After being sprayed by the pest control man the camera will no longer detect and record events. It was working fine the day before. The camera is located 4 hours from my home so it’s not easy to trouble shoot. Any ideas?
I also have another pan cam v3 on the property that was not sprayed. It’s still working fine.
It’s still recording to the SD card fine and that video can be viewed. I can still move the camera also. The software is up to date.
This happened on Dec. 11, 2024.
My only guess would be there is a film over the lens now that is interfering with it and it needs to be cleaned. May have even removed some glare filtering coating or similar from the lens. That’s assuming you’re 100% sure the two are related and it isn’t just a close coincidence. Have you tried the “reset services” and rebooting it?
I’ll give that a try. I’ll have someone onsite this weekend. Thanks
The reset services and reboot you can do remotely, obviously cleaning the lens has to be done onsite. Just can’t see any other way that the spray would have affected only that function without causing other issues (unless like I said it is just coincidence and you need to reset stuff).
When you watch the camera with motion tagging enabled (the green box) do you see the green box pop up when there is motion? If so that function is working and it is something more with the upload/connection to the Wyze servers.
The green motion tracking boxes are on but the camera will not capture motion. I can view live and the picture looks really good. So there doesn’t appear to be a film across the lens. I was afraid to hit the reset button because I might loose the ability to view the area if something goes wrong. I will try that and let you know. Thanks
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If you see the green box popping up in live view, then detection is working fine, and I suspect the spray was just coincidence.
I’ve never had “reset services” or “reboot” cause me to lose a camera, but of course can’t guarantee it.
Okay, I had some people there this morning. I tried the restart button and that did the trick. I got the green boxes back and it’s recording events again. I was going to do the reset next but didn’t have too. I think we’re good.
Thank you.
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I’m getting event recordings again and the camera is following them around.
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I would recommend plugging the camera in a smart plug (preferably non Wyze) so you can remotely reboot it.
Yeah I have all mine automatically reboot once a week. I never ran into any specific problems, but the Panv3 tends to “wander” off its set “home” spot, and the reboot recalibrates it. So that was originally why I set it up, but then added all my non-pan cams also. Everything (especially cheap IOT devices without much memory) can benefit from a periodic restart.
I have never had one not come back online and I’m coming up on 2 years of weekly reboots.
The “reset services” is mostly for people that have a subscription to Cam Plus, however I’ve seen where it has resolved seemingly non-subscription related things for others. It doesn’t hurt anything, doesn’t even reboot the camera, just sort of resets the communication with the Wyze servers.
As @habib says, if it is a remote location, a smart plug may not be a bad idea, in case the camera is totally offline and you can’t use the reboot in the app, or maybe in case the app reboot causes it to not come back online for some reason. I’ve seen both the TP Link and Wyze plugs on good sales from time to time, there’s plenty of other brands out there too (the TP Link seem to work very well, can’t speak for Wyze but haven’t seen any complaints in here and you’d be able to use the same app to control them). Even the Amazon smart plugs go on sale for good prices, in case you’re using that ecosystem already.
I’ve seen people say don’t use the Wyze plugs for this purpose so you have “brand redundancy” but honestly if Wyze is down or having issues, rebooting your camera with some other brand plug isn’t going to help anyway, so I don’t really see that as a concern.
I get what @dave27 is saying, and I’ve had good performance from the original Wyze Plugs for over five years; however, I think I’d tend to agree with @habib’s advice about choosing a different smart plug brand if you’re going to be physically distant from your cameras and require a way to power-cycle them. Others in the Forum tend to favor non-Wyze plugs for this purpose, as well, and I’m thinking specifically of incidents like this:
That’s not a frequent occurrence, but it may be something to take into account. If you could be somewhere to physically unplug power to something and plug it back in, then you wouldn’t need the smart plug in the first place. If you can’t be there, then you need a plug that’s going to respond reliably.
I don’t think there’s a single right answer, though. 
Welcome to the Forum, @debbiehall08! 
Well you could plug your smart plug into another brand of smart plug 
I have 0 experience with the Wyze plugs, but I have used the Amazon and TP Link ones and both have been reliable.
I believe Eufy is another popular one, mostly because you can often get multi packs on sale pretty cheap.
EDIT - just checked amazon and it looks like Eufy isn’t really in the smart plug business anymore. TP Link has many kinds and the prices look pretty good. Appears TP Link is using the “Kasa Smart” branding for their plugs now.
The reason I recommended non Wyze plugs because I’ve seen plenty of complains on this forum about them and I am not sure if they store settings locally. I personally have over a dozen of TP Kasa plugs that the settings are stored locally, some over three years old. I’ve had zero issues with them. I also like them because in all this time they might have had only two firmware updates, unlike Wyze.
Not the same thing, but apparently @Seapup has plugged Wyze Plugs into Wyze Plugs:
That’s for an entirely different purpose, though.
Depends on the product line, I think. I’ve read good things in the Forum about Kasa plugs, but I’ve been using TP-Link Tapo P105s for a while, and their performance has been excellent. I also some Sylvania plugs that I picked up on clearance locally, and those have been fine, too, with everything integrating into both Google Home and Amazon Alexa, because I’m primarily controlling things with voice assistants, but I have some automations that run regularly through the Tapo app.
If I’m not mistaken Kasa is their high end brand and Tapo is branded as low end. Not exactly sure why.
I think Kasa is an older brand, and I’ve seen prompts to migrate my Kasa devices into the Tapo app, so I’m not sure that it’s really a high-end/low-end thing. I have a vague memory of reading once that they were working on a shared-access feature in the Kasa app/ecosystem and that maybe it was available in the Tapo app/ecosystem first, but I could be wrong about that.
Anyway, the important thing here is that @debbiehall08’s camera is now working as expected. 
Ugh, if they don’t at least store the timer settings locally that would stink. Given that the camera “automations” are server based, I suppose that’s a possibility for the plugs too.
I also like the TP Links, I have no reason to try any others (I know people using the amazon ones and they’ve been reliable too).
Of course I’m guessing if you lose power and internet, then power comes back on but no internet, the TP Link probably will lose its clock, but that’s a pretty edge scenario. So you might not have your timer working for whatever period you’re in that situation (which I would guess is the same with any brand). Though setting your internet router up as an NTP server (if it has that feature) would solve that too.
They seem to have rebranded “TP Link Kasa” to “Kasa Smart” all over amazon and there are a ton of them available, and only a few Tapo ones. So I’d be surprised if they intend to end the Kasa line.
That is one of the things that annoys me about IOT devices, they seem to think they can just create new brands and separate apps. Sonos was one of the first to do that and it ticked off a lot of people (especially given how expensive their stuff is).
Has happened to me at the cottage when I had the DSL. I had no access to anything for couple of weeks until I got there and reset the gateway manually.
I think that was their intent some time ago when they introduced the Tapo line.
Yeah the using plugs to “hack” or daisy chain automations is a funny workaround to me, but hey, if it works…
This is the other annoying/confusing thing about IOTs, the app and the device aren’t necessarily tied together. They may want you to use the Tapo app just to consolidate the apps they’re having to manage, yet the Kasa branded plugs will continue to be their main offering.
They shouldn’t be naming the app after a product line if they intend to have it manage multiple product lines.