I recently purchased a Wyze Bulb Cam for my back patio/lanai.
I’m having trouble keeping the device powered on as it loses power / turns off after time.
Initially, I had the bulb cam mated to my sconce and a lutron smart switch. I was not able to finish setup under this configuration as the bulb cam just kept losing power. It would power on fine as soon as I flipped the switch button, but would lose power after a few minutes before I could finish setup.
So I thought…maybe the issue is the lutron switch or the sconce.
So I removed the lutron smart switch and put back a regular non smart button switch from eaton and was able to finish setup of the wyze bulb cam and it worked for a time.
Come the next morning, I noticed the wyze bulb cam was off (non smart button switch was flipped on and was not altered) again. In order for me to turn it back on, i have to turn off the non smart switch, wait a few minutes and flip it back to on.
The only thing left that i haven’t changed is the sconce. But before i do…Anyone else having a power issue like this with your wyze bulb cam?
This is kind of a frustrating problem to have just to get this thing to work…
I have not experienced that with Bulb Cam. The way you describe the issue, I wonder what your experience was with whatever light you had there previously. What kind of troubleshooting have you done downstream from the switch that controls this lamp socket? My initial suspicion is something in the wiring or in the light fixture itself.
What happens if you move Bulb Cam to a different socket? That’s another thing you could watch temporarily to see if the problem seems to be in the device or in your wiring/fixture.
I did find a bad, or what technically we used to call, a dirty switch. It happened to be a Lutron. It was a brand new switch. After 6 months the bathroom light would flicker. I thought the bulbs were going bad. I let it go. Eventually flicker became more annoying and the light would go out. I played with the switch when the flicker happened and noticed I could cause a variation of the flicker.
I bought yet another Lutron switch and the flicker issue disappeared. Never seen this issue before in 21 years of living in this house. I was wondering if this only affected halogen lights. Seems the contact internal to the switch were making intermittent contact.
Now that you mention that, I’m rethinking this a little. Since the Bulb Cam has had an issue with two different switches on the circuit, it’s also possible that the issue is upstream of the switch. I wonder if something is going on with the wiring or breaker that controls power to the box where these switches have been installed.
If the original Lutron smart switch never dropped offline, then I’d think it’s probably not an upstream issue, but I’d keep that in mind if the downstream troubleshooting doesn’t produce a culprit. I still think I’d probably look at the endpoint first, though: socket itself or the wiring to/within the sconce.
First thing that comes to mind is something I’ve run into a few times when swapping an incandescent to an LED (or really any style bulb to a newer style). The bases are shaped differently and the tab inside the light socket doesn’t make good contact, a door closing or any little bit of vibration cuts the contact. You can try tightening the cam bulb a bit more, but better to try and fix the problem. With the switch off and being 100% sure there is no power to the socket, you can use a hook or whatever will get under it to gently bend that tab down toward the ground some. Try for somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 inch, just use care not to go too far and snap it if it seems brittle/old. The new bulb will push it back down, just not quite as far as before. Also make sure there is no corrosion, dirt, etc inside the socket.
Second thought is that maybe you have another switch that controls that circuit that you don’t realize.
Then of course there is the possibility it is just defective and needs to be swapped.
I would test it on another light socket before doing any physical work to have the sconce replaced just to rule out bulb cam hardware defect. You can also try to clean the light socket contact as a last resort.
My original setup before I got the Wyze bulb cam was a lutron caseta smart switch → cheap sconce bought from wayfar → amazon non smart led bulb which worked fine
Current setup now is non smart switch → > cheap sconce bought from wayfar → wyze bulb cam
After some time, i have found the wyze bulb cam can stay on longer than i was initially encountering, but it does randomly lose power. It’s like a roll of the dice on how long its going to stay on sometimes.
Yes, I have tested the wyze bulb cam with one of my living room lights and it has had no problem with random shut offs.
So I plan to change up the sconce to see if that is the problem component.
Thanks for the recommendation in regards to the socket, dave27. I plan to closely inspect the socket this weekend.
I’d definitely try bending the tab down regardless (and clean it off if it looks corroded), can’t hurt and is a likely culprit, may save the effort of swapping the fixture.
I went ahead and checked what you indicated and the metal flap was indeed flat. I bent it so its stands a bit upright like you suggested and put the wyze bulb cam back in.
I’ll monitor it closely this weekend to see if that finally solves the problem that ails me.
Does that fixture have a dusk to dawn sensor on top (looks like there is something on top of the mounting area)? Even if you’ve disabled it and set it to switch-only, which is often done by just putting a plastic cover over the sensor making it think it is always night, those photocells can still interfere. Hopefully the tab solves it, but that’s something else to consider if it doesn’t. May have to replace the fixture with a plain old “dumb” one. Something that would have caused a barely noticeable flicker in the old bulb may be freezing the bulb cam up (electronics don’t respond well to brief voltage sags).
There are even some fixtures where the photocell (or motion sensor when it has one) actually rely on the bulb being a constant resistance or they won’t function properly. The wyze bulb probably won’t be constant like that. But those fixtures usually will say that they are for incandescent bulbs only and aren’t that common anymore.
