Wyze Cam Outdoor Foggy Image

Hum…maybe a bad/leaky seal and fugues with moisture seeped in ?

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Could have been a couple spores and some moisture on the uSD card. The WOC still has to breathe when heated/cooled. The ports on the bottom were never going to seal that out esp. when up-side-down.

If there were no cost constraints, Wyze could mount the electronics in a hermetically sealed containment, pressurized by dry nitrogen gas and have a vented area for connectors and battery.

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I have 3 V2s outside some since 2018 none of which has gotten this bad yet…being that the V2s are even more vented than the WCO.
Just 2 outside and one in that needed a inside disk lens cleaning…no mold.

I have V2 outside, too. Its like apple and orange. I have tile in my kitchen but only the tile in the shower gets mold. StickyWhippit has a problem with his WOC but also has V2 outside with no problem, soooo
Seal your V2 in plastic wrap with a drop of water and leave it under your home or bed for a few months and see what happens.

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When setting up the camera in this location I found it worked best to have the motion detection/PIR zone to be on the bottom of the cameras view. The only way I could find to accomplish this was to rotate the camera, therefore causing it to be upside down. I suppose I thought that would be an acceptable use as we do have the ability to rotate the image 180 degrees.

At this point however I am thinking that was a bad idea and I should have found some workaround to it being upside down because I fear small amount of moisture have entered the some of the ports that I though were sealed. Of course they are only sealed with a small flap.

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I agree @StickyWhippit Maybe the hat should have been placed on the hind end to protect the ports. :grin:

I did bring the camera indoors for the evening and attempted to clean the lens and the camera housing using the previously recommended vinegar and water solution.

The solution did a pretty good job removing the fungus/mold from the camera itself. However it did nothing to improve the image.

At this point I am convinced there is moisture inside the camera causing this issue.

I have opened a ticket with WYZE. In the meantime I will be ordering a couple more outdoor cams and be a little more careful with the placement. I think placing it upside down, whether it was designed for this or not, was a bad idea.

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@tomp I’m convinced that you are correct. I knew the Outdoor cam went through some harsh Beta testing and in a lot different environments without having this issue.

@StickyWhippit You should be able to get a replacement without any problems. You can also include the link to this thread in your reply emails to the Wyze Wizard.

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“Seal your V2 in plastic wrap with a drop of water and leave it under your home or bed for a few months and see what happens.”

Hey Doc, I often take you seriously …:upside_down_face:

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I’m confused about this. When the detection zone is on the BOTTOM of the the camera’s view the camera should NOT be upside down. When it is upside down the detection would be the top of the cameras view.

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@kjay My apologies. You are correct. I should have said the top.

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Ahh ok makes sense now.

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Have you given thought of using a hair dryer on the Lowest heat and blowing into accessible ports such as sd card, power cable, speaker vents etc. Circulating air should evaporate any fog or mist causing your blurred image, that is if it is not caused by something adhering to either the glass or the camera lens itself.

I assume that the detection zone is dictated by the PIR viewing area otherwise we would be able to move the green area around… I wonder if other cameras using PIR have the same problems with detection areas?

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@Big_monkey I plan to give it a few days inside the house to see if anything improves on its own. If not then I might try some more aggressive efforts to remove the moisture. If that’s what is causing this. I worry that it could be some sort of mold or fungus that is growing everywhere inside the camera. If so I don’t think drying it out would even help.

It is my understanding that the green zone is the PIR zone. I think they have some pixel change algorithm they use as well in that zone for motion detection as a supplement to the PIR.

Luckily yet sort of frustratingly the motion detection works perfectly. It notifies me within a second or two every time it detects motion. This thread is actually my first time posting in the forum because all of my wyze products have functioned as advertised. I’m all actuality they have probably been more reliable than most other smart home devices I have used, Most from more expensive/well known brands as well.

Well, lets hope that mold isn’t the culprit… Nasty stuff. Please keep us posted as you pursue a solution

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@StickyWhippit- I just thought of this trick reading back through the post. An old trick for saving a wet phone is to put the device in a Ziploc bag full of dry rice (Rice, not Ice) and leave it overnight or longer. The rice absorbs the motion moisture in the device.
I would suggest opening all the waterproofing flaps and trying this trick and seeing what happens.
If you decide to try this, please post back and let us know if it worked or not. I personally would love to know!

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@Big_monkey Thanks for the hairdryer suggestion. I removed the SD card and held the flap open over the SD card port. I used a hair dryer on “Cool” setting as I didn’t want to damage the rubber flap or the casing in general with too much heat.

It took a while but after 10 minutes or so the image began to get a lot clearer. I would say it is 99% back to normal now. There does seem to be something stuck on the inside of the lens. It is tough to see here but when viewing on the phone it looks like a grouping of tiny dots. I’m tempted to say it looks like water droplets but couldn’t say for sure. It is very visible when focusing the image on a light/solid colored surface.

So here is what I “think” I know:

  1. Camera upside down outside will allow moisture into the housing. Will have to find a better way of utilizing the motion detection zone of the camera as flipping the camera over to have the zone at the top doesn’t seem like a good choice.

  2. Most of what was inside the camera was just moisture. With the speed of how it cleared up I don’t think there is much in the way of fungus or mold. I am concerned that the remaining spots on the lense however are fungus as nothing seems to get them to clear up.

  3. Leaving the camera inside the home for a couple of days, even with the sd card removed and port propped open is not enough to get the moisture to dry up.

  4. @dr.know The little hat they gave me would have been a great idea when using the camera upside down!

I’m not sure if Wyze would still want to replace this one or not as it seems to be almost normal now. Also I am not sure if placing the camera upside was part of its intended use or not. Again, I just assumed it was because of the ability to rotate the image 180 degrees. Ill wait to hear from them still about this to see what they have to say about it.

Thanks everyone for the help and the great ideas. Active forums such as this can be a lifesaver. I have been a lurker on this forum from the very beginning and have learned a lot from everyone.


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Glad it mostly worked out, did you by chance use the dryer on high setting (not the heat).?? Could also be water spotting which is actually a bit of mineral depositing as to mounting it UPSide down, that is why the stand will attach to both top and bottom. I think what you experienced is part of a design flaw, it can be possibly overcome by placing a very thin piece of plastic sheeting of some sort that would perhaps be a couple inches bigger than the camera’s footprint (think of a slice of meat between two slices of bread). In any case, I would submit a ticket to wyze about it … Cost’s you nothing and you may get a positive reply from them.

water droplets.png

They appear symmetrically round as do droplets of water.

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