Wyzecam App Issues - Display freezing and constant load

Hello all,

I recently setup 2 cameras and so far they have been great, until I had to leave my house. When I am at work and on an LTE connection, connecting to a camera has become a huge pain. It constantly kicks back to trying to connect/authenticate. Once in a while I get a single frame preview and it locks up (can tell by the timestamp)… and then it tries to authenticate again. As soon as I am on the same WiFi network, it connects and is nice and smooth. So I have a couple of questions regarding the tech behind this:

  1. When I am connecting to the cameras via the app, am I connecting directly to my home IP address and accessing the camera? or is the camera streaming to a server somewhere and I am connecting and pulling the feed from said server.
  2. How many people can connect to a camera for viewing at the same time. I have shared the cameras with my girlfriend and she attempts to connect to it from time to time.
  3. Are there any ports that need to be forwarded from my home router that would stabilize/allow proper external viewing/connectivity?
I have quite a few other mobile app concerns/questions ... but I am going to give it a few more days of testing before posting about them.

Thanks!

Brad

Brad,

I’m not sure why you’re having trouble over LTE (assuming you have a good fast LTE connection). You might want to do a speed test (speedtest.net) while on LTE. Here is some troubleshooting guidance:

https://2lofnd24kddg1841xi3wn90z-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Troubleshooting-Guide-1.pdf

If that doesn’t help, I’d suggest you file a support ticket from within the app while you’re having the problem. Doing so from within the app will allow the logs to be sent to help the support staff troubleshoot the issue. Also, try connecting your phone to a solid wifi outside your home network and see if you have the same issue. That way you can narrow down if the problem is LTE, or perhaps the problem is getting the stream to work outside your network independent of the “away” connection you’re using. In the latter case, it could be slow upload stream on your home network or firewall/router issues.

To answer your questions:

  1. When you are connecting to the camera, there is an external server involved in establishing the connection. But once you're connect, the streaming is point-to-point with no external server in the loop. That's why when you're on your home network, you are not using any ISP data for the stream.
  2. Multiple people can connect to the camera simultaneously. However, how this works is going to be affected by your upstream data rate.
  3. https://www.wyzecam.com/what-ports-open-firewall-for-wyzecam-work/
 

I’m having the same issues over 4g/LTE. My speeds are fine everywhere else except when streaming the v2. The only time its fast is when im on my own wifi network. Like the guy above i have no issues streaming youtube, netflix or downloading big games over 4g/LTE

Is there a way to find out what external servers are involved in the authentication process? My upstream is 15Mbps attainable and it is at that 99% of the time. I can stream all kinds of different services (video gameplay on Twitch for example) and there aren’t any dropped frames or connectivity issues. I tried opening the mentioned ports on my ISPs WiFi modem and once arriving to work today, I am still having the same issue connecting to the camera remotely… it simply gives me 1 frame and pauses, cycles through authenticating etc. I can download the motion clips without any issue… just can’t get a live stream of the camera which is completely defeating the purpose of what I wanted to do.

I feel your pain same issues here. I tried the rout this app they mentioned as well with no issues. Each email I send takes multiple days for a response. I been going through the connection loop often, tried to restart the device, remove it, turn off motion detection, Put the cam in DMZ as well.

I have a gig connection and a house full of smart devices. I traded in my nest and cloud cams for this and the hardware is an amazing deal, However I must say it is full of bugs that people report the same issues on and get the same answers.

On my end it seems to work best when I connect to my 2.4 channel on my phone which I rather not do. When im on my 5ghz the audio is so choppy it takes forever to load and multiple force quits. same thing on my phone connection on my android or Iphone.

Either the server is to conjested as the cameras are popular now or the app has issues. for the money yes its a great deal you can put a bunch of them around the home, However I would not count on them for a real emergency what so ever.

the cloud clips are fine but there is serious issues with the live feed they need to fix.

Yep this is definitely frustrating. I have a family member coming over to check on our puppy and was hoping to hop on and make sure everything was going well, sure enough I cannot connect to this at all. I got about 1-2 seconds and then it locked up again. Even on WiFi at my office, still locked up. I have opened every port in that FAQ post and it has not changed a thing. I only have a full proper stream when I am at home… which again defeats the purpose. I would really like further detail on how the authentication and multi user access works. My girlfriend said she could connect just fine earlier today and then it suddenly dropped and won’t connect again. I am not sure if sessions refuse to drop and no one can get in or something? I was initially considering buying 10-12 of these for the entire house, but if I can’t get one of these working consistently… I might need to think otherwise.

