Wyze Video Doorbell "QR code is incorrect"

Cameras
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TL;DR - skip to “What I believe to have been the issue:” at the last paragraph

I have battled this issue and I found a solution on my end. YMMV. My doorbell cam V1 went out last night.
The IP was set static but it was ping-able with the usual large latencies and dropped packates on Wifi. The distance from the next 2.4Ghz AP was about 16m thru one glass/wood door and the metal front door, mounted on aluminium flashing - not ideal (a little Faraday cagey) but it was working for a few years. Then the picture/video went out and did not come back at all.
I tried to re/set-up the camera and scanned the QR code: Up, down, sideways, max. brightness, moved from Android to iPad, printed it out : always after about 60sec: “QR code is incorrect”.
Power cycling, resetting this and that, deleting app, creating a new wyze account, calling wyze support - to no avail. The symptom:
The QR code gets scanned. A ping shows, the camera obtains an IP, then a few packets drop, then it disappears for a bit (maybe it restarts?) , then it appears again on the network and when it disappears finally from the network ,the message : “QR is incorrect occurs” - which is, as already noticed in this thread “incorrect”. I bet there is nothing wrong with the QR code itself.

  • Then I dismounted the door cam, opened up the rear USB port cover and started with 5VDC instead of 16-24VAC (mostly because it is too cold outside and I wanted a stable Wifi inside the house)

    • The change in power supply is not required IMHO.

    What I believe to have been the issue
    ================================

  • I changed all wifi access points that broadcast the SSID on 2.4GHz for the cam to this setting: channel = auto instead of fixed channel 1..11 due to congestion in a city of 9.5+ million people. This magically made the camera come back to life.

    Moral: The error message is bogus and the app should be able to communicate with the cloud to determine:

    1. cam was online,
    2. => cam wifi worked,
    3. Problem: cam disappeared/dropped
    4. suggest: please fix your network setup ! - But please do not emit bogus error messages such as regarding QR code

    I hope this may help some people.

Wyze Video Doorbell “QR code is incorrect”