Right, they don’t last forever, but my other V2 that I bought at the same time with the same usage is just fine, as are my two V1s that I bought way before my V2s, so I figure it should be OK.
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Right, I did all that, and it’s not charging. No light. Can’t view it live. Nothing.
I’m so sorry I didn’t realize you responded back to me. Somehow I didn’t have my notifications on for this topic. I messed with something else the other day and somehow turned this one off.
So my guess is that the V2 being an older camera, it’s possible that it has reached its end of life, I still have a few that work but I only use them on very rare occasions. You know how batteries are these days only so many church cycles sadly, I can’t say how many these ones are good for.
I wish I could offer you better news than that but it seems like you’ve been on top of it and have tried everything I would have recommended.
I know our Maven team would definitely look at this amongst ourselves as a chance to level up to the newest battery camera which I think all of us prefer. The battery cam pro is vastly superior to the original outdoor cams in every way.
I use them as ad hoc game cameras when I need to trap animals in my yard now lol
I wish I could give you a better news but sadly nothing is popping to mind that might help you outside of possibly running a charge connection checker to make sure that the cables are throwing the correct amount of power through them and such. But something tells me that is less than likely the issue.
Nice typo… Perhaps the WCO’s are praying for a cooldown period of other than the forced 1 minute cooldown?
I have Eight V1s, and One V2 spread out on three bases, and was using them as ‘trail cams’ around the house much like you are doing. With the 1 Minute Cooldown forced upon these camera’s, they aren’t as useful as they were once.
The battery health on these 8 of my 9 camera’s appear to be doing OK as of today. One of the v1s won’t light up it’s LED when I plug it in (a new development as of today). I pulled them all out of service and left most of them on chargers for the last few weeks, contemplating if I’d even use them again since they are, IMO, a bit useless without the ability to set them to “No Cooldown”
I have purchased four of the new Battery Cam Pro’s (two are on Wyze Solar Panels and stay self sufficiently charged in my back yard)gathering pictures of Coyote’s on the hill.
yes, the BCPro’s are a much better product that the WCO’s, but I do miss the ability to do an ad hoc time lapse as the BCPro’s don’t have that feature.
My Birthdates of my camera’s are:
V1s:
03-25-2021
03-28-2021
04-02-2021
04-02-2021 (might be deceased)
04-24-2021
04-02-2021
04-22-2021
10-01-2021
V2:
11-09-2022
I like the form factor of the WCO’s, as it’s just a block sitting on the ground, not looking much like a camera at all, especially when I have them wrapped in camo to ‘hide’ them. It’s almost like they were made to toss on the ground for that purpose. I’m not so inclined to toss a BCPro on the ground in that same way, as it doesn’t have a base to keep it above the ground.
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You are very knowledgeable indeed The fact that you know the birthdays for all your cameras Is rather impressive. That’s something our maven team does quite a bit. were that big of nerds. I still have my original outdoor cameras although I use them very sparingly so they haven’t gone through the charge cycles like yours probably have. In regards to placing or mounting the battery cam pros, in my searches online I came across this and they have been wonderful for mounting and being able to quickly mount and adjust both the cameras and the solar panels.
Under normal circumstances I would send you a picture of one of them in use, but currently I can’t as they are all spoken for and I can’t say what they are being used for…but I can say it is awesome!
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I still like and use my four WCO v1 cams for recording critters around different areas of my yard and move them frequently . All four were placed in service 4 November 2020. They all record events everyday some more than others. I am also smoking mad about the WYZE Firmware FUBAR that eliminated the “NO Cooldown” period. I have continued to set some of the cams to used Scheduled Event recording to the cam SD card to eliminate the WYZE imposed 1 min. cooldown.
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I asked @WyzeMatt in another thread:
"will you please address the WCO v1 and v2 forced 1 minute cooldown issue?
And so far ‘crickets’, it is the weekend, so perhaps I’ll hear something this week?
This is exactly how I use my 9 WCO’s to catch rats, mice, coyotes, rabbits, possum, etc. Being able to just ‘drop’ one anywhere on my property within range of the base to see what’s crawling around out there worked great for this camera, hence, I purchased NINE of them.
I’m to the point that I’ll no longer recommend Wyze to any friends or family until this FUBAR has been reversed.
