Whenever there is a power outage to the house, even for a few seconds, I’ve noted that all my Wyze cameras (V2 and Pan Cam) that were turned OFF, are turned ON when the power is restored. I’ve checked this a couple of times after a real power outage alerted me to the problem and verified that this is, indeed, the case.
So if the wi-fi router and the cameras are disconnected from the grid for a few seconds the cameras will be automatically turned on when the power comes back on and the wi-fi router and cameras kick into action.
This may sound like a good idea but there are instances where I do NOT want my cameras to be turned on (upstairs guests who have been told the cameras are turned OFF would not take kindly to the cameras being turned on due to a 5 second blackout). Filming people like this without permission is an offence.
Unfortunately Wyze support have not been able to replicate the problem so I was wondering if anyone else has noted this behaviour?
I’m surprised support hasn’t replicated this since I think it’s standard behavior. I just tested one and confirmed. It does take a while after it is re-powered for it to come online. Perhaps support wasn’t waiting long enough.
In any case, I think there are pros and cons to both behaviors. If you really want a camera totally off, such as your guest situation, I’d suggest that you simply unplug it.
Even when ‘off’, the Wyzecam is still consuming power. In ‘off’ mode, current consumption is the same as when it’s ‘on’ (about 310 mA, as measured on my V2).
That’s with the IR illuminators turned off. In Night Mode with IR on, current draw increases to about 430 mA.
Those who are truly concerned about privacy should unplug the cameras from power when they don’t want to be observed. Of course, if you’re truly concerned about privacy, you won’t have any cameras, Amazon Alexas, Google Homes, Apple HomePods, smart TVs or other such devices eavesdropping on the household.
I posted this issue a couple of months ago. There is plenty written about this. Wyze does not maintain camera on/off setting as a user defined setting. With power cycling the camera will turn on. Yep, it only takes a bump in the power and the camera will turn on.
One would think that a user defined setting for power on/off would be a pretty important feature for most users, at least for the folks setting up the camera for security purposes. It would be even more important for a third party monitored system.
I am actually having the opposite issue. It seems that after a power outage sometimes my cameras return and sometimes they remain
Offline with no consistency. I had a power outage the other night and one camera came back online and the other remained offline until
I power cycled it again. Then I had an outage yesterday afternoon and never noticed that neither of them were still offline until this morning. I suspect it has to due with my network not coming back up fast enough and the wyzecam pans are timing out when trying to connect. It would be great it they would just keep trying instead of timing out.
I checked with the engineers on this one. It looks like power outages turning Wyze Cams back on. In the event of a power outage, the status stored in the cloud goes from “off” to “offline.” When the power is returned, the status goes from “offline” to “on.” The cloud is only able to preserve one status at a time and it can’t go back to the previous “off” status at this point.
@iamwally, the cameras SHOULD continue trying to connect. I recommend contacting our support people through this link:
I contacted support on several occasions about this issue but they informed me they couldn’t replicate the issue. In fact they said that no-one else had reported this issue so evidently they didn’t log what sjgschwend had to say! Perhaps support doesn’t log any of these issues or alternatively they don’t read the postings (I may also be guilty of this but I’m not a Wyze engineer).
I couldn’t do any more which is why I specifically asked the Wyze community if anyone else had experienced this problem.
In terms of turning off the cameras I want the security but if I have people staying over for a few days I turn the cameras off for their privacy. I’ve found that if electricity is cut to the units it can take a long time to bring them back on-line. And I don’t want to keep pulling the power every time someone leaves the house and then re-establish a link when they return. That’s why there’s the ability to turn the unit off.
As I have said to Wyze support more than once “If a setting is ON and the camera is turned off or if there is a power cut and then the camera is turned on or power resumed the setting should remain ON”. The same applies to any setting that is turned OFF. IT SHOULD REMAIN TURNED OFF.
As my grandpappy down on the farm used to say “If the gate is OPEN leave it OPEN, if the gate is CLOSED leave it CLOSED”.
@ulyssesroder… I hear you. There’s now a Wishlist topic (link below) that you can vote for to ask this to be implemented. Make sure you click the VOTE button at the top:
The support team doesn’t generally participate in the forum. This is mostly a user-to-user area so they won’t see the posts here. I’ll make sure that they know about this, though.
I have the same problem. What I do is go into my router settings and turn off access to the Cameras ip address. This keeps it from being able to connect. After my guests leave, I switch it back, so it can connect. Most routers have this option.
I have the same exact issue, especially with the fact that the cameras are on a very remote location, where I cant just go and power-cycle them, I want when the power is back or the internet is back to get connected automatically.
Problem is the wyze cams reboot too quickly and timeout before the wifi router starts broadcasting its signal. I installed mechanical timers on each camera and they turn of the camera at 3am for 15 minutes, thus rebooting the cams once a day.
Ideally they will update the firmware so that the webcam tries to connect several times before timing out. When web cams are installed in vacation homes and such it’s difficult to have someone physically reboot the webcams!
I’m wondering if a Wyze cam in an empty house could be checked over the internet periodicaly to determine if there is a long power loss that needs human intervention. The specific problem is that during freezing weather a long power loss might require someone to start a generator to prevent water pipes from the well to a basement holding tank from bursting.
