I’ve been trying to get three of the subject cameras to work without success. I’ve followed all of the published troubleshooting steps as well. They won’t update the firmware, and they won’t properly connect. I’ve deleted setups that don’t work and performed factory resets. I have an extremely strong WiFi 7 mesh system from Asus that works well with all of my other Wyze cams, both indoor and outdoor. I’m only connecting at 2.4ghz, not 5ghz. I always setup my Wyze cams close to my router and only the Solar Cam Pan models fail to connect completely or update. All of the setup prompts and procedures work, but I can’t Liveview or update them. When trying to update, I get the “Failed to Update” message. When I try to Liveview, I get the “Failed to Connect. Error. (code -3005)” message. Any help would be greatly appreciated…
Have you updated to the latest Wyze app?
Yes
I escalated it to Wyze Tech Support. My Router is an Asus ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro, a very powerful WiFi7 mesh system with an exceptionally strong signal. All my other Wyze devices work fine on my network. I submitted logs from all three Solar Cam Pan devices and some engineers are supposed to research and get back to me…
If you’ve tried setting them up near the router then wifi signal strength shouldn’t be anything to do with it.
Other things that come to mind - if you have the Trend Micro malware protection enabled in the Asus, it could be triggering a false positive off these cams (each cam model uses different protocols and servers). So check the logs for that to see if anything like that is happening.
If your phone is on 5ghz, it could be having an issue doing the setup with the cam being on 2.4. Try with them both on the same band (both on 2.4 or both on 5). Again some routers incorrectly block things between the bands, usually not intentionally. It may work fine this way once set up, often it is just the initial setup that has an issue.
When’s the last time you tried clearing any caches? Occasionally I see a “-3005” error when trying to connect, and sometimes clearing the in-app cache seems to help.
This is how I tend to clear my Wyze app caches on Android (click/tap to expand):
- Clear the in-app cache: From the Wyze app’s home screen, navigate to Account ➜ App Settings ➜ Cache File Size ➜ Clear.
- Swipe the Wyze app out of the running Android apps.
- Long-press on the Wyze app’s launcher icon (on the phone’s home screen or wherever you tap to initially open the app) and then tap App info in the pop-up menu.
- Tap Force stop on the App info screen (may need to tap OK to confirm) and then tap Storage & cache.
- Tap Clear cache on the Storage screen.
- Back up one screen (back to App info) and then tap Open to re-launch the Wyze app.
Note: I don’t know what the options would be for modifying these steps on iOS since I don’t use that platform. If using iOS/iPadOS, you should be able to clear the in-app cache with Step 1, and that may help.
Sometimes I stop at just clearing the in-app cache, and often that’s sufficient, but occasionally I’ll clear the OS-level app cache, too.
If you’re getting to Solar Cam Pan’s Live Stream screen, then it seems like you’ve managed to get the Cams added to the app for initial setup/connection. Do you bring the Cams close to your router when attempting firmware updates? Normally this shouldn’t be necessary, but an advantage of the clip-in mount system on these is that they can be removed from the mounts easily if you need to temporarily relocate them, provided they’re easily reachable wherever you’ve chosen to mount them. (I’ve had to do this in the past when I’ve had one apparently drain its battery with multiple reconnection failures.) I’d consider trying that on whichever Cam is easiest to reach in addition to clearing the cache(s). If that doesn’t resolve it, then I’d also consider clearing OS-level app data to refresh the local copy of your Wyze account profile.
This is how I would get a clean copy of my account profile/settings on Android (click/tap to expand):
- Clear the in-app cache: From the Wyze app’s home screen, navigate to Account ➜ App Settings ➜ Cache File Size ➜ Clear.
- Navigate back one screen to Account and tap Log Out at the bottom.
- Swipe the Wyze app out of the running Android apps.
- Long-press on the Wyze app’s launcher icon (on the phone’s home screen or wherever you tap to initially open the app) and then tap App info in the pop-up menu.
- Tap Force stop on the App info screen (may need to tap OK to confirm) and then tap Storage & cache.
- Tap Clear cache and Clear storage on the Storage screen.
- Back up one screen (back to App info) and then tap Open and proceed to log back into your Wyze account/app. (Optionally reboot the phone at this step for good measure and then launch the Wyze app after the fresh boot instead of relaunching it immediately from this screen.)
Note: I don’t know what the options would be for modifying these steps on iOS since I don’t use that platform.
If you’re in contact with Support and they’re passing appropriate information to the engineers, then I imagine they (the engineers) will take a look at whatever logs you submit via the Wyze app, and sometimes they’ll even procure and test with a specific router if you’re supplying them with that data.
I had the exact same issue with my solar cam pan. The only fix is for Wyze support to push a firmware update to it. After that, it will get firmware updates as they are releases.
Thanks, Dave. I’ll try both of your suggestions…
Thanks, Crease. My router is a 2-node mesh. Asus ZenWifi BQ16 Pro. The base unit is in the living room and the other unit is in my loft/office area next to my desktop on the 2nd floor of the house. The signal is so strong that I get over 1gbit of throughput over wireless in the loft area. I setup all of my Wyze devices from up here. Never had a problem with any Wyze device other than these new Solar Cam Pan units. I will try the cache clearing routines you suggested though…
Dave, turning off the Trend Micro and rebooting the router didn’t change anything…
OK, was worth a shot. Did you try putting your phone on 2.4ghz to see if having them on the same band gets you through setup? If that doesn’t work, you may need that support firmware push that @Skipsmith mentioned, though I haven’t seen anyone else report that yet.
Edited to remove reference to trying both on 5ghz since this cam doesn’t support 5.
Solar Cam Pan won’t do 5 GHz.
Also from the “Tech specs” section of its product page:
That’s a good thought, though. I don’t know how many times I’ve intentionally disabled 5 GHz and 6 GHz radios to force my phone onto 2.4 GHz for setting up IoT devices. I did that again just a few days ago for some original Wyze Plugs and some other things.
Ah I just saw the OP stated was using 2.4 not 5, so assumed it supported both like a lot of the other newer cams.
So in this case, would have to disable 5 or put the phone on 2.4 manually to test that theory.
I have been following this message thread and I tried everything initially to get my solar pan to work. It did exactly what was described. I actually purchased one and had this problem, sent it back and got another one and it did the same thing.
I tried everything with the router including turning on ONLY 2.4 when setting it up… reset everything, Believe me, tried everything.
After I contacted Wyze support, they said to leave the camera on and then they pushed out a firmware update to it. The firmware they pushed on it at first was not even one listed on their firmware lists at the time.
After that…it fixed my cam not being to view live mode and other issues… and it also received regular updates after that.
Too bad this isn’t one that they post firmware for the manual update procedure, but re-reading OP’s post and yours I see that it seems like they get through the setup procedure fine but then just have connection issues, so yeah the 2.4ghz thing seems less likely.
I wonder if using an older version of the app temporarily would allow it to update and work, but probably just easier to ask support to update it, sounds like they know about the issue already.
I’m suspecting since this hasn’t been widely reported here if it is just some of the newest app versions along with old/original firmware that aren’t working together, and it will start being more of an issue.
It would be helpful for Wyze to post the firmware files so people can help themselves. It took me 2 weeks after receiving the cam to trying everything to fix and getting support to update the firmware to make it usable.
My only complaint for the solar pan cam, I wish they would use up the battery some more on the panning ability of the camera. Its kinda of a glorified battery cam pro with the ability of the user to manually pan things around.
Just received a firmware update via email from a Wyze engineer to try. I’ll let you all know how it goes…