I just want Wyze to ‘look me in the face’ and tell me the truth as to why my nine WCO’s have had a feature taken away from them, that can easily be restored.
I don’t believe this was an accident, and will continue to shout that from the rooftops until I get an answer.
I purchased four battery cam pro’s, should I expect them to also revert to a forced 1 minute cooldown once Wyze deems them unworthy of a ‘no cooldown period’ due to the next rendition of the Battery Camera?
I think that’s a valid and fare question that Wyze needs to answer. @WyzeDave perhaps you’d like to chime in on this issue?
I recently recommended to a friend to purchase Two Battery Cam Pro’s for his property, even going so far as bring two of my BCP’s to his home, with my router, to ensure where he wants to place them would work for the distance. Demonstrating the app, and solar panel to him and his wife.
Not sure I want to put my recommendation on something that might not work past a arbitrary date based on the company wanting to push the model out the door to make room for the newer models.
That’s technology though, if you’re not growing as a business you’re dying, and Imagine if the company had only ever kept supporting the older cameras and didn’t turn out anything new. They would lose any potential new customer growth and eventually all the older stuff would die anyway.
Same with any computer type item, Think of processors or screens or materials for pretty much anything, it’s just kind of a cycle. if the performance actually warrants the upgrade though I would argue myself and at least a couple others are ok with it. it’s just a matter of performance. might you agree with that statement?
The entire issue with the WCO cooldown is all about WYZE not fixing what they broke. Many users like me purchased Cam Plus for WCO cams so we could record what we wanted to without a cooldown and also knowing the battery use would be greater. the 6 November 2023 firmware broke that and imposed a 1 min cooldown no matter what the setting was. After first saying they could not replicate the issue/then they could and would fix it nothing has happened and never will. Pay the $$$ and don’t get what used to work.
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I fully agree that technology ages out,
I have v3 cams that have died, as well as Wyze Color light Bulbs that I’m not raising a stink about, because they died and they were out of warranty. Completely understandable, and I moved on. For that matter, I have Two WCO’s that have died, and are sitting on the shelf waiting to be taken apart someday just to tinker with them. I haven’t complained about those Two Deceased WCO’s, because that’s what happens to electronics sometime. And if it’s out of warranty, so be it.
WCOs being Neutered by Wyze prematurely while they are still fully functional is not the same thing.
Having purchased 9 WCO’s and keeping them in use did not cause me to not buy the 4 Battery Cam Pro’s and solar panels for them.
Wyze appears to have Lied to it’s users (“we can’t recreate the issue”) and/or “we’ll fix it the issue”, to downright completely ignoring this issue, hoping that we’ll quit discussing this blatant blunder.
I agree with the statement, but for me it does not apply to my WCOs, they are working just fine the way I was using them, and I had every intent to use them in that way, until the batteries died or they failed in some other way.
I didn’t expect their epitaph to be written en mass by Wyze.
Once again, I’ll ask for @WyzeDave to put this whole thing to rest by either coming clean with the truth of what happened and possibly even fix this issue and let the WCOs in use remain in use rather than be tossed aside prematurely.
fair enough, I know dave, i’ve hung out with him, he is a good guy, I hope he gets time to chime in here, I know there are many things being worked on currently,
I can’t speak with any authority and factual knowledge as to why the one minute cooldown would have been put in place, my memory isn’t great enough to remember that or know if I was given any information on why that was done. So although I would love to speak as a Very informed person on this one as our team usually is, sadly I’m unable to but I’m more than willing to admit that one versus give filling but false information. I do have a guy though that has a good memory, he might remember something being brought up as to why something like this was implemented. @R.Good do you happen to remember this change all those many moon ago?
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The issue was on all the Fix it Friday post from late 2023 through the spring / summer 2024:
A COUPLE of many:
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Assuming this is Wyze on Amazon, and not a 3rd party, it appears the Wyze Cam Outdoor is still being sold by Wyze on Amazon:
I will never purchase a battery powered cam again, from any company. I now have 6 V3, one V3 Pro, three V4 and four WCO v1. The WCO cams still work but will replaced with plug in cams when they die,
I’ll reserve judgement on the Wyze Cam Pro’s with solar panels in about 3 years or so, when Wyze forces a 1 minute cooldown on them at that time, then I’ll completely bail from the Wyze ecosystem once everything dies.
