If anyone has ever needed or tried to do a factory reset on the Wyze Outdoor cam, you found, as I unfortunately did, that a reset option was intentionally omitted from its design. And, if you unwittingly deleted the cam from your app as I did, you probably also found that you now own a white, cubic paperweight.
With good intentions, this reset-less feature was added with the knowledge that being entirely wireless and portable, the outdoor cam is an easy target for thieves. Preventing a factory reset removes the incentive for theft. Basically, once the cam is initialized for your network, it can never be assigned to any other network. But that also means it can’t be reconnected to your own network once it’s deleted from it. And other than the power cycle, there is no way to fully reset it when it malfunctions.
I suggest that the unique MAC address (or whatever unique serial number Wyze wishes to use) for each outdoor cam be stored in a Wyze-managed database at the time it is initialized by the customer. This data would be linked to the customer’s Wyze account. If and when a factory reset would be required, the customer would have to log onto their account to receive a special reset QR code to be scanned by the camera during setup, just like the code used when the cam was initially set up out of the box.
This relatively simple mod to the cam’s firmware and the Wyze app would accommodate a factory-reset with sufficient control by the original owner. Additionally, the online app could have a “transfer” option that would allow the original customer to transfer ownership to another person, with a sharable QR code.
Until this mod is implemented, the outdoor cam remains as a one-network, one-user-only device. And that is simply not acceptable.