I decided to replace my two Outdoor Cams with the new V2 wireless cams, thinking it would give me more options for placement. After a week of field testing, I think I made a $200 mistake.
Once I read the fine print telling me not to place them in direct sunlight, I realized I had fewer placement options than I had before. One of my old Outdoor Cams was in direct sunlight part of the day, and I never had an issue. Now I have to find shady places, so I need three cams instead of two.
After two days, two of the cams shut down. I pulled them down and plugged them in overnight. When I put them back up, they were fine for a day or so, then shut down again. I ignored them for a day, then realized they were back online.
The one cam that I have not removed for a week has gone offline a couple of times, but always came back up. Now it is offline again, and is at 63% battery power - after 7 days. The other two cams are at 81% and 89% with only a few days duty. Doesn’t bode well for the “up to 6 month” battery life advertised.
All three cams spend most of their time in SD mode, when their older counterparts were always in HD mode.
Just read about cycling power on the base station using a smart plug. I’m going to try that. But I’m starting to think that I’m going to use their return policy for the first time in the several years I’ve been buying their products. I don’t know if I just got a bad bunch of cams or if these guys really don’t perform like their older brethren, but I’m not liking what I’m seeing so far.
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Sorry your having so many issues.
Mine are in direct sunlight and have no issues. Where did you see the warning for this? It may just apply if it’s super super hot where you live.
What is the signal strength from the base to cams? Click the base station in the app and you will see the strength. If it’s 1/3 bars it could be loosing connection to the base. For extended range, try to provide line of sight, or at least minimal obstructions (walls, metal, etc).
The “up to 6 month” battery is only in optimal conditions with specific settings. If you have event recording enabled, battery life will decrease. If your willing to spend $20 per cam, you can get the solar panel. HIGHLY recommend. I have 4, and all my cams sit at 100% at all time, and only dip to 99 at night.
The SD/HD thing could also be a connection problem.
To clarify, did you have the v1 outdoor cams, or did you have the v3 wired cams before
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The warning is under “Precautions” in the Quick Startup Guide. I live in North Texas, and temperatures have been in the 100s for a month. My house faces south, so gets sun most of the day, except for one cam that is on the front porch and gets no sun, and using a solar panel would require a fairly long run and placement in a spot that would be very ugly. I could use solar panels on the other two cams, but it would put me right back where I was trying to get away from, having wires running on the house. Not quite as ugly as the front porch cam, but still not pretty due to their locations, but I may still consider it. The porch cam is very easy to get to, so if I have to pull it to charge it every few weeks, so be it.
I have 2/3 bars on my other two cams right now, but pulled the front porch cam down to turn it off and charge it and see if it will come back online when it is fully charged.
I do have event recording turned on, but since I have a microSD card installed, do I need that? Doesn’t it continuously record to the microSD card, regardless of my settings? Would turning event recording off increase battery life?
The SD/HD thing was apparently just the fact that I didn’t change the setting when I installed them, and they apparently defaulted to SD. I changed the two that responded to HD, and they have stayed that way. I’ll do the same with the porch cam if it comes back to life after charging.
I was mistaken - I DID NOT have V1 outdoor cams, I was using the V3 wired cams. One was very protected on the front porch, and one was fairly well protected under an eave. I initially installed my new V2 outdoor cams on the front of my house, not under an eave, but when they shut down within a day, I found the Precaution against direct sunlight and relocated them. I started out using PanCams in silicon weather protectors, and found them to work great. But I keep moving to the newer technologies in hope of getting better video quality, especially at night. I’m still using 3-year-old PanCams on my back porch (protected from weather) and they work great.
To chime in on my experience so far…got mine two days ago, nothing but problems. I have a bunch of wired v2’s which have been (mostly) trouble free, but I’m regretting the Outdoor cam. Highlights of my experience include:
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Had to make a new guest wifi network because it cannot connect to my existing network, due to the underscore in the network name. Which took me an hour of googling to find out was an existing problem. Now I need to switch my phone wifi to control the camera, or change my wifi name and fix the other 20 devices that connect to my main wifi.
