Restarting the camera remotely

Eye candy no longer excites me so I’ll wait.
What I want to see is PC APPP, and remote device restart.
The SECOND those show up… I’M IN!!!
Don’t get me wrong, I really, really, really appreciate the frequent firmware and software updates and the attention to detail and customer requests the wyzeguyz provide but without PC and remote restart, my system(s) can be frustrating at times.
Keep up the great work!!! (but PLEASE, hurry up on these)

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The cameras can be remotely restarted from the current app (Live Stream > Gear Icon > Restart Device).

The only workaround for viewing on a PC at this time is to use an Android emulator (Nox, BlueStacks) to run the Wyze app or TinyCam. To vote on asking Wyze to implement viewing on a PC, please visit and vote for this topic:

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Yes Rick I have tried the PC work arounds and none of them really “work”. Way too convoluted, we need a SIMPLE, user friendly, app that functions on a PC. Maybe just my opinion but I’m old, fat fingers, and a bunch of us oldsters are probably past the point of dumping our laptops for cell phones.
As far as the “restart>gear icon…” yep - been there, done that (1000 times), but when that fails the error message is “unplug and replug in the device…”
That’s good advice… unless you are 100 miles away from the camera in quetion. In which case, it’s a tad inconvenient.
We have elderly parents living miles away and we travel away from our home, when we do, and lose connectivity, the “unplug and replug…” doesn’t really bring much comfort for our security.

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There will never be a remote restart that can work if the camera becomes completely hung up. For this situation, I would consider installing a smart switch between the camera power adapter and the wall socket. They can be obtained for under $10.

However, if the local internet connection is the source of the issue, this may not be reliable either. You may want to check out the connectivity troubleshooting guide in the Support site link the top of this page.

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Rick,
Not meant to challenge but why would there “never be a remote restart…”? Doesn’t seem like it should be that big of an issue to simply remotely disconnect the AC and then reconnect.
I’m sure that you are probably right that it is technologically impossible but assuming that is the case, you guyz really should have made that plain because I know I’m not the only one that has been waiting for this feature to be implemented and felt that it was just a matter of time.
Regarding our particular case though, it’s really not an issue with the ISP (I don’t think), but it IS an issue when our system just stops working (at least on the one camera we need) and the only way to fix it is to drive 2 hours to unplug and plug it back it.
There has to be a better solution
Work arounds are great…sort of…but not mainstream.
If wyze is going to move to the head of the pack that is where they have to go - and I, for ONE, am their head cheerleader to get there!

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Not “remotely disconnect the AC…” it is, of course 5v DC.

Let me try to explain again because I don’t think I did that great a job the first time. Think of the camera as a tiny computer (which it is). Think of the video feed as a program running on that computer (which it is).

Now imagine the you left your home computer running such a program. You have undoubtedly had the situation where a program running on your computer got hung up and you had to force restart it. You were able to do that because the whole operating system had not crashed. You could still restart the computer using the menus or keyboard combination.

But if the entire operating system got hung and the computer was totally unresponsive (eg, blue screen of death)? Then you would have to physically force restart the entire computer by holding the power button.

In the case of the camera, Wyze has already built in the ability to restart it remotely if the program running the video stream has crashed but the operating system is still running. They did that, cleverly, by using a completely different communication channel. That is why you can restart the camera from the app even if the video stream will not connect.

However, if the entire camera’s operation system is hung, there is no way that it can communicate to the outside world, and therefore there is no technical way to get the signal to it for it to restart.

