Window cams streams freeze after a few seconds, other Wyze cams ok

Cameras
,
1

A month ago I purchased 2 Wyze window cams. One is installed on a south facing window, the other a north facing window. I also have 5 other Wyze cams (V2s and V3s) inside my home. They are all connected to an IOT VLAN on a Ubiquiti network. All the Wyze cams have SD cards installed and are on Cam Plus.

The other Wyze cams all stream continuously to my android phone without issue. However the 2 window cams pause/freeze the stream after a few seconds (usually 5-6 seconds). No error messages, the stream just stops/freezes. Both window cams stop at about the same time, sometimes one lasts a second or two longer.

If I disconnect and reconnect to the camera the stream runs again for a 5-6 seconds and then again freezes.

I understand that Wyze cameras try to hand off to a peer-to-peer connection between camera and phone after a few seconds, so thought my firewall might be blocking some communications between my trusted and IOT VLANs. I updated my firewall rules to allow through a number of connections between VLANs to enable this. All my other Wyze cameras (non-window cams) are working fine with the current firewall setup, it’s only the window cams that are “freezing” after a few seconds.

This happens regardless of whether my phone is on WiFi or cellular data. It also happens when playing back from the SD card.

Thought it might be a heat issue due to sun exposure, but my north facing and south facing window cameras both freeze after the same amount of time even though one gets sun exposure and one doesn’t. Ambient temperature is not particularly hot right now (low 20s C).

I tried changing the SD card as well in case that was the issue, but no effect. I’ve tried both Samsung PRO Endurance and PNY High Endurance cards.

The cameras are reporting good signal strength (RSSI: -49dBm for one, -42dBm for the other). The IOT network to which they are connected is 2.4GHz only.

Firmware is updated on both window cameras to 1.3.0.47.

Any ideas on what might be the issue with these Wyze window cams and what to do about it?

EDIT: I just checked and continuous streaming seems to work when the window cameras are viewed through the Wyze Web Portal. The above issues occur when viewing the cams on my android phone via the Wyze app (updated to latest version), which is my normal way of viewing them.

2

Are the 2 problem Window Cams the furthest away from your WiFi router? I have 1 v3 that does the samething. My problem v3 is the furthest from my WiFi router.

You could try moving a Window Cam close to your WiFi router Temporarily to test.

3

Thanks for the suggestions, but these cams are quite close (about 15ft) to my WiFi access points and both have a strong signal as reported by both the camera itself and my access point.

4

At 15 feet apart, I would next look for obstructions in between. I have one laptop that does not get a good WiFi signal with a metal refrigerator in the line of sight to my WiFi.

My tablets do not seem to mind the refrigerator in the path.

It might still be worth a try to Temporarily move your Window Cams to test.

5

My guess would be that you’ve allowed some, but not all, of the ports/protocols required for local streaming, which is causing things to get confused. That’s why web view (which always goes via the internet) works. Try totally blocking communication between your main and IOT network and see how it works. If that resolves it, you can stay that way (which is how I’m set up) or you’ll need to do some more in depth testing to determine what was being blocked and why.

If your phone is on a different subnet/VLAN from the cams, I don’t believe it will ever be able to stream locally, but honestly I’ve never bothered to try, looping it through the internet has never been an issue for me, and I want them fully isolated from my LAN.

6

Yes, it does appear to be something related to the inter-VLAN communication. When I connect my phone to the IOT VLAN/WiFi the streaming connection is maintained, while when connected to my trusted VLAN/WiFi it freezes after a few seconds… but ONLY with the window cams. The other Wyze cams (mix of V2 and V3) continue streaming to my phone regardless of to which VLAN/WiFi my phone is connected.

Do the Window cams have additional ports or services that need to remain open, over and beyond what is listed for other Wyze cams? Are these ports/protocols documented somewhere, specifically for the window cam?

7

From what I’ve seen they’ve never done a great job of documenting ports, and yes they do tend to change with different generations of camera.

The easiest way is probably to open up the communication temporarily, monitor what ports are in use while streaming, then lock it back down leaving only those ones open. Also check in your firewall settings for any UDP timeouts, but usually thats more like 5+ minutes and Ubiquiti is pretty good about not using that timeout if there is active traffic.

But you also have to ask yourself, you’ve gone to the effort to isolate your IOT devices, which is a good idea, why are you then punching holes and allowing communication directly to your main LAN?