Thank you for mentioning about the microwave oven’s disruption ability!
There are so many under shielded ovens in the market place and I have read about so many Wyze user having random connectivity issue, but your the first to write this!
I don’t have this communication issue as our microwave oven does a great job with EMF shielding as it has is variable regulator on the magnetron’s emissions which forces this greater level of protection, but I have long suspected, but could not corroborate it.
The chipset in these cams is very cost effective and changing it will add additional costs. However there are other issues when you add a 5ghz radio to your product. Not to mention the current wifi implementation is less than perfect.
Current Issues that will get worse:
RF Propagation. 2.4Ghz is obviously a lower frequency than 5Ghz which allows the 2.4 signal to travel roughly 1 third further under ideal conditions. Meaning you will need to add more access points to your home for the cameras to work and not affect other clients on the network.
The current wifi radio is weak, rf sensitivity is weak, and it’s antenna pattern isn’t perfect omini directional. The addition of another radio will add another antenna, more power, more line filters etc. Everything that is currently an issue in the department would be multiplied by two.
Dealing with DFS Channels. In the middle of 5ghz there are channels most wifi engineers do not use for commercial deployments however, home users use them all the time. I have seen multi-million dollar deployments brought to their knees because a client didn’t properly deal with DFS.
20/40/80 or wider channel widths would not be supported by the camera which currently only supports 20 Mhz channel. Even if the a newer chipset supported wider channels your camera would most likely wouldn’t be able to clear a 40Mhz channel because the SNR would be to high so the camera would back off. Now it’s slowing everything else down in the new because of this.
The camera doesn’t currently roam well at all, from my observations it typically sticks with the AP it found on boot. It will eventually move to a closer AP but it takes several minutes or more before it does. This issue would become exaggerated if the same SSID where broadcast on both hands. This is obviously easily over come by changing SSID on a perband bases but this simple act may require you to update all your clients the ability to join both while preferring the 5ghz band.
Not every country allows the use of 5Ghz
Last but not least is that generally IOT has adopted the 2.4 because it is available everywhere and has the fewest drawbacks. Your typical wifi clients like laptops, phone, casting devices are moving to 5Ghz and 801.11ax(wifi 6). Next year you will start seeing APs with 6Ghz abilities opening up more channels and bandwidth for the next generation of bandwidth intensive apps. Keep the cameras cost effective and on the 2.4 band for now. As the hardware evolves then maybe look at it, however as I have outlined above there are more than a few hurdles to over come and these are just thew few I could think of off the top of my head.
The only issue I have is I went with a mesh router when my old one fried from lightning. Now it I move my pan cam or power goes etc. it takes it several times to pair with my router. BUT it always does. We just have to wait several minutes to roughly 1/2 hour for it to pair. I prefer 2.4 gz myself. We have just have a issue with lag when talking back and forth. It frustrates my wife so she just ends up calling me.
I need 5G too. COX just reset my modem form 2.4 and 5 to just called Panarama and they said they modem will determine what best for the specific device phone, computer or TV. BECAUSE YOU, WYZE knows this you should have your system send the signal to the modem and tell it to choose 2.4. does not do that and we cannot hook up. NOT thoughtful or well planned out engineering. Everything else I’ve seen form a friends phone looks great!
You’re telling me to call Cox and have them change it back to both until we hook up the two cams and then have them switch it back??? Is that correct?
The WYZE cam can only connect to 2.4 it does not need to send a signal to tell the modem to choose 2.4. When setting up usually the issue is your phone chooses the 5 and your phone needs to be on the 2.4. The cam cannot control what your phone connects to. Cox is right when they said the modem will decide what is best and if the phone can connect to both it will choose 5. You either need to shut off the 5 at the modem or tell your phone to connect to the 2.4.
I ran in the many smart devices that are only 2.4 GHz. The only issue I have when I try to pair them is my phone goes to 5 GHz. If I walk out into the yard far enough to get my phone onto 2.4 GHz then I can come back quickly and pair and have no problem. But with the Wyze cams or actually any of the Wyze devices I’ve had no issues getting them to pair on my mesh router
I would swap out all of my indoor Wyze cams today if a 5GHz version were available at twice the price. While the fixed redesign cost is real, it will also be amortized over millions of units. The incremental variable cost should be less than $2/unit.
Why?
5GHz greatly mitigates the spectrum congestion problem in homes embracing lots of IoT (your target market).
