No injuries. We had a fire on our front porch caused by our outdoor Wyze cam v4. I thought someone through a Molotov cocktail at our house. I heard an explosion and then saw smoke. I immediately ran outside and saw there were flames coming from the Wyze power block. so i first, tried stomping it out, ruining my shoes and then grabbed the fire extinguisher. Thank God I was in my home office which is located just a few feet from my camera, otherwise…I believe our entire house could have gone up in flames. It was electrical. The camera’s power supply literally exploded into flames.
The power adapter is not outdoor rated, or were you using the Wyze outdoor power adapter?
Typically even then these types of USB power supplies just die, sometimes let out a bit of smoke. Is it possible there was a short in the outlet it was connected to? Not saying it isn’t possible, anything connected to AC power can potentially have a catastrophic failure, but even cheap generic USB power supplies have a fusible link in them to prevent something major like this.
But having something plugged into an outdoor receptacle without an in use cover can result in something like this. Is the receptacle GFCI protected? Did the breaker trip?
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I am sorry this happened but glad to hear there are no injuries. If you have not yet, you should contact our support department at 206-339-9646 so we can look into this and see what happened. If you have reached out can I get your ticket number so I can follow up.
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Thanks Jason! Here’s the ticket # 4582693
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All great questions! The cord was outdoor-rated and plugged into a GFCI outlet with a weatherproof cover attached. When I brought out my shop vac to clean up the mess I made with the fire extinguisher, I discovered the outlet kind of did its job…it had tripped the breaker in my electrical panel. I just wish it had tripped before the fire started.
All is good now, and I’m just thankful I was home. I happened to be on a conference call in my home office, which is right next to my farmer’s porch where the cameras are installed. My two golden doodles got quite the show…they didn’t know what to think seeing me spring into action!
I’m honestly really bummed that this happened. I’ve been a big fan of Wyze…I actually sold all my Nest Cams, including the Nest Cam IQ, to switch over. The picture quality from Wyze in my opinion is better, and I could more than double the number of cameras for less than half of what I paid for my Google Nest Cams. I mainly wanted to share this for awareness, because I never imagined something like this happening.
I may modify my setup to include more battery-operated cameras so I can keep them a bit farther from the house—probably just being overly cautious. My kids asked about it, and I told them it could have happened to anything plugged in. Just one of those fluke things, I guess.
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So it was the wyze outdoor power adapter and not the one that came with the cam?
Honestly I think I’d rather just have the normal power adapter (or a smaller one) inside of an in-use cover. Not that it necessarily would be any different but it minimizes the amount of AC cord. I guess by the time there was enough short to trip the GFCI breaker the adapter had already gone past the runaway point.
Honestly I do a lot with both electrical and electronics and I haven’t ever seen a failure that bad on just a low wattage power supply for anything. Some sort of perfect storm must have happened. Quite frightening indeed.
As far as the battery operated idea, lithium batteries aren’t pretty when they decide to self destruct, not sure it would be any better than what happened there (and potentially more likely to happen).
I’ve got 8 cams running for about 2 years now, all using the stock Wyze adapters that were included, the adapters are inside and mostly not exposed to extremes, but the one in my garage gets very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. So far no issues, knock on wood (that garage one is on GFCI, the rest are AFCI which is a bit better in theory).
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That’s what I wondered when I read the initial post, and I’m still curious about that.
Incidentally, my mom recently got a Ting via a partnership with her homeowner’s insurance company, and I set that up for her last week. I’m intrigued by the technology, and now I wonder if something like that could’ve prevented what @billy.gilbert reported. 
Welcome to the Forum, @billy.gilbert! 
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Haven’t seen that, but its a bit odd that it is just a detector and doesn’t have a means to do anything for you. Newer homes or ones that have been renovated have AFCI breakers in many or all living spaces which will trip at any sort of arc or spark.
They have automatic water shutoff devices, guess it is a matter of time before we see this sort of thing paired with a main breaker it can trip. Though given that AFCI breakers occasionally false trip, that could be sort of annoying if it shuts down your whole house.
For quite a while now they’ve had smart boxes you can add to your panel that track usage and can alert you to certain malfunctioning devices. I’m guessing there are probably some of those with this arc detection built in now too, but again, an arc is something you want acted on pretty darn quick.
Whether it would help in this case is hard to say, if it didn’t trip the GFCI it seems like the issue may have been on the DC side of things.
Not automatically, no, but I wouldn’t expect that from a small plug-in Wi-Fi-connected device. It does (supposedly; I haven’t yet had any conditions that would trigger one) generate push and SMS notifications for different conditions, and the app displays things like voltage fluctuations and history, so that seems pretty cool. I guess for the first week or so this thing is in Learning Mode while it tries to determine what’s normal for a given location’s electrical setup.
Good point about the lithium-ion battery. Yes, I purchased the dedicated outdoor Wyze adapters (and wow, are they long!). I also picked up protective casings for the cameras. Living in Maine, where winters can be pretty unforgiving, I do my best to maintain a safe setup and protect the equipment from the elements.
That sounds really cool.. I’m going to look into that. Mom’s are always coming across these neat life saving products.
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And thank you for the warm welcome.
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Her insurance company actually reached out to her with the offer. Apparently Ting does partnerships with several insurers and policyholders can get the device for no cost (I think she said it includes 3 years of free service). She wondered if it was useful or just some gadget someone else was trying to sell, so she had me take a look, and it intrigued me enough to suggest giving it a try.
You’re welcome! Thanks for taking the time to share your experience. I really appreciated reading this:
Thanks also for clarifying the point about using the outdoor power adapters. I thought that’s what I was seeing in the initial photo but wasn’t sure.
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Thank you for the ticket number. I will make sure the proper people are handling this ticket. Let me know if you run into any issues.
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Thank you Jason, I appreciate your support. Everyone has been very helpful.
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