I have a new Wyze Solar Cam Pan 2k installed on roof with solar panel attached. All works great but sometimes it just goes offline. This happens with my various other Wyze cams and I just power off and power on to get them back online, however, there is no method to recycle power on an offline Wyze Solar Cam Pan 2k. I have to get a ladder, remove the Wyze Solar Cam Pan 2k from the roof and hold “setup” and reconfigure again. Cam and app running latest firmware and the mounting spot has great WiFi per Wyze app. The Wyze Solar Cam Pan 2k is fully charged. Are there better options to get this back online?
Have you tried rebooting your router? It sounds like it is losing wifi connection and that may be enough to get it to re-establish. If this happens frequently on multiple cams that’s not normal, may need a better wifi router or to tweak the settings in it.
Thanks for the response, it is not my wifi issue, my wifi is stable with great signals everywhere I install a Wyze device, this issue seems to happen when my ISP goes out, when it comes back on, sometimes the various Wyze devices, whether they are plugs, cameras, or bulbs go offline and will never come back. Most of my cameras are plugged into smart plugs where I can simply recycle the power to get them back when I am not home. Plugs have to be pulled and reinserted, and same with the lights, but there is nothing I can do remotely to get those solar cams back online. Also, I getting tired of getting the ladder, going up to the roof and reconfiguring every time there is a blip. It is sounding like this is my only choice if I want to keep this camera on the roof. I am open to other suggestions.
After the outage, turn your router off (and any nodes if you have a mesh system) for like a minute. The cams should all go into a reconnecting mode, and once wifi comes back on, they should link back up.
If not, something is wrong, your router may be using beamforming, band steering, 40mhz wifi channels, something that isn’t playing well with the cameras. My cameras haven’t been power cycled in over a year (the last time the power went out for a bit), none have any issues reconnecting. I do have an automation that soft reboots them once a week, but I can take my wifi or internet down, and they all reconnect when it comes back on.
It is your router. All the cameras should recover after an Internet Outage. If they aren’t recovering, your router is doing something to prevent it. I have 26 cameras (and 30 other things). My internet can go down and come back and I don’t have to touch anything.
If the camera still opens in the Wyze app, there may be a remote soft reboot option: open Device Settings and tap Restart Device. That could bring it back after an ISP outage without removing it from the roof or running setup again.
If it only happens when your internet goes out (and not other times) I wouldn’t expect beamforming to be the issue, but it is possible.
If it is strictly when your internet goes down then I’d suspect it is just something in your setup where the cams get confused, they’re connected to wifi but can’t see the internet, and after a while give up trying to communicate with Wyze. In that case, bouncing your wifi (all of it) should take care of it as that will wake them up and force them to reconnect. I’ve never seen that happen but I’ve also never had more than a few minutes outage of my internet since owning these cams. Supposedly after 30 minutes of no connection most of the cams will start rebooting themselves every 30 mins to try and more aggressively reconnect, but I’m not sure if they do that only when the wifi is down, or if just the internet is down. Not all models have that behavior but several have been reported to do it.
I often wonder if it might be my AIMESH network and these Wyze devices get confused between routers, The mesh network looks like one network with dedicated 2.4ghz SSID but I never have seen this issue with any other devices. The Wyze devices have always gone offline every now and then but my important stuff is on another vender’s smart plug which I can just recycle the power remotely to correct. I have not seen this issue on the other vendor smart plugs. It is unfortunate that we cannot connect to our Wyze devices strictly from our local networks to perform a soft reboot but all these devices require internet. I am going to keep a close eye on these to see if I can find a root cause. If anyone out in these forums have any ideas with an Asus Mesh that might lead to these issue, please speak up.
I’ve used and set up Aimesh in the past and it works generally fine - not with Wyze specifically but they use the same wifi chips as many other IOT devices. The issue with any mesh system is that they will try to force devices to roam to what it thinks might be a better node (and if those nodes aren’t the same technology, devices can get confused), band steering is typically enabled which can be problematic, etc.
On an Asus setup you definitely want Universal Beamforming disabled on everything and it is a good idea to have any “fixed in place” devices to be specifically locked to the closest node. Wired backhaul whenever possible. You may want to set up an IOT specific guest network for your cams and other IOT devices where you can disable those features, and have the 2.4ghz band use a different name so it won’t try to steer devices around, plus lock your cams to the best node and don’t let them roam.
Another issue can be that some people have too much wifi with too much overlap which can cause a lot of problems as well.
But again if this issue only happens when your internet goes down (but your wifi is still online) then most likely you just need to reboot the whole system (router and nodes) when the internet comes back online.
Thanks so much for your response, I do suffer from too much WiFi in my mesh network but am begining to look at upgrading my network in the next 6 months. My Wyze and streaming environment has grown significantly since I originally laid this out.
If you have more than three wyze cameras connected to one base is your problem. The base to actually communicate sufficiently have to only have three cameras attached to one base. Hope this information helps. Also, disconnect the option for cross camera detection if you have more than one camera. If you loose wifi go into the app after wifi is restored to the base and reboot and then to each camera scroll to bottom to reboot. This will eliminate you having to go to the actual camera to disconnect and reconnecting the camera from the outside. Hope this information helps.