Not opposed. But while IEEE 802.11ax (sorry, not a fan of marketing speak like WiFi 6, just a personal preference) might be nice in general, Wyze cams are (for me) relatively low-bandwidth clients, and I would not prioritize this. That said, the more bandwidth hogs we can get to support 802.11ax (hello, smart TVs, looking at you) the more traffic we will be able to move away from legacy bands, leaving these available for low-cost devices like our beloved Wyze Cams.
Yes and it seems like legacy brands are not willing to try to update at all. My smart garage door by linear pro is 2.4 GHz and they said they are absolutely not looking at adding 5 GHz capability and when I was trying to pair to my Orbi and was having great difficulty they said I was on my own because I went to a mesh router which they do not support. Great customer service don’t you think. Anyway after several hours and close to 30 times trying to pair the garage door to my phone I realized that if I ran out into the yard far enough I could get off of 5GHz on my phone and get onto 2.4 GHz and then run back into the garage and get to pair. It works even if my phone is on 5 GHz now that it’s paired. And when I told them that they said that was impossible. I had my wife video me using my phone on 5 GHz making the garage door go up and down with the app and turning the light on and off and they still didn’t buy it. To me it is a company that released a smart garage door just to do it and does not have the technical support behind it. I would not buy any smart garage door brand that falls under the Nortek umbrella.
@paindonthurt I am glad you got your garage door paired, and thank you for the hilarious mental picture of your wife videoing you doing it. Surely this is the 21st century version of adjusting rabbit ears. Please post!
[Note for our younger readers: long ago, before the dawn of time, television arrived magically through the air with no wires or cables. The price of this sorcery was high and involved standing on the roof in the rain, wiggling occult apparatus, and a lot of shouting. Sometimes, when it was over, mom and dad were left questioning their life choices.]
It’s funny how everyone assumes changing the wireless chip to allow for 5Ghz is a slam dunk. Rewriting code, updating the boards, another model to have to keep up on firmware, etc.
Staff cost money, the time to think about the idea costs money, the planning costs money, the vendor of the chip wants money, you need a new Kickstarter to attempt to fund the change, compatibility testing to follow initial build (does it work on the same network as the old cams?) Redesign cause someone dropped peanut butter in the housing which caused the main SOC to overheat so better cooling is needed…
Simply put, adding 1 feature like an additional band to the existing build could require a whole redesign, which isn’t very cost effective for a company that charges such meager prices for the amazing equipment they’ve already delivered.
I’m in no hurry to change to a 5Ghz cam. Quite pleased with my setup of 3 networks and it’s a crowded neighborhood but I’ve got no issues with cameras, light bulbs, plugs, door lock, motion sensors… Yes I own each product outside the keypad for the door lock. (Early backer) only issue I ever had was the missing resistor for the SD card slot on 2 of my cameras which Wyze sent replacements ASAP.
Great company, great products, and you have my trust that I know you’re making the right decisions to give the best outcome from your products.
Technology always changes faster than hardware, but hardware has to try to keep up… or die. Someone will offer a competing product that DOES take advantage of 5ghz, and WYZE then will have to scramble! Good luck…
I don’t have the money to buy my own modem, so having the Wyze Cams have 5g accessibility would be a huge help. I do understand why they are only compatible with the 2.4g connections, but having both would broaden horizons for more customers and higher satisfaction when it comes to personal preferences of your client base. In other words, it would optimize sales and current customer satisfaction.
Maybe I’m misreading this but this is confusing. You don’t have a modem?
How are you accessing things currently in regards to online access? Hotspot on your phone?
You would need a device for all of the cams to connect to for internet access to upload to the cloud, but you could still save locally but would have to remove the SD card and view it, or setup the devices to a hotspot and as that device came online you could then in theory use the app to view the recordings or watch in realtime.
With 2.4Ghz being a base frequency these days, and it broadcasts further than 5Ghz, it’s easy to understand why a lot of companies still include 2.4Ghz as pretty much everything in regards to networking will receive/transmit a 2.4Ghz broadcast.
I’m usually around 240KB/sec on my feeds which is quite sufficient at 2.4Ghz. Could be my network equipment, I did recently upgrade to Ubiquiti equipment for wired and wireless and have seen other significant improvements.
Need more clarification on what you mean with your initial post though…
Please support 5G for your devices. I get too much interference on 2.4ghz. 5Ghz is perfect on all my devices that can use it. My cameras often go off line with 2.4ghz