But for now, I like the video I’m getting from my BCPs, and even on a very overcast day like today, both that I have mounted with solar, are sitting at 100% battery at 7:27pm PST.
I do miss the time lapse feature of the WCO’s, I tossed a WCO on the flat roof of my sun room, and did a time lapse of me prepping and painting the roof, that was interesting to watch that project in that way.
Imagine the folks that go to eBay to purchase a new or used Wyze Outdoor Cam model WVOD1 or WVOD2 or one of the Wyze Cam Outdoor V2 Starter Bundles WZODV2B1 or Wyze Cam Outdoor V1 Starter Bundles WVOD1B1 only to discover that they purchased a camera with this exciting new undocumented feature of a 1 minute cooldown period!
To be a fly on the wall, watching them laughingly thinking that they solved the problem by spinning the Recording Cooldown wheel to “No Cooldown” only to come back the next day to discover it automagically changed to 1 Minute all by its little self!
Imagine the entertainment as they reach out to Wyze Tech Support…, well, I’ll just let the imagination run wild on that scene, we all know how that plays out.
Grab some popcorn, and pull up a chair as the story unfolds between buyer and seller on eBay about the defective camera that was sold to the unsuspecting buyer (and seller for that matter, because they were most likely unaware of this new feature made available on the WCO v1 and v2) Perhaps that won’t play out often, as the prices I see on eBay are way too high for these cameras being listed.
Ah, but we can now go back to Amazon, and the New Camera’s being sold there. I wonder how many of those will get returned for this reason as well. @wyzedave, is this really Wyze selling the Wyze Outdoor Starter Bundle v2 on Amazon? If so, you should either fix this glaring issue or remove these from Amazon, as you are selling a defective product.
I might just have to buy one off Amazon, just for the chance to see if an unmodified (by any new Wyze Firmware) actually still allows for a No Cooldown Period. Then Return it to Amazon if it plagued with the same 'No Cooldown For You" treatment.
@Bam I apologize for taking this original posting and going a bit off the original topic, feel free to move the comments that started with me replying to you about the issue where WCO’s are forced into 1 Minute Cooldowns to any related threads that would be more appropriate.
Until then…
I received my shiny new Wyze Cam Outdoor v2 Starter Bundle today (gots to love Amazon’s next day Prime Delivery).
I set up the Base Station, refusing any firmware updates, it shows out of box to be running 4.16.3.117 (my existing updated Base Stations set at: 4.16.4.523)
I then installed the shiny new WCO v2, refusing the firmware update.
It’s firmware is: 4.48.2.62, (my existing WCO v2 sets at: 4.48.4.427)
I’ve set Recording Cooldown to “No Cooldown”, and beings it can take a day to covertly swap itself to 1 minute, I’ll monitor from here, and post the outcome of my test.
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Good Morning @Antonius , thanks for the advice, you had me ‘scrambling’ to look for that seeing this morning on both devices.
I was relieved to see the option was not available, and then went to the firmware release notes to see that feature was added on Firmware 4.16.4.496 on the Wyze Cam Outdoor Base Station:
Thankfully, the the Base Station and WCO v2 have been prompting me to update, with the option to Cancel and check a box to say 'Don’t ask me again":
For the WCO v2, the option was not available either (, so it must of been implemented in a later firmware, but on the Wyze Cam Outdoor v2 Firmware list, I don’t see it logged as to what firmware implemented it. (same on the Wyze Cam Outdoor v1 Firmware list)
And Hugh thank you to get me to go turn off Automatic Firmware update on ALL of my Wyze Cams today, and check to see if any non Camera’s have this ‘feature’ to potentially inject an unwanted Wyze Sanctioned Undocumented Feature aka. render any other Wyze devices useless, in the future.
Automatic Update is a big time saver, when you just want to set and forget, but if Wyze can’t be trusted to release proper firmware updates, and fix the broken ones when they need to, I’ll never enable Auto Update ever again.
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As of 7:00am on 4/4/2025, my the new WCO v2 has NOT covertly changed it’s Cooldown from ‘No Cooldown’ to ‘1 Minute’, when my existing WCO v2, as expected covertly changed to the '1 Minute Cooldown"