That is why I recommend, for people with cameras in remote locations, to install a smart plug between the camera and the wall socket. They can be found for around $10. Here’s one example: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B076HKHSSX/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Now let me go on to another situation that can cause the camera to be unresponsive. That is when the local internet wifi router or modem has problems. If that happens, you wouldn’t even be able to communicate with the smart plug. The solution to this is usually to unplug and replug the router/modem. But again, if you are far away, you can’t do it. But there is again a gadget solution to this side of the problem. That is a smart switch that monitors that you have a good internet connection and if it detects internet failure, power cycles the router/modem. Here is one example of such a gadget: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0792S1DGZ/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Okay, having said all that, it is very often the case that if one of these cameras works fine most of the time, but occasionally is unreachable, then there’s an issue with the local internet or the camera’s connectivity to it. When this happens again, I’d suggest you refer to the connectivity troubleshooting section below and also submit a support request that includes the log files.

https://support.wyzecam.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012903431-Connectivity-issues

https://support.wyzecam.com/hc/en-us/search/click?data=BAh7CjoHaWRsKwgzPtzSUwA6CXR5cGVJIgxhcnRpY2xlBjoGRVQ6CHVybEkiPS9oYy9lbi11cy9hcnRpY2xlcy8zNjAwMTk5MzQ3NzEtSG93LXRvLWdhdGhlci1hbi1hcHAtbG9nBjsHVDoOc2VhcmNoX2lkSSIpYTBkMTE2ZWQtMjViNS00MGI0LTg0Y2EtNTllOGE5MGIyNzdmBjsHRjoJcmFua2kH--409036c8a1753a35eee706b8cb6f846d0c1be958

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… or for a smart plug that supports Siri (Apple HomeKit) as well, here’s one that I’m using: Wemo Mini Smart Plug

I use a power controlling device called an “Ambery IP-P3” it is a network and telephone (POTS) controlled power strip with 4 controllable outlets. I have my modem, router, cameras, and WAP plugged in to it and if network is up I can access via internet, but if the internet is down I can call it via telephone to access and power cycle modem & router if network (internet) is down works well when needed…

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Rick,

Excellent explanation - makes complete sense.

Your suggested solutions are also great - kicking myself for not having thought of the smart switch. We use a number of them in our home so I’m familiar with their operation and we will implement a couple both at the remote location and here as well on a couple of cameras that are mounted in areas where a hard, power off reset is very inconvenient.

I had not seen the second one with the internet monitoring function - will be placing an order shortly.

Thanks for your interest and for the great explanations and suggestions.

Very much appreciated.

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With the right router, you can automate restarts.

I have a TP-Link router. It allows me to set up an IFTTT account to monitor when devices connect and disconnect. When the camera quits working it would most likely be disconnected from the router when it stops responding long enough.

I could set up an IFTTT applet that turns off a smart plug when the camera disconnects from the router. That smart plug could further be set to turn itself back on a few seconds after being turned off with the smart plug interface.

The result is an automatic power cycle of the camera when it stops working.

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I had tried to set up something like this before getting the gadget I linked above. However, once the smart plug is turned off, there it has no internet connection (since the router/modem is plugged into it). Therefore, there was no way to turn it back on. I could not find a smart plug that had a feature to come back on automatically in the absence of online connectivity. Thus, the EZ Outlet was my solution.

Even though most devices like these are DC powered, people don’t thing about DC because they are plugging the device into an AC outlet.

I think all of you are missing a more important point. All of your solutions or workarounds depend on your discovering the camera is offline. What happens when an event occurs and is not captured before you discover the camera is offline? Its all well and good to be able to manually restart the camera (which is the functionality Wyze has already built in), but its much better for the camera software to monitor itself.

Please vote for this feature here:

thanks

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You need a z-wave or zigbee “plug” to divorce this from WIFI because WIFI could be the issue.

I use Home-Assistant to control my Wyze V2 RTSP-flashed cameras (6). Each camera is connected to a TP-Link/Kasa power-controller and each camera’s RTSP feed is monitored by the Motion Project (motion-project.github.io) software encapsulated into a Home-Assistant “add-on” (a Docker container) called Motion Classic.

The Motion Classic add-on provides a RESTful API call (cgi-bin/status) that returns true/false for each camera based upon the RTSP feed status. When the status is false, Home-Assistant power-cycles the camera through the switch (named to match the camera name), which inevitably fixes the issue.

The whole enchilada is at motion-ai · GitHub

Can you please point me or explain you IFTTT procedure ? Thx