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Cannot download Timelapse videos, just repeatedly get error messages saying “The file does not exist”. Since I bought this to capture backyard/wildlife/plant timelapses, this is problematic.
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Seemingly cannot circumvent #2 by inserting the Wyze 128gb SD card into my MacBook Pro, because my MBP will not read the card. Tried erasing and reformatting as EXFAT on my MBP, then inserting into camera, and the camera wouldn’t read it. Formatted again on the camera, now the camera sees the card, but computer does not. I’m guessing I wasted money on a 128gb wyze SD card.
I can shoot videos and photos.
All in all, I am not impressed and mostly feel like I wasted $120.
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Alright, so the reason you upgraded to the v2 outdoor was because of the cables correct?
The v3 cams are superior to anything else in every way except battery. If you are able to run power, then use the v3s. The outdoor cams are great, but crippled due to battery.
The outdoor cams don’t record continuously to save battery, and the sd card will only says Timelapse’s/manual videos or backup events.
Glad you got the SD/HD figured out.
We’re the 2 cams that are at 2/3 bars the ones that were disconnecting, or have they been stable?
I wasn’t aware of the underscore thing, but makes sense. If your router allows you to create a guest network or alternate networks you can use that to make one for your cams.
There have been numerous reports of the Timelapse thing lately. Please try again, then get an app log in account > Wyze support. Also get a device log in the cams settings > Wyze support. Please post both log numbers here.
I have heard of some issues with larger sd cards not working with certain formats. I think it has to be a specific format. @carverofchoice do you have any insight?
Thanks! I tried troubleshooting more today as well with the timelapse, restarted the base, deleted the cam and added again, restarted my phone. None of that worked.
Here was the support article that led me to the guest network solution. Which is fine, it’s not ideal but I’d rather make a single new network than reassign every single object that uses my main wifi. It’s a lot of things. Wyze Cam 3 not connecting my network - #3 by AGK64
Log IDs:
Log ID: 635873
Wyze App & Services
Other
Log ID: 635168
Wyze Outdoor Camera V2
Other
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I only have one Outdoor cam (the battery kind called a Wyze Outdoor Cam V1), and I only use 32GB in that camera, so I can’t confirm how well it works with 128GB cards. I do use 128GB cards in all my other Wyze cams and they work fine, especially if I format them to FAT32 format.
I usually use this program to format my cards to FAT32:
https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/FAT32format-GUI.shtml
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Hmm doesn’t seem like that works on Macs, which are the only computers in the house. But, that did make me think that I should try pulling a 32gb card from one of my wired cams and see how that performs in the outdoor. Will report back!
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Yes it definitely is. The thread above has all the info in one place, and I pinged Jason so we can look into it when he gets a chance
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I appreciate the responses I’ve gotten. I have been unable to get my base station to sync with my wi-fi, but I was able to find a spot 20 feet from my front porch where I can connect to one of my Google wi-fi modules, so the front porch cam gets 3/3 signal. That cam is also easy to get to for charging purposes. The other two cams are not much further away, but only got 1/3 signal, so I’ve replaced them with my old V3s and all is well. Rather than try to return the other two V2s, I will find a use for them somewhere.
One last thing that bugs me: on the V2 mounting bracket, instead of one slotted screw hole for mounting like my V3s have, it has two slotted screw holes. Initially, I thought “good, more secure mounting!” But the slots are in opposite directions, which I thought was odd. Maybe they wanted to give you an option of which end you wanted to mount? It doesn’t make sense to me. Why not orient them in the same direction so you can more securely mount this heavier camera?
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I think the mounting is to you can mount it upside down if you choose.
I do agree though, the tiny screw isn’t the best for such a heavy camera.