The Moon was sure working early this morning. Note the sky and time. My driveway V3.
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Call me crazy here, but I still hold to my theory that Wyze did something to StarLight sensor. So, here is my proof ( I might sound like a conspiracy theorist). I went to Home Depot yesterday and I bought three more v3 cams. They all came with an old firmware version, 4.36.3.19. I put two side by side, one with old FW 4.36.3.19 and one with the latest FW 4.36.90319. Here are the screen shots:
I placed them in a group so I can view the live feed simultaneously. Here is the screen shot of two feeds, I know the angle might not be exact, but that shouldn’t make a big difference.
Look at the sky!? There is no moon, the shots are taken at the same time. To confirm my theory, Wyze replaced the camera the moment I mentioned that the StarLight sensor died. Something happened between FW 4.36.3.19 and 4.36.9.319. I don’t know, I might be crazy, but it doesn’t look the same anymore.
Hmm, at first I was going to say it was increased compression but I’m not sure. Looking only at the later 21:39 shots, the far left neighbors’ vehicles are clearer in the top shot but the far right neighbors’ vehicles are clearer in the second shot. Maybe simply a matter of exposure and contrast. The overall lighting and detail seem pretty close?
The one thing you’re losing is the cloud detail.
Exactly my point, the cloud detail. Has nothing to do with neighbours lighting because these are same shots side by side.
Yeah maybe increased compression, but they definitely did something to the quality!!!???
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I’m saying much of the frames are equal but the increased brightness / decreased contrast has blown out the sky. Everything else is roughly the same brightness and detail between old and new.
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Thanks for the side-by-side comparison. One confounding factor of your setup is actually the window screen. It may be out of focus but it may be causing the exposure to adjust poorly. OR it may be having no impact at all and your theory is spot on.
I will say that one of my cameras where we can’t use IR-lights seems to have degraded quality recently. Previously it did pretty well in the very dark environment but now it’s just pitch black. I’m wondering if it was replaced with a new camera how it would fare.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure I have past images that would help show the difference but I totally agree that this is worth investigation because it certainly seems like there has been some degradation.
That how it all started. The quality just went down almost overnight. I reached out to Wyze and sent them a video clip. They sent me a replacement right away. The replacement seems to fair better, but the old camera just totally died.
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Well, I’m still wondering if the lighting conditions changed in some way I just haven’t figured out so I’m reluctant to seek replacement for now but I will be watching closely.
The exposures are different,
it is probably the backlight compensation changes in the firmware, fixed to allow more blowout so that shadow detail would be improved. There are common cases where foreground objects are brightly illuminated by the IR (or other) lamps resulting in the rest of the image being too black.
Read the FW change logs to track it down.
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Huge spider. Burn the house. LOL.
For all those watching this topic, I have posted the issue to this month’s Fix-it Friday thread.
If you are still experiencing this issue, feel free to follow the link, like the post with a heart coin, and add your experience in a reply post (if you are so inclined).
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I thought it would be beneficial too show how bad the quality of day time recording is due to artifacts introduced in the latest compression algorithms.
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What KB/s rate is the cam running in live view. This V3 is running 151 down to 75 KB/s.
Mine a running from about 79 all the way down to 16 in SD quality.
I don’t use SD quality. 
I don’t have a choice. The upload speed at my cottage is to slow for HD. In live view it skips in like 6-10 seconds intervals.
So I have to wonder if that’s the real issue. I agree your videos above look terrible (the trees in the first one certainly). Do they look as bad when recording to SD card?
Yes they do, both in live view and SD card. The clips that I posted are from SD card.