Like it was mentioned above, getting the 12 second cloud clips are fine…but I can’t even get to the playback thats on the SD card… it just sits there in an authentication cycle over and over again. I upgraded my internet connection over the last few days (now I will have 300 down and 20 up)… so we will see if anything changes with a new modem and brand new router in place … I doubt it will change anything though, considering all ports had been opened prior.

Hey guys as I expected had nothing to do with my connection I followed this link became a beta tester went to the Google play store updated the wyze app and no more lag it also connected to the camera so much faster hope this helps

 

I’m on beta and still have issues with 4g/lte

Did you try the routethis application they use ?

 

For my 4g issues I lowered my firewall and put the cam in dmz that helped me with mine

 

What router do you use?

The Asus RT-AC68U. I won’t take down my firewall just for the camera. My computer and everything connected would be at risk. Why do i not have issues with my own wifi or a friends?

Ok so I spoke to soon tested some more.

 

Hopefully Wyze will look into this more. The good news is I am 100% sure its the app itself. Im not sure if the version of android software is the issue or if it is android itself but here is what I tested.

For what its worth, i work in IS Security for a huge hospital

 

When I first set the v2 up this weekend I could only get live view to work when I was connected to my own 2.4 ghz channel, Both 5ghz and LTE the timestamp would freeze and audio was choppy.

I then install the android Beta software and now 2.4 and 5 work great LTE still buffers and has issues with the connecting 1,2,3 cycle.

I used my works Iphone and the LTE worked fine over the Att network using the IOS app. So to make sure it was not a connection issue I put my Iphone into hotspot mode essentially using the same network and connected the Android to it using the Beta software and once again the life feed was choppy.

So with that being said it truly seems like live feed over cell connections needs tweaking on the android side.

 

This is frustrating. Good HW but interface to it is not working remotely over WIFI or LTE.

I have older cameras (not from WYZE) and I can access them at any time from anywhere over any connection. They are also competitive on price and quality and the interface is simple and reliable.

I purchased both the V2 (4X) and the PAN (2X) and was happy until I tried to access them remotely.

I want to continue buying more cameras from WYZE and telling my friends how good you are but for that we need a solution that works (HW, SW and Services).

When this will be fixed?

This can only be addressed by submitting a support ticket. If you do so from within the app while you’re experiencing the issue, the logs will be sent along with the report which will help the techs troubleshoot your situation.

Shouldn’t the product be released only after extensive testings and troubleshooting?

Yes it should and yes it has. That does not mean that problems can’t crop up in individual cases. They are often due to ports being blocked, upstream data rate, etc that can only be diagnosed via a support ticket.

As another data point I have an Android 7.0 phone and I have no issues streaming my camera over 3G or LTE on ATT.

However, when I connect to the guest WiFi at several local businesses I am either unable to stream video or it drops the connection repeatedly (frame freezes, repeats 3-step auth process, etc). That seems to confirm the theory that 3G/LTE or bandwidth itself is not the issue, but rather how the network is handling that traffic (firewall, routing, QoS).

It definitely looks like there are some challenges here. It’s hard to know whether there are updates/changes going on via the other auth servers involved, but I happened to update my ISP Modem yesterday and purchased my own router (in case I needed to forward ports to solve this issue again)… and I am having no issues connecting via LTE today… streaming is smooth. Multiple connections worked fine off WiFi yesterday after the install was done as well. I want to point out that this was without forwarding any ports or making any configuration changes… the hardware was simply swapped. I would also note that ALL other browsing with that other modem worked flawlessly - only the cameras seemed to have issues communicating outside of it’s internal network. I wonder why they recommend so many ports to be forwarded… could this traffic not be streamed via HTTPS behind the scenes similar to web traffic? Would be interesting to know exactly how these feeds work and what the specific demands are.

Glad you got it working!

As you mentioned one of the biggest roadblocks to troubleshooting is all the invisible (to the consumer) traffic shaping and network controls put in place by ISPs and cellular providers. All internet connections are not created equal and sometimes the only way to see what’s actually happening is to inspect the IP packets to/from the camera in real time.

I generally encourage clients to purchase their own routers and access points for the simple reason that ISP-provided equipment typically doesn’t offer much (if any) control. Can’t fix a car if the hood doesn’t open…

Could be why I don’t have much trouble , I have always purchased my own equipment and upgrade it as necessary

and thats the unfortunate thing with this tech by the looks of it. I would much prefer to have the stream work off of secured web traffic ports that 99.9% of modems/routers have open and available)… so that it should work on any device in any location, depending on bandwidth capability.

I would assume there is a reason around it though…I just hope that some day they release the ability to allow access to these devices via web browser. I know there is the whole emulator solution, but there shouldn’t have to be.