I Have A Serious Security Issue

My daughter went out to check the mail tonight for something that she has been waiting on. My son went with her and when it wasn’t there she did something that was apparently pretty funny and it cracked my son up, When he told me to look at it on the camera footage I couldn’t find it. The time stamp does not skip, there is no interruption to the video she’s just not there. When I checked the person detection there is a clip of her going outside. When I view playback at the exact same time… nothing. I can get past the delayed notifications, but I cannot in good conscious trust my family to these cameras. What if this were a serious event that required video evidence? Note the time stamps.

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That is concerning!

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Check an hour up or down. Recently I also found one of mine seemed to be missing something just like this. When I looked into it I found the issue was that it was off by an hour on the SD card playback for some reason and I had to look an hour off and it was there (wrong timestamp and all). Then I did a time sync and it fixed all future videos and correctly aligned everything that recorded after that.

At first I assumed this was due to a daylight savings bug (just one that only affected 1 camera, mostly because they’d recently been working on some kind of firmware fix regarding daylight savings stuff, but it was weird because I had all the latest firmware on it and all the others, so who knows why this one went weird), but thinking about it now, it’s possible it could be related to the file saving procedure in general…when I pull the SD cards out, the file and folder date/times always appear to be saved in a different time zone than mine that are also an hour off from the real video time (even though it is synced correctly in the GUI), then the camera/app offsets that to my timezone when I look at them through that GUI. So it’s possible that my SD card was going off the default time zone (if so, your recordings could be more than 1 hour offset depending where you live). So, it may be something to do with that too…I just don’t know which. I just noticed that anytime I look at an SD card, and try to find a certain video, the time folders, etc are all different from what I am expecting to look for.

In short, check an hour or two or three up or down depending on where you live and you should find what you want. Then tell it to do a new time sync and it should fix the issue and sync everything back up again.

That worked for me with a similar situation a month or two ago when I noticed things didn’t align on one camera (the others were all fine).

Hopefully that helps you or others in the future. Basically, just look an hour up or down, maybe 2 or 3 depending on what the real issue is and where you live…then do a time sync and all further issues should be resolved with aligned video.

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Yep… I looked all up and down and there is no video to be found. Also, I had two packages that were delivered today that were both not in the recorded video, and did not trigger person detection. Even if there is a “fix” for this I just can’t trust that these cameras are going to do the job I need them to do. I’ve been a firearms instructor for over a decade and I can’t count the amount of times that I have told someone flat out… “If you carry that pistol for personal defense you are going to die! Period!” What good is a device designed to protect us or help secure our homes if it only works sometimes. These were a great novelty, but they are nowhere near serious security cameras. Between waiting 3 minutes to get a motion notification… if at all, and this… They simply can’t be trusted. These will have to be relegated to something non critical like looking in on the dogs, or a 3D print. I’m sorry Wyze, I really wanted to believe in your product.

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An astutely accurate description. I’m down to just 1 Wyze camera from a high of 7 devices for the same reason. They’re cute toys and nothing more.

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I took it to mean that he said that to people that owned bad non reliable pistols that may not work when needed. I was a military instructor and reliability is key.

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That context adds a lot, but you certainly had to read into what he typed to get that out of the quote!

This (the misunderstanding about the unreliable gun parallel) is a great example of why it is so hard for me to be concise and to the point. Too often people misunderstand or misinterpret what I say, so I find myself being very detailed and loquacious, which then makes a lot of people complain about that or else skip what I write (“TL;DR”)…it’s a Catch-22… I just try to give people the benefit of the doubt on both sides now.

Anyway, regarding OP, if you found the video wasn’t offset by a single hour, then, assuming you didn’t just accidentally overlook/miss seeing the event, that indicates it wasn’t a daylight savings bug and that my second hypothesis is likely what is going on, that it is a conflict of the actual local timezone vs the filesystem default, which means it could be offset multiple hours up or down depending on location.

I am sure the video is on the camera, just under another time somewhere. It is still immensely frustrating…I would definitely recommend telling that device to sync time again so it fixes all future videos, even if you don’t want to go searching through the SD card to figure out what the exact offset time is.

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You missed the context. I was referring to people carrying cheaply made pistols that malfunction frequently…

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Exactly!

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I can’t share your optimism on that point. Based on my experience I’m certain that Wyze cameras (well my V2 and CamPan anyhow) regularly/occasionally/randomly fail to record events. I was unaware of that tendency until I went looking for a piece of video that should have been there but wasn’t.

Specifically a sequence of 3 events: 1) UPS package delivery, 2 ) a few minutes later myself going out to get the package, and 3) a few minutes after that my wife going out. The second event was not recorded.

Because of that I set up 2 cameras (V2 and Pan) side-by-side covering the same area to test. At least once every couple of days one the Wyze cameras would fail to record an event the other did. There was no pattern to this that I could determine, nor was it a single camera, but it happened often enough to satisfy me that something more reliable was needed.

I subsequently got a third camera (ReoLink) covering the same area and it has never failed to record an event captured by either of the 2 Wyze cameras - including events that one or the other Wyze cameras failed to record.

Thus began my exodus from Wyze - they are cute novelty toys but nothing more.

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I’m team carver on this one. Because your camera did successfully record the event at that time, it’s also likely the same camera successfully recorded that to SD card, just at a different timestamp. Considering it’s night, you have no more than 12 positions to check if you want. (Ironically I say that as someone who never even checks the SD card because they are completely unreliable in my Wyzecams. But this sounds different.)

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I feel the same way. Cameras and sensors help to provide proof and evidence, so what good is it if it only works 8 or 9 times out of 10.

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I think for me it was probably immediately clear from being a former Navy gunner and instructor myself, but a couple additional words would have helped.

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Can you post a screen shot on an event during the day? Hopefully during a sunny day, then go to that time on the sd card and post a screen shot. With the two, and the shadows cast by the tree in the front lawn, it should be appearant how off the two are.

Also you can go look at the latest or last recorded sd card footage, does the time match up to that moment?

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I have several Wyze cams and they are all very unreliable- they just go offline randomly and require a power-cycle to get connected again, and they don’t detect motion properly either. Basically you get what you pay for, so if you just want to watch a garden to see your dog playing, that’s the best they are for, but don’t use these for any real security applications. They are really just toys…

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Yep, nothing like making a 6 to 7 hour round trip for no reason other than to power cycle a camera. The 3 $20 Wyze cameras ended up costing me a lot more money than the $40 cameras I replaced them with.

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What cameras did you settle on as replacements? you can DM me on twitter if you wish @mndudek

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Reolink E1

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What would you say are the pros/cons from switching (besides the stability issues)? Like what feature differences are there between the two cams that are worth noting from your experience?