WARNING! Power Outage!

Forums Mavens moved this post to Plugs section. It should stay in this thread as it pertains to cameras controlled with a plug, not Wyze specific.

For all of you folks out there who are using smart plugs (no brand specific) to reboot your routers/modems on a schedule. Beware of prolonged power outages, they will render the schedules useless.

What happens is that if there is a prolonged power outage including internet, the internal clock gets “confused” and will not run the schedule.

I have Kasa plugs that they “remember” last power state, powering three v3s and a router/modem combo on a schedule at a remote property. There was a power outage for over ten hours few days ago, and now =none of my cameras and plugs are reachable. It looks like the plug in front of the modem/router got stuck in OFF mode as the clock lost time and didn’t get updated via internet.

I was told that another outage might reset the plug, but that is not guaranteed.

Just beware.

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Most of the smart plugs are not reliable enough (in my opinion) to use for any kind of router management. The problem you posted is just one of many. For reliability a simple “clock” type timer to reboot once per day (or less often depending) should be enough to keep your home network and router functioning. There are also products that connect to the router’s power supply and will power cycle the router if the device cannot reach some server or URL on the internet.

One or the other should take care of most issues.

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I learned the hard way, that is why I’m posting, to warn other users.

That is the route I’m taking, or get rid of the schedules and manually reboot the router when needed.

Your gist of your post is related to smart plugs losing internal settings and schedules due to a prolonged power outage. It is not specific to cams. Any device connected to the plug is affected. I’ll leave your post here in the cams category, but unless you change your topic title or search tags, a user looking for helpful plug info such as this topic of yours won’t be found. You can’t change the search tags to plugs in this Cams category because the topic is mislocated… a plug is not a cam. You can however move your topic to the Tips & Tricks category.

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Moved to Tips-and-tricks and added plug tag.

Thanks

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Excellent! Just trying to help you get max visibility out of your efforts. :+1:

Greatly appreciated, just trying to do my job as good Samaritan :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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And your help around here is very much appreciated! thumbsup2

Do you mind pointing me to one of these devices? Thanks

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Only did a little searching:

https://a.co/0hMk9DA

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Thank you guys. I think I’m going with a timer plug, have a feeling it might be more reliable.

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So you have to wait for another outage to reverse what the first one did? :thinking:

Ahem…

Hubitat Elevation does not need to be connected to the internet to turn plugs on and off at specific times. The hub controls everything independently of the internet.

I totally forgot about this post. Shame on me!

As most of you know I have been battling with my ISP to allow me to use my own gear, modem and router. They finally gave up and allowed me to replace the router. What a difference a robust WiFi 6 mesh router makes. I, finally disabled ISP’s WiFi and installed an Eero 6. It’s been over a month and I haven’t had any issues with my cameras or plugs. They’ve been rock solid.

Looks like all I needed was a robust hardware to get me through.

Yes, because no one is physically there to pull the plugs out and back in.

Removed by OP.