Will do thanks for the help and suggestions
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A light bulb extender may get the bulb far enough from the socket to improve reception. They come in a lot of different sizes.
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If you sent it with the beta version of the app, they will not reply because it goes to the devs, and not support.
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I am not sure if I have the beta version?
Also I changed the front porch light (which has never gone offline) with the side Porch Light (which always goes offline) the light fixture is the same this morning. So this should eliminate some causes. Will keep posted on that.
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This is my first post here, so be gentle.
Iâve been dealing with this for months. My porch light is on the same circuit and switch as two lights, one on either side of my garage door. I put Waze bulbs in all 3, which was tricky because they all work off the same switch. Iâd have to unscrew the other two while I programmed one. Everything would work great for about a week, then all of a sudden, Iâd lose two of them. Re-program and it all worked great for another week. This was a pain cause Iâd have to grab a ladder, remove the dome and unscrew one each time.
Finally, 3 weeks ago, I installed toggle switches at the base of the garage lights, so all I have to do is reach up and flip the switch. Reprogrammed everything, then it worked great! ⌠for about a week. Then they quit again. Reprogrammed and they worked great. Now, one thing I DID discover, is I didnât have to delete them to get them back up again. As long as I named them the exact same way, it would just work as normal. That way I didnât have to re-program their schedules and such. So, yesterday, they garage door ones went off line again. I spent over an hour trying to get them back, no luck. The light will flash, I can see it as a Wifi access point, but Wyze app just says âThis will take a minuteâ and just stays stuck there. Really frustrating! I really like the way these work⌠when they work. Itâs just consistent, so I donât think I can rely upon them anymore. I have a camera in the window on my front porch, I put a motion detector up under the eve and when someone walks up onto or near my porch, all the lights come on, I get an alert and video is recorded. I love this! But, I just canât seem to keep those two garage lights to cooperate!
Nksprts,
I did failure analysis in Nuclear and it sounds like you need to sit down and plan things out.
There are two areas of technology involved here. The first is analog and has to do with radio transmission/receiving.
The signal from the wireless router is analog and the receiver in the bulb is also. These signals can suffer distortions from nearby transmitters, or metal objects nearby that tent to soak up radio signals. Notice how sometimes you have to move your car to get the garage door to open? The second is the digital part. Zeros and Ones. But, thereâs a threshold where a zero crosses over to be a one and this is analog in nature. So distortion to the analog carrier transmission could have an impact on the digital information that is superimposed.
Next is the receiver itself and the transmitter, which is the bulb and router respectively. The receiver could be faulty⌠and replacing it doesnât necessarily mean you replaced it with a good one. It could be faulty too. Or, they both share a weak link which is exposed when you have something nearby. So do this, take both bulbs to some other location in the house that isnât showing this issue and wire them up. Then programme then identically. Then observe.
Next is the transmitter, the router. I mentioned this before to Wyze that they need to put together a white paper on the effects of load on a router. The router can only do so much and most people refer to this as the bandwidth. This is a throwback to the old radio days when bandwidth had an important part to play on the quality of the audio sound being transmitted. The more bandwidth, the more quality. Anyway, in routers, the more bandwidth, the more things you can put on it. A 1 megabyte/second max baud rate on a router isnât going to transmitter good quality video information. And if you have three people with receivers (PCs, cell phones) viewing video content, it can be next to impossible. If you have 10 megabyte/sec, now you can do it. So the service you have with the Internet Provider (IP) plays an important part if youâre viewer video content and control a number of devices. Also, the number of devices is an issue too. The router has to fetch information from the modem destined for a particular device on the network, package it and send it to that device. It then listens to another device and takes action if you just clicked on a button on Amazon. It packs it up and shoots it to Amazon. Then listens to another input from the modem and decides who it belongs to and to pack it up and send it to your sisterâs cell phone. The more devices you have hanging on the router, the harder it has to work. And some routers just canât keep up. So, to check what your router is doing, another test is to disable all the devices except the bulb at the location causing trouble. See what happens. See what happens when you get that video stream running. Also, another source of information to help you with your investigation is to change out the router with another different router (model/manufacturer) and see what happens under full load, stripped load to the just the bulb, and load with the bulb and camera.
Normally, in industry, we use feedback. We sent a command (digital) via analog (voltage going up and down) to the device. The device then takes action, confirms, and then feeds back a replay that the action took place successfully. If the sender doesnât get a reply, it sends it again. Usually, on the second try, it works and youâll never know about it. But if it continually fails, youâll soon get a message. On the devices we play with such as the plug and bulb, you will not get feedback to confirm and so we chase our tails.
