FWIW, I reduced the motor speed to 1 and my Cam Pan v3’s are now accurately returning to the original point.
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That’s good to know, IF THEY TRACKED AT ALL. Mine no longer tracks ANYTHING. I can move it manually, but track something moving? Ain’t gonna happen. I’ve checked and rechecked the settings, reset it and even pulled power from it to force a complete reset. I’ve asked reloaded the app. It talks to the cam just fine, tracking? Nope. I opened a support case but haven’t heard anything yet. I’ll post how that goes.
Call wyze and talk to a real person…they will send you another camera because I’m sure it’s still under warranty.
Guess I was chasing a “fata morgana”. It turns out lowering motor speed to 1 didnt work after all.
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Any more news on a fix? Or is it the hardware and we’re outta luck.
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I figured out the issue with mine no longer tracking. For some reason it kept turning off Motion Tracking under the Detection settings. Just having Track Motion on under the screen image when you first go to the cam (where Privacy Mode, Siren and the "quick settings are) isn’t a true indicator. Track Motion in the Detection settings is what ultimately controls it. But, like I said, it was getting turned off for some reason. I reset mine and then turned it on and now it’s staying on, so I think the issue is resolved,
So now I’m just back to the not returning to the home position issue. Motor speed is set to 2. Detection Zone is turned on. Speaking of which, I will say that the algorithm for detecting motion is WAAAY too sensitive on the area. If you want the zone to stop at then end of your driveway (for example) so as to not pick up cars going down the street, I’ve found with the advice of others too, that you need to turn off 1 or even 2 blocks BEFORE the end of the drive. Going TO the end of your drive will still pick up stuff in the street. It needs a WIIIIIDE buffer between on and off. (Too wide is my point, IMO… )
Whenever I would turn on the DZ after enabling the Scan feature, it would turn off the Scan feature and I would have to turn it back on.
Also noticed this earlier and mentioned it as well. It seems like the DZ has a progressive edge and not a hard edge to it. I have also had to add a block or two extra to the edges to "pad’ the excluded zone and get the DZ to be effective.
Since there are multiple reports and confirmations of all these behaviors, I think it’s time they get addressed.
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I have 2 full blocks in the DZ before the end of my drive and I STILL pick up cars in the street. Not all of the time, but occasionally. I’ve turned down the motion sensitivity down to 50 to see if that helps.
The good news is that since I set the motion speed to just 2, it has held the home position much better.
They REALLY need to address these issues with this cam… Just sayin’! I think they’re trying, but we’re not seeing a lot on our end and it’s very disappointing to have these kinds and this many issues. I can understand it some with a new cam from a new source, but still. That’s what testing is for BEFORE public release.
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My 3 cam’s are on a windy place ( I live in the Netherlands ) and I saw the wind just turning the cam’s out of the original position to a new one, while all track, scan,events are turned off, the motor isn’t strong enough by heavvy wind to keep it in the original position, I had to do a reset of the motor to get it back on track and then turn it to the original position… I don’t think this is good for the camera’s engine, So every time with hard wind, I must reposition it, what makes it useless as a security cam 
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My ring cameras do the same thing you have the block off more than you think. I just let my wyze cameras pick up everything and set my notifications to person only and knock on wood it’s been perfect.
Unfortunately, that won’t work for me. I have mine overlooking my driveway where detecting vehicles is key. But that also means that I have to ignore half of my driveway to limit the number of vehicles it picks up going down the street. I tried turning the sensitivity down to see if that helped with the “progressive” edge, but it didn’t. I think this too needs some refinement. There’s not much point in detecting vehicles in your driveway if you have to ignore half of it when it’s only 50’ long to start with.
The good news is that with the speed set to 2, it is keeping the home position stable. It’s not drifting anywhere for me now. And it was going nuts yesterday afternoon watching “vehicles” in my yard that were actually just the shadows of the flags on my flagpole.
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Update - I increased the speed to 3 several days ago and it’s still holding the home position pretty well. Maybe 5 or more is just too much torque on the gearing/belt?
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I’ve been experiencing the motor slip too. I tested with the motor speed set to the lowest and highest speed and I could not tell a difference in its motion tracking speed. The manually controlled speed was very noticeable. But it should be affecting the motion tracking speed as well?
I left it set to 3 and I was still experiencing the drift mostly in the vertical, I do have mine inverted.
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That’s a great question. I would think that it would only be for the manual control since the motion tracking feature would have to depend on the speed of the object being tracked. Otherwise, the object can outrun the track.
This seems to be the norm. My theory is because it is a geared drive with a smaller motor rather than the direct drive of the base.
Another commonality that should be looked into.
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When the cam resets it moves to the extremes. Is that stressing the motors when it happens or is there a clutch of some kind that when in normal operation may be slipping?
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No clutch. The motors can turn indefinitely if told to by the firmware. The only limitation would be wrapping up the power lead to the motors. I believe they both have mechanical limiter stops though to prevent this.
The motors are step motors that divide a full rotation into a certain number of equal steps. The more steps, the finer the exact adjustment can be commanded by the app and firmware without a need for a position sensor.
When it rotates to its limit, it is just traversing from the first programmed step to the last and back again. Since the Base motor is a direct drive, the steps are fractions of its arc limit since it travels less than a 360° turn. Because of this, the motor turns slower, with less torque, and can be much more precise with less possibility of motor slip.
However the upper Vertical Motor is a shaft mounted multi-rotation gear driving an outer sprocket ring. It has to make many revolutions much faster to reach its full arc limit, and it is a smaller motor. The steps on this motor are not only fractions of one 360° rotation, but also multiples of each step repeated over and over as it turns repeatedly to reach the full arc limit of the cam.
Each motor’s position can be commanded by the firmware to move to, at any given speed, and hold at any one of these steps as long as the motor is correctly sized to the application in respect to the torque and speed. If those are off, the motor can be thrown back a step or two because the object is too heavy to turn or if it is geared to low; or forward a step or two because the object is too heavy and continues rotating pulling the motor with it. The motor is essentially pealing out internally when starting and skidding to a stop when ending rotation. The firmware sent the command, but the motor just couldn’t complete it.
Because there are no position sensors being used in a step motor and rotation is command driven, there is no direct feedback to the firmware telling it that the motor is now at the wrong step so that it can correct the position. The firmware thinks it is where it is supposed to be, but since the steps slipped, it’s just a bit off.
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Simply put, it’s not a servo motor and yet limit switches are not needed.
The “growling” at the end of travel during a position reset is the stepper trying to push beyond the physical limit. It isn’t powerful enough to “eat the gears” so no need for a slip clutch. The firmware sends a lot of step commands in that direction, waits a certain amount of time, assumes it has reached the limit and then starts counting back in the other direction until it reaches dead center. Mechanically crude, to be sure, but it gets the job done.
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