 32 GB SD cards from the Micro Center (their house brand). Half of the cameras are older than the one in the Pan V3 and are all set to continuously record. But I’d like to try an “endurance rated” SD card but I don’t know what that means. A particular brand? Rating by some independent agency? (BTW, I try to access the SD card recorded video from the SD icon on the live stream setting of my cameras.)
Thanks! I tried reformatting, both in the Wyze app and in my computer, but the Pan V3 will now not recognize my SD card. I have subsequently tried two other cards and neither is recognized. Troubleshooting continues…
Interestingly, I went to look at my camera after this discussion, and it is stuck again with a full card and nothing recorded. This time reformatting in camera produced an error “unsupported SD card”.
Another reformat produced a dialog reminding me to close the door to prevent water damage (?), but it now shows a fresh, empty card on the SD card management page, but when going to playback (main video page) it says “SD card is not available”
I’m managing this camera remotely, so I can’t look at it in person right now. It is a 32GB card, but it was bought new with the camera less than a year ago. I suspect it is also a MicroCenter house brand “better” grade card. That’s what I have also been using.
When I’m back in the office, I will pull the card and replace it, and test the ‘bad’ card on my computer as well. As you say… troubleshooting continues.
Meant to add: there are “high endurance” cards out there, but I cannot find any sort of standard way of measuring/ranking/rating them. Nothing akin to the SD card association’s speed class ratings, anyway (for what they are worth). Most of them currently seem to be “high endurance” because they say so.
There do appear to be an assortment of emerging technologies that are aimed at improving reliabilty - such as onboard wear leveling, self monitoring (a sort of SMART for SD cards), automatic data refresh, etc… but I don’t find a standard way for that to be communicated on the cards yet. The SD card association does have a few whitepapers and some pdfs with recommended cards for high endurance applications (most of which I had never heard of).
Some do offer a self-reported recording hours rating - like 20,000h - but I wasn’t able to find further exposition: ie. is that an MTBF number, or a minimum expected durability number? It appears to still be early days for continuous recording standards for solid state media.
Best option may practically be just checking data integrity regularly and probably swapping out the available, affordable cards more frequently - unless you are really really relying on a single camera.
OK, just tried my last 32 GB card with same results. The app shows that I have selected to record to the newly installed SD card and it would appear that the card is seen by the camera and the app, as it did not report “no SD card found” when I selected continuous recording. However, when I click the SD card icon on the livestream page, it shows “SD card is not available.” All of the cards I have tried have been sitting in my desk drawer and were previously used for other applications, so they are not brand new. One was a PNY branded card. Looks like I’ll have to visit Micro Center and buy a new batch.
For what it’s worth, I just now tried formatting the latest SD card in the camera itself using the Wyze app. Format fails as “Unsupported microSD” shows up. Yet the “Record to MicroSD Card” still appears to report an installed card…
Those Microcenter cards are absolutely the worst quality cards you can get. They often give them away free as promos.
They will not last long with continuous recording, and I would not trust them for anything that can’t be lost or corrupted anyway. Their read and write speed is terrible so it probably can’t even keep up with the minimal speeds the camera needs.
Get some Samsung Pro Endurance (under $10 for 64GB, $12 to $13 for 128GB usually on Amazon) or Sandisk Extreme. If you get them from Amazon, just make sure they are sold/shipped by amazon, not a 3rd party, and make sure they don’t have a white sticker on them with barcode (3rd party stock) when the arrive. To be extra safe, Samsung has a validation tool to confirm it is genuine, not sure about Sandisk but they probably do too.
The way you tell it is “rated” high endurance is if their warranty covers constant write/camera use.
Samsung guarantees theirs for 5 years of constant write (up to a certain number of terabytes depending on card size). I did the calculation and based on their rating and the speed that Wyze writes at, the 128GB card is good for 16 years of constant write.
OK, I ordered a SanDisk Extreme on Amazon to give it a shot.
For what it’s worth I’ve been running nothing but the basic Micro Center cards on my six Wyze cams in continuous monitoring mode for several years. The one in my Pan V3 is probably newer than the ones in three of the cameras, and I’ve not had a problem with them until this instance. I DID have a problem using a Micro Center 16GB card at one point, but switching to a 32 GB card made the problem go away.
The microcenter cards are “binned” cards where manufacturers test the memory that they produce, if it falls below the standards for the cards they’re making, it goes into a bin to create these cheap white label cards. A batch may be 10% below spec or 50%.
A 32GB card will last 2x as long as a 16GB one. Each cell gets written half as much on the larger cards.
You can use them, but you need to monitor them and be ready to replace them when they die. For me, it is not worth the little bit of savings to risk missing stuff.
Finally got the Sandisk Extreme card. Installed it with the same results. “Unsupported microSD.” Got on a live chat with an agent, and the agent said basically I need a new camera and mine is out of warranty. Camera works fine except for the fact that it will not recognize SD cards.
Thanks! As part of the chat with the agent, there’s no such “club” of people having problems with Pan V3 not recognizing SD cards. To quote:
“Does this happen a lot? Camera works fine but just shows unsupported SD card? (09:17:44)Rodel
We are not seeing issues like this. There could be an issue with the SD card slot or the camera itself. If you are interested, you can perform a factory reset and see if it resolves the issue.”
Same issue here. With ve pan
Sd card used to work but a few months ago, started having issues from the events page.
Then it says there’s no SD card inserted so can’t read, but when I go to the location in the app it shows there is an ad card and it’s about 95% full. When I reformat it, it says successfully reformated however it doesn’t actually reformat and stays 95% full.
Of the time we’ve had this camera, (less than a year) the SD recording only worked the first couple of months
If you know the card is genuine and in good working order, that leaves a few possibilities:
Power to the cam is insufficient due to bad adapter, long/damaged cable, etc. Test using a known good 2 amp or greater adapter and short cable to rule that out.
Water/dirt got into the sd card slot. You can try cleaning it using a “sacrificial” SD card and some rubbing alcohol or contact cleaner. Get a a few drops down into the slot (evenly across the width of the slot) and on the contacts of the SD card, insert and remove it 10 or so times, wiping off the contacts each time. Then a few more drops into the slot as a rinse, spray out with compressed air if possible, let it dry. I say sacrificial SD card as it could potentially kill it, but it will probably be fine after.
Water got into the camera itself and is affecting or has killed the SD reader chipset. Can try putting the camera in a bag of rice for a day or so, that actually revived one of mine that would not boot up at all. This is especially likely if cam has ever been mounted upside down.
Power surge or other event has fried the SD reader chipset, in which case, new cam.
Luckily in the grand scheme of things, the Pan cam isn’t that expensive, probably be some sales coming up too.