In this instance, you need to collect a lot of data, how the system works under various situations, and from that, information may become evident that solves the problem. In your problem, I give you a 75% chance to fix it. Good luck.
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I wanted to do more than just like your post, wanted to comment and say that you win a gold star for the week. Nice write up! 
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Well I thought I had it as I made it 3 days but woke up today and seen the light was on. Checked the app and the bulb is showing offline. 
I switched that area with another area and that is working fine. As I said router only about 15 feet away⌠So wish this would work as that area is the reason I bought the smart bulbs.
OK⌠think of what is different between the area where it works
and the area where it doesnât. Being 15 ft way doesnât impact the
analog part of it but if you distort the wave shape you may get a
digital 0 instead of a digital 1 in one or more bits. As a
matter of fact, being too close to a transmitter can overdrive a
receiver and you get distortions.
In the home in Boston, I found that the drywall had a layer of
aluminum foil in it. And the thing was as hard as a rock
(probably why it was once called sheet rock). The house was built
in 1935 so drywall was a bit of an overkill. But what that did
was kill my X10 over-the-air data transmission and my wireless
routerâs range was not good. You seem to have vinyl siding.
Thereâs usually a 4X8 insulation panel that goes in under the
vinyl. And that usually has aluminum sheathing. So going through
walls is not as easy for low power transmitters as you would
think. By the way, your router is probably limited to 1mW
power.
Also, I noticed that youâre using a outdoor style lamp with an
aluminum cage that holds the glass panels. That cage is going to
be grounded to your electrical wiring ground. Itâs going to act
like a shield to radio transmission going to your bulb. Thatâs
not good.
If you have both examples above⌠thatâs really not good.
Now lets throw in a transmitter close by. Like your streaming
camera. That could have some impact on the analog radio signal
too. And if thatâs included in the two above, it gets worse, not
better.
If you have a dimmer connected in the branch that feeds to your
bulb, you might find harmonics trickling through that may find its
way through the bulbâs power supply. This isnât good either.
This may not pose a problem for bulbs inside the house on itâs
own, but add it to the mix above, and it gets worse.
So the long story short, Iâm teaching you and the readers how to
fish so that you can feed yourselves instead of depending on
others. But then you need to know how to row a boat.
I once drove home from work in Toronto and as soon as I parked
the car in front of the garage I noticed my headlights go off
before I turned off the engine. So I got out of the car and took
a good look. Yep, both headlights were off. Checked the fuse,
took out my multi-meter and checked the connectors, the wiring,
the light switch (no easy feat in a Honda). Had the engine
running and off. They all checked out fine. In theory, there was
no reason why the headlights wouldnât work⌠except for one.
Both headlights burnt out at the same time. So I checked the
filaments. They were both burnt out. I drove to Canadian Tire
(the best auto and hardware store in the world!!) and bought two,
installed them and bingo, it worked. What were the odds?
Strange things happen. In your case, I would go through the list
I wrote plus some, look at the data, and it will tell you whatâs
wrong. But sometimes you need a background knowledge base to make
sense of the data. And thatâs why I give you at best, 75%.
There is a âhard fixâ technique used in industry that is frowned
upon because it isnât elegant but it does help with situations
such as yours. Send three signals, one after the other, with the
same command. One should get through. So instead of one shutoff,
start off with three as close as possible. See if your rate of
failure diminishes. You may want to add a second burst a few
minutes later. A colleague of mine once referred to this as
âtaming the shrewâ so that you could co-exist.
Another solution requiring some testing is to take out the bulb
from the socket, put in an adapter plug into the socket, use a
lamp and plug it into the plug, bring the other end inside and put
the bulb into the extended socket. If it works, then we have
reception problems. The solution is to replace the wall switch
with a controlled version and have that control the bulb outside.
If noise is an issue (you need a spectrum analyzer for this),
then the solution is to shunt the harmonics away from the bulb.
You can do this with a .22 uF film capacitor rated at 275VAC and
put it across the hot and neutral at the lamp fixture. This
removes one of the problem sources and may just be enough for the
bulb to work regularly.
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Thank you for all the help and info. 2 if my 4 bulbs are outside lights. Both outside a door the router is placed between them and they are same style light enclosure. One has never gone offline so not thinking itâs an enclosure or wall issue.
Donât forget, you may have more than one issue at play here.
The idea about the grounded enclosure is not a theory, itâs a
fact. It weakens the setup. If you have something else in play,
then it push one of them over the edge. But again, you need to
run all the tests.
Iâm not going to nag you any more. Remember, this is common.
And it would seem each solution is different.
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No nagging at all in appreciate all the info and help
I tried the light extender as suggested to see if the casing was causing issues and canât even get the bulb to pair using it. Tried 4 times just says canât connect.