No. Reported with other issues in the Beta Thread…
Here’s this week’s update for everyone following this issue:
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That’s great. Please include v2 pans in the mix. My inverted ones drift “up” all the time.
Any news on the firmware release date? The drifting is driving me insane.
My Pan cameras have been fixed cameras as I’ve turned that feature off. Won’t be buying more Pans. Originally didn’t do this so either a software update added this view of the sky or something is going bad in the cameras.
This issue is being tracked since reported shortly after release earlier this year in the Fix it Friday monthly thread put out by Wyze. Last update was 3 days ago and similar to past updates
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I’m a new pan v3 user and came here after noticing this same problem, just got the camera a couple weeks ago and have the latest firmware. The strange thing in my case, if I set a waypoint for where I want it, when it has drifted (usually just one step to the left) i can tap that waypoint and it goes right back to where I want it. so obviously it is something in software/firmware? I’m not using pan/scan but am using motion tracking set to the default speed of 5. It is watching a street with cars going by so it does pan fairly quickly. Usually it ends up back in the home position, but seems like once a day I have to tap the waypoint to put it back where I want it (usually just one step to the right it seems). Note I am not using detection zone (yet). Seems like if I can put it back where it is supposed to be with the waypoint the firmware should be able to also. Or maybe I just haven’t been running it long enough for it to get way out of whack. I did notice when setting up the camera it is not quite “centered” even after doing the reset. So I mounted it with the usb cable coming out the back slightly off center so the camera can be centered. Not sure if that is in any way related. I just got another v3 in the mail today (before I was aware of this issue) so I guess I will see if that one is any different. It will be in a spot where it won’t be turning fast though since no cars will be passing it.
Maybe mine is more related to the fact that it seems one step off center (with the cable not coming directly out the back in order to make the camera face forward). Perhaps it needs me to manually move it a bit but not a fan of doing that either.
EDIT - OK after playing more with it, I realized the main waypoint (which is identical to where I want the camera’s home position to be) definitely seemed higher than when I set it. So i did a reset motor and sure enough after doing that, tapping the main waypoint put it back lower where I had originally set it. So I guess I am in the same boat as others, somehow the camera is losing track of its position but it is able to regain it via a reset. Hoping for a new firmware soon to fix it. Will see how the second camera that just arrived today behaves in the area with no fast motion after a few days.
I see there is a “reset position” rule that I can run daily or whatever. But I think that will send it back to middle position and not my waypoint, but will try and see. There is also “restart camera” which does a calibration, maybe that will get it back to the main waypoint.
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No doubt the Pan 3 looses it waypoint at various times and be slightly off or way off. I have 4 and they all do it to a certain extent. The ones that tend to detect flying bugs, so they move more trying to track them seem to drift off more than some I have that does not do as much panning. The more they pan the more often they drift off. I’m not an expert, but this is probably an issue with the hardware so I’m not expecting a firmware fix. Probably will have to wait for a Pan 3v2 to truly fix the problem. I love and recommend Wyze cameras but I also say they are not perfect. At this point I would not recommend the Pan 3 because of the waypoint drift, since this is sort of the point of a Pan type camera. My sad solution is don’t set the pan to move or track. If it doesn’t move it does not drift. I only pan manually if I want to look at a different spot than my one set waypoint.
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From my observations it appears to be fixable in software. From what I can tell the servos provide no feedback on position (those are much more expensive) so the software needs to calculate and keep track of the position, and currently that calculation is off (or variations in the servos are not getting incorporated into the calculation). This is why when you calibrate the motor or restart the camera it bottoms out at the extreme positions and you can hear it struggling for a few seconds, that is the software figuring out where the “end” is. If the v2 uses a servo with X,Y position tracking and feedback, I’d expect it to cost 2-3x as much. But much of that is guesswork and conjecture since I haven’t torn the camera apart or looked at the firmware, it certainly sounds like Wyze is confident they can fix it in firmware though.
Even 3d printers with stepper motors calibrate this way. They likely need to introduce automatic calibration while the camera is in use and hits a stop. It needs to be able to calibrate itself from all 4 stops back to home. I’m thinking this is why it does it more when inverted because the down stop isn’t used much. The up stop is likely used a lot in that position but might not be utilized in software properly to calculate home. This coming from a programmer who knows nothing about their software though.
I am leaning toward a hardware design deficit in the vertical axis motor that they are trying to compensate thru firmware. Teardown hardware components posted above:
I am leaning toward this conclusion based on the updates being posted:
implement the new strategy to the production line, collect more data points about the hardware deviation that is leading to drifting, and then release a new firmware that will adjust to improve the performance of the existing devices.
I think people have tried it and so have I. Makes no difference. Probably the motors always step at the same speed but the distance is just shorter with each activation. May actually be worse and it starts and stops more to travel the same distance. The pan and follow is the same from memory.
