I received my order of Wyze Plugs a couple of weeks ago, and they have been awesome. I have noticed that I have one plug connected to a GFCI outlet in my garage. I have an LED overhead light plugged into the Wyze Plug, and the other socket on the GFCI outlet is a small chest freezer. I have noticed that since plugging in the Wyze Plug, the GFCI gets trips about once per week. The outlet is far from being overloaded with just the two items plugged in. I haven’t been able to recreate the issue, so it appears to be random at this point, but I wanted to throw this out there and see if anyone else has experienced something similar with their Wyze Plug and a GFCI outlet.
I suspect it happens during the start up stage of the compressor on the chest freezer. Perhaps in combination with the LED light being on. Compressors draw a lot more energy during initial startup than normal running. But as you have discovered its hard to recreate.
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Hi @majortomm,
The Wyze power Adapter has an output of 5v and and rougly 2-3 amps, If you have a chest freezer plugged in and its running close to the GFCI outlets max amperage, (10Amps)? not sure what your outlet is rated. like @rbruceporter stated, when the compressor kicks on for the chest freezer (possibly 7 to 10 amps or more if its older) it could be putting it over the amp limit of the GFCI outlet.
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I have inserted a Wyze plug into the same outdoor plug that I’ve used for holiday lights for 20 years, with the same light strings attached, and never tripped the gfci. But now it happens nearly every evening…
The actual draw of the plug itself, while small, does exist. It could be that the plug draw + lights draw is right on the edge of the current required to trip the GFCI circuit. Hard to say without measuring the actual load.
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GFCI is not a fuse or circuit breaker based on load. It is protection device that prevents personal electric shock.
GFCI monitors the amount of current flowing from hot to neutral. If there is any imbalance, it trips the circuit. The GFCI senses a mismatch as small as 4 or 5 milliamps, and it can react as quickly as one-thirtieth of second.
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Yes that is what “ground fault” means. However every GFCI outlet is usually rated for either 15 or 20 amps and drawing more will cause the outlet to trip.
Hey all, my nephew had a new shop built, all new wiring as well. On a run with 4 outlets with gfci leader, he plugged in 2 wyze outdoor cameras into one regular outlet. Instead of tripping the gfci, it tripped the breaker every time randomly. We moved the power plugs to a different breaker run and had the same results. These are the only items plugged in to the run, no other current draws. Amp readings at breaker are .1A while cameras are running. Any ideas??