I’ve had my sensors since they were first available to Wyze members. In the first few months I exchanged emails with support a number of times about issues I was having. They sent me a couple of replacement sensor bridges but it really didn’t help. I figured maybe it’s the camera, or maybe it’s the USB cord, or maybe it’s the USB adapter. Swapped all those out. No change.
What happens is randomly there will be multiple sensors that appear “offline”. In order to fix that I need to reboot the camera that they’re connected to through the sensor bridge. Sometimes the problem goes away on its own, The sensors tend to go offline while I’m sleeping, and might wake back up around an hour or two after I first trigger a sensor (no notification or event log). Anyways, the result is that I cannot rely on the sensors at all because I never know when they’ll be offline or not.
Is this just happening to me or is this common with others?
I find the PIR sensor flawless if set up properly. The magnetic switches are problematic and I wouldn’t depend on them. I have had zero problems with the Bridge.
I had one bridge go bad…it was replaced by Wyze.
Used a USB extension on one cam to improve the signal strength to 1 out of the 3.
All my 3 bridges on V2s only, none on Cam Pans because of disconnection issues when panning.
All bridge disconnection issues seem to have improved for me over time, no rebooting cams in months.
Motion sensors all good and reliable.
Contact sensors needed a battery change on 2 of the 6 was done before they went completely dead.
1 when bad on me.
Connection was improved on 2 of them by extending the antenna out on the sensors.
All in all I’m very happy with the new app working well for me on 2 Android devices.
Able to view 3 cams simultaneously in each group, unlike in the older app.
All individually cam live feeds was also a improvement.
Alexa intergation is very reliable even viewing live feeds on my Fire Cube.
I believe also that some issues owners are experiencing is Wyze server related.
I’ve replaced all the batteries on the sensors themselves recently. Still having issues with the connection regardless of whether they’re motion or the contact sensor type, which leads me to believe it’s the bridge (or camera). Has anyone had luck with alternatives like SmartThings?
Same here. I need reliable sensor system does not have to be an inexpensive and Wyze. After trying to revive mine I gave up. Have considered buying a new set since maybe the quality has improved. But there are enough reports of issues that I feel it might be a waste of a few bucks.
If I do take a chance I plan to use the trick of plugging a USB cable into the V2 then plug the bridge into the cable. It will reduce heat build up and also allows the bridge antenna to be placed higher for better RF propagation.
Likewise hacking the contact sensor to add a small external antenna can be a win in terms of allowing it to be used at a greater distance.
BMovieBen, as you havent described distance, placement, wall materials in your post, I am getting the feeling you dont appreciate these make a difference to how well or not the sensors will work.
I had placed a link to the sensors chip specs here. If you are assuming they used wifi & operated the same way you assumed wrongly, these are very low power devices running on a tiny battery.
I have 2 dozen installed, and the sensors work flawless. The ones at the very perimeter sometimes appear offline, till the door/gate they monitor is opened. If you dont like seeing the cloud icon, schedule a reboot a few times a day to wakem up.
After using Wyze sense for a year, & following complaints on the forum, I think Wyze needed to spend more effort explaining to ppl that these sensors do NOT use wifi, they use a proprietry flavour of Zigbee (range similar to Bluetooth), to set customers expectations straight.
I have had the same exact problem with newer sensors. I swapped them out with different ones and haven’t had a problem since. It appears some sensors are more finicky than others.
I have issues also. I have three, one motion and 2 contact, that consistently drop off the network. They’re all within 50 feet of bridges.
Getting really sick and tired of having to keep forgetting/resetting them.
And as for cameras that hang or appear offline… don’t get me started.
I didn’t buy these things to have to continually be fiddling with them…of course there’s the old axiom “you get what you pay for”.
I have pretty much given up on the sensors ever being useful. I experienced the problems you’re having for quite a long time. The main problem seemed to be that the pan and tilt I was using it on couldn’t properly power the bridge. The solution, which worked was to move the bridge to a camera.
The other problem is that there’s not a whole lot of useful things you can do with the sensors. Sure, you can trigger a sensor video BUT try and find that video in the list of events associated with your switches. Especially if you’re triggering from a PIR and turn the camera off when you’re home. (Hint, you can’t stop the PIR events and will find the sensor videos lost there.) There might be a way of using IFTTT to make the sensors useful, Like unreliably counting how many times something happened. I can’t think of what that would be.
I also bought my sensors new. At this point the batteries have started wearing out with almost zero utility having come their way. Maybe some day Wyze will wise up and make this work and be useful. Until then, well, just be happy that they were really cheap sensors.
I use about 8 sensors for my windows. I have match IFTTT and some Sequematic.com sequences to verify if they are all closed and send me an advise via Alexa to point me which one stay opened. Any issues until now.
Have 2 motion sensors one works ok to trigger a wyze outlet, the other stopped working months ago and I just quit trying to make it work. One contact sensor works mostly to turn on a wyze light bulb. My other contact sensor fails and is also on the shelf.