IE
Officer: I pulled you over because you were going 60mph in a 40mph zone.
Me: But officer, I wasn’t planning on being out that long.
Just posted…
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Yeah I’m not a mechanical engineer but I’ve torn apart several 2D printers to harvest parts before disposing and they all use stepper motors, often several of them have a ring with holes and LED emitter/sensor to act as a counter for position tracking. There are motors/servos that track very precise position data and feed that back digitally but you’ll only find that in like CNC machines etc. It sounds like these cameras may not have any feedback mechanism at all other than trying to calculate voltage applied x time = position and obviously it is not perfect.
Without tearing apart the camera it feels like the X/horizontal is a gear drive and the Y/vertical is a belt drive (I’m assuming that rectangle on the side houses a belt). So obviously a lot more chance for slip on the belt portion but should not typically be an issue, I think both probably go back to tolerances and variations in the calculations.
Odd that they seem to specifically be talking about pan/scan when motion tracking causes it just as much. But I guess it is the same issue either way. I don’t use pan/scan, I just have a few waypoints set (including my “home” position) for ease of looking around, but home doesn’t put it back to its original home.
One observation, if I reboot the camera, and it does its calibration, it returns to the “slightly off home” position, but if I tap the home waypoint it goes to where it is supposed to be. So the calibration is doing something and getting things back where they should be, but it has somehow stored the last position of the camera accurately, and knows that it is not the same as the home waypoint. Odd.
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The horizontal axis is direct drive, the vertical axis is ring gear drive as mentioned in my post above.
The side arm is just a support mount for the Cam. It is a conduit for the wiring. There are tear down videos on YouTube you can watch.
Yes. Because it is a mechanical failure, any Pan or Tilt movement will cause the drift… manual, track, or scan.
Fair enough, I haven’t taken it apart or watched any videos, just when installing it I noticed vertical moved fairly freely when not powered on and horizontal was much firmer. I believe I did try centering the USB connector by turning it a tad manually and thought I heard gear noise but probably not remembering correctly.
It seems to be a combination of the fact that gear lash (a bit of slop) is causing things to be different when moving in one direction or the other, plus differences in tolerances on various motors combining to cause the overall problem. So not necessarily mechanical failure in my mind, just limitations and so far not being able to compensate for those limitations with firmware.
Without any sort of feedback mechanism it will never be perfect. The only thing I could think is if the camera could take an image and compare that when returning to home to be able to center itself. But that likely would be error prone too, things change and move over time.
Honestly if it got to the point where it is a tiny bit off and it recalibrates/re-centers itself to the right spot once a day, I’d be happy with that. One of the things I’ve noticed is there is no way to tell the camera what you want your “home” position to be. So you basically use a waypoint for that. If you recalibrate the motor it returns to center X/Center Y, would be nice if you cold tell it what you want its “always return to” spot to be.
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Absolutely spot on! Without positional sensors, the firmware thinks the motor and gears did exactly what it was told to do. Since there is a mechanical reason that isn’t happening, there is no way for the firmware to register the physical offset error and correct. Worse yet, cumulative offset the more it moves. While the initial reset calibration is designed to find 0,0 based on the mechanical rotation stop feedbacks in place and then do an initial reposition to home, there are no positional feedback inputs after that.
I considered a digital mapping feedback as well and came to the same conclusion.
If you are using Waypoints in Scan, you have up to 4 home positions.
If you are using the Detection Zone without Scan, it is the FOV when the Detection Zone was saved.
If you are using Tracking without Scan or DZ, the home position is the last position you manually placed the cam in.
Agreed, I am not using pan/scan just motion tracking, but have basically set a waypoint to act as “home” so I can tap it and put it back. The issue is that waypoint becomes more and more off from where it should be, and after a reboot, I have to tap it to get the camera to adjust to the correct position (which it has apparently re-discovered during calibration). Would be nice to be able to tell it - after reboot or calibration (or after inactivity) this is where you should always go, instead of the CenterX/CenterY position. It is easy when zooming in and out to move the camera a bit so “last position” being “home” doesn’t really work since you may have inadvertently moved the last position.
Not a major issue, just getting used to the nuances. I didn’t realize that detection zone became your “home” so that is a potential solution for me, there is a tree I need to block out anyway, so that along with whatever fix is coming may be what I’m looking for to get it to go back to the right place always. Just not sure if you manually move the camera, or reboot it if it isn’t on that spot, if it will return to that or not (haven’t tried yet).
Nope. That’s what I documented earlier in the thread. Set the detection zone, then tested manual Pan\Tilt, then tested Scan, then tested Tracking. The drift caused the DZ to be askew from original. It doesn’t matter what initiates the Pan\Tilt motion, Home always drifts.