Has any of you guys experience problem with timezones? Im on vacation and 3 hours advance from my home but my Wyze cam follows my current timezone!!! The camera should sync its time to the router it’s connected not With my phone.
Your cam should only follow your device (phone) time if you set it to except during time zone changes.
I’ve 6 cams a timezone away. When they went from CDT to CST I had to set my phone, which was on EST, to CST and sync to my phone.
The camera does not obtain time zone from the router. It queries an NTP server somewhere on the internet and obtains UTC time from there. It obtains the time zone from the app (ie, from your smartphone).
Since the camera connects to the server on power up, the server knows its IP, and therefore its time zone. I agree, the clips should use the camera’s time zone. That’s where the events happen.
Or at the very least, allow the user to specify to use the camera’s time zone.
Also, the camera itself can call an nntp server to get its local time, which I believe, it’s already doing. It needs to show the time when the option is on.
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I’ve an AT&T mobile hotspot I use when I drive from Ms. to Va. - Does the IP address change as it switches cell towers?
Sorry, I haven’t tested this.
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NNTP servers provide client devices with UTC time, not local time.
It’s up to the device to figure out correct local time, based on its knowledge of time zone offset and DST (if in effect).
The Network Time protocol is defined in detail in RFC5905.
You can compute the local time from the UTC time if you know the time zone. And yes, the camera can get its time zone from its IP (or its time zone) from the Wyze server.
Time zone is simply an offset from UTC.
I think we’re in sync about nntp servers: the camera does not “get its local time” from nntp as stated in post #4. Instead, the camera gets UTC time, and then computes the appropriate local time on its own.
But we don’t agree about it getting the time zone from its IP address. Not sure how that works.
There are several databases available that will give you the time zone given an IP. Here’s one; it will get your IP and return your time zone.
Those databases can’t be relied upon. ISPs don’t assign public IPs based on precise geographic location nor municipal boundaries. That ipapi database shows that one of my public IPs (I have several) is located hundreds of miles from my true location. Sometimes a lookup will be correct, esp in big urban centres. But there are lots of places where the reported time zone is not accurate, in particular when unusual DST rules are in effect.
You might not trust them, but they are being used. Better than getting it from your current location (your phone) which might be halfway around the world.
But the question is: did any of your IPs give you the wrong time zone when you tried the link? Remember, we’re not interested in the location (it might be hundreds of miles off), only interested in the time zone.
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