Dangerous Design? - Power Adapter

Ask the Community
#1

I love my four Wzye cameras and tell people about them constantly. That is until yesterday.

My only beef with the Wyze camera has been how obtrusive the power adapter and it requires nearly three inches of clearance from the wall when the provided USB cable is included. Yesterday my three year old pushed over a empty canvas violin case and it hit the power adapter of our V2 camera that sits in our front porch window. It majority of the power adapter came unattached from the plate that plugs into the wall, leaving an exposed charged surface. While bending down to pick up the case he knocked over, my son touched the surface seen in the picture below and was shocked. Luckily he was not hurt severely.

After examining the power adapter, it almost looks as if the plate wasn’t even glued into the power adapter. The power adapters on my other Wyze Pan cameras seem to be one piece and not subject to this issue.

Is this something you guys are aware of? Is the power adapter I have a manufacturing defect or were the designed easily pop off the plate with the prongs?.. so you could install international plugs maybe? It could have been a much worse outcome for my son and I worry others may not be so lucky. Needless to say, I’m ordering safer third-party power adapters to replace the ones on my Wyze cameras.

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Power adapter came apart
Power adapter broke
#2

@WyzeGwendolyn, @WyzeDongsheng, @WyzeLi

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#3

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#4

I called tech support and they offered to send out a couple new cameras, apologized for the incident, and asked if I could send in the unit that shocked my son to see what caused it to come apart so easily and see if there is a bigger issue.

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#5

Oh, golly. We are so, so sorry about this and relieved to hear that your son wasn’t severely injured. Thank you for letting us know about this problem so that we can investigate it.

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#6

I’m so sorry this happened to your son and I’m glad he wasn’t hurt. We’ve already communicated this incident within the team and manufacturer and we will treat this very seriously.

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#7

I would say, yes, it is a defect. I know when my power adapter died, it took a heatgun to get it open, so, looks like that batch(?) of adapters didn’t get glued down.

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#8

I would agree… bad (hopefully very small) batch. I just checked a half dozen of mine that are not in use and could not separate the pieces with all the force I could muster by hand pushing the prongs against a table.

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#9

We launched an investigation for this issue and worked with our manufacturer to learn how this could happen. From the Quality Assurance ran by our manufacturer, we have determined that it takes between 70-80lb of pressure per square inch to cause the two parts to separate. We are working with our manufacturer to make short and long-term changes to improve the strength of the wall plug.

We would like to send you a replacement and take yours back for the investigation. If you aren’t already in contact with our support people, please open a support ticket with us with the subject “Broken Wall Plug” through (https://support.wyzecam.com/hc/en-us).

And to anyone else reading this, if you have run into this problem we would also like to have your wall plug back and send you a replacement so please send in a ticket with the subject “Broken Wall Plug”. Please also include any details you have of how the two parts separated and if you feel it did not meet the standards mentioned above.

Thank you in advance! :slightly_smiling_face:

3 Likes
#10

I assume that is for glued units, since the pics above don’t show any residue of glue, so it sure looks like, at least that unit, wasn’t glued properly.

#11

I believe that we use ultrasound bonding instead so glue residue would be surprising.

#12

Wanted to report tothe community that I had a similar issue with the V2 camera we have facing out in the window in my daughter’s room, I lost connection with the camera and when I checked on it the base of the wall wart had been knocked off and the prongs were still in the outlet. So this may not be a isolated of an issue in areas where the plug is prone to being bumped. Luckily no one was shocked and it didn’t ignite the curtains or anything. I have attached a pictures of what it looked like when I found it.

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#13

Close up picture to go with previous post.

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Ill put in a ticket to arrange for a replacement after the holidays.

#14

We’re so sorry, @Zo76! When you send in the support ticket, please send me a message with your support ticket number so we can get a replacement sent out to you quickly. We’re relieved to hear that no one was injured (including the curtains).

1 Like
#15

That’ what ours looked like too. We had to cut the power to the wall in order to remove it. It was scary for sure.

I noticed that my Fire TV stick uses a similar designed wall wart. It definitely made me apprehensive given our experience with our Wyze wall warts. I ended up buying low profile wall warts from Amazon to replace the ones that came with our cameras. We couldn’t take the risk of keeping the stock ones with three little kids running around.

#16

@WyzeGwendolyn!

Bad news…another one of our camera power adapters has started to come apart. Luckily we caught it before the electrodes were exposed.

Any news on this issue being fixed?

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#17

My understanding is that there was one bad batch were a very few bad ones. But Wyze definitely wants these back, so please file a support ticket on this.

EDIT: I was mistaken… not a bad batch, but very few bad ones. Wyze is definitely investigating.

#18

Glad to hear you guys are still investigating.

1 Like
#19

Sorry, I missed that you said “another”. I’ll try to get someone from Wyze to contact you.

#20

Oh, holy cow! We are incredibly sorry to hear this. So far we haven’t been seeing enough of a pattern to indicate a bad batch as opposed to QC failures on some. We have been working with our manufacturer on a redesign and we already adjusted the process in the meantime to make the bonding depth deeper to improve the bond strength while we work on the longterm option. Could you please send me a photo of the end of your power adapter with the writing on it? We’re keeping an eye out for patterns in case there was a bad batch at some point.

We’re relieved that you caught this before anything happened. If you would like, we can send you a replacement that has the deeper bond depth. How would you like us to go from here?

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