As stated in the topic, I want to use the bulb camera as the only light source. Please provide the necessary steps to completely disable the ir light and have the bulb light on from sunset to sunlight, in other words, all night.
I have tried all the settings I thought would accomplish the above, but the settings I have used either caused the ir light to activate when motion is detected and turned off the bulb light or disabled the camera from recording.
I am using the Wyze Bulb Camera with the telescoping design and have the latest software installed.
What, specifically, have you tried so far? I think maybe you want to do this:
From Bulb Cam’s Live Stream screen, select Settings ➜ Advanced Settings ➜ Night Vision Mode ➜ Off. This should put Bulb Cam into full-time “Color Night Vision”. (I understand that Wyze’s labeling is confusing.) On some cameras, like Cam v4, changing this setting to Off also removes the separate “Night Vision IR Lights” setting, but Bulb Cam apparently doesn’t do that.
On this same Advanced Settings screen, set Night Vision IR Lights (off).
Navigate to Settings âžś Bulb Settings âžś Ambient Light âžś Ambient Light (toggle this on). Set your schedule and brightness here for your desired overnight lighting.
If that doesn’t achieve your goal, then please share some more detail about what you’ve tried and what you’re experiencing.
Thanks for the reply. I have tried the settings as you provided and when applying step #3 if I have the ambient light set to on the bulb is on but the video is black and white (IR). If I reverse the setting and turn ambient off there is no bulb light and the video is in color. Additionally, I have tried using the shortcut bulb icon on the video screen while recording and it reverses the above results.
So, I cannot get the desired result to have the bulb light on and color video at night. Very frustrating!
I am going to see if setting a schedule for the light to on at sunset and off at sunrise solves the problem. Just a shot in the dark.
PS, is there a setting to have replies to my post send a notification to my email?
That shouldn’t be happening if you have Night Vision Mode turned off ( Settings ➜ Advanced Settings ➜ Night Vision Mode ➜ Off). That’s supposed to keep typical IR-based greyscale “night vision” off so that the Cam stays in full-time “Color Night Vision” mode. That’s how it works with other Wyze Cams, anyway. I’ve tended to set Night Vision Mode ➜ Auto because I have plenty of ambient light with it (and for one of my Bulb Cams I use the Ambient Light setting overnight), but this morning I’m noticing that I apparently forgot to reset the Bulb Cam I have out at my driveway after checking settings for you yesterday, so it’s currently set this way:
Night Vision Mode is Off
Night Vision IR Lights is toggled off
Ambient Light is on
Schedule Start Time is 15m after Sunset
Schedule End Time is 30m before Sunrise
PRESET MODE is Always ON
BRIGHTNESS LEVEL is 40% (I think; it used to give a numeric value before they tweaked the UI)
All of my event videos from overnight are in color, so I’m not seeing that the Cam went into regular IR-based Night Vision Mode at all. It appears to be respecting those settings.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean about scheduling an overnight light. This is what I was suggesting with the Ambient Light setting. Do you maybe mean some other schedule and/or light source? Regardless, I’ll be interested to learn what you find out. I understand how frustrating this can be when these things don’t work as we expect.
Yes, you’ll want to do two things:
Make sure this topic is set to Watching. I believe it should already be set that way by default since you created it, but it’s possible to accidentally change it to something else. Check the buttons at the bottom of this topic to be sure how it’s set.
Set your Emails Preferences so that “Email me when I am quoted, replied to, my @username is mentioned, or when there is new activity in my watched categories, tags or topics” is set to “always”. Then click the Save Changes button at the bottom of that page.
Thanks for the help, I truly appreciate it. Now I have another question; Is there a list of all the Wyze Bulb Cam default settings? I have tried doing a reset and removing the device twice and all of my previous custom settings are still there. If there is a list, I can compare my settings and use it to go back to the factory defaults.
If any such list exists, then I’m not aware of it. If I wanted to try setting any Wyze Cam to its default state, then I’d probably try something like this:
Delete the Cam from the app.
Clear the in-app cache at Account ➜ App Settings ➜ Cache File Size ➜ Clear. (On Android, I might even clear the OS-level cache and data, and that would force me to re-authenticate with the app and force the app to pull down a fresh copy of my profile information from Wyze’s servers.)
Add the device to the app and assign a different Cam name toward the end of the process.
I really don’t know if that would set everything to the defaults or not, because I haven’t ever had a need to do that, but it’s probably what I’d try. The times I’ve factory reset Cams have primarily been because of microSD card and/or connectivity issues.
If there’s a setting that you think might be problematic, then feel free to share screenshots. Since you’re a new user (we start at Trust Level 0 [TL0]), I think the Forum should allow you to include one image per post. You can get to TL1 and be able to include more images by visiting/reading a few more topics and posts and spending a few more minutes in the community, and poking around like that might also answer some questions for you.
The cam’s device settings that you chose are stored in the cloud. They are associated to your account and your unique Bulb Cam’s identification (MAC). You can reset your cam, delete your cam to no avail. When you reset or readd your cam, those previous settings in the cloud are reloaded from the cloud.
I figured this was probably the case, but, like I said, I haven’t ever had a need to reset everything to default, so I haven’t actually tried. Thanks for confirming!
You can reset everything by doing a factory reset and setting the cam up under a new Wyze account. Doing that would not pull the settings from the cloud because the cam would no longer be associated to your previous account. Not something I would personally do unless selling or gifting a used cam to someone else.
Yeah, I actually thought about that while I was writing an earlier response, but I decided not to include that because I didn’t want to make the situation too confusing or unnecessarily complicated. Even in a situation like that, I wonder how long the device data remains associated with the original user’s account, and it makes me wonder about a situation like this:
Add new Cam to Wyze account. Delete and factory reset Cam.
Create new secondary Wyze account. Add Cam to secondary Wyze account. Delete and factory reset Cam.
Add Cam to primary Wyze account again.
In a case like that, would the Cam’s MAC and settings be permanently associated with both accounts? I have no idea if/when Wyze ever purges data like this and haven’t ever tried figuring it out.
Good question. I don’t know and I doubt Wyze would tell us. We’ve asking similar questions before with no answer. It’s probably not in their best interest to share info that would help thieves and hackers.
I haven’t tried clearing the app cache, but I believe that it will do the trick, thanks.
Since I began posting my issue and not resolving the problem, I exchanged my Bulb Camera for a new one. Setting up the new camera, using the steps provided here, everything is now working properly.
