Question/possible issue with night vision?

Sorry for all the questions recently but I just got my first Wyze cams and have been having some issues.

Anyway, night vision - if the cameras are in a dark room the image I see on the phone is pretty much pitch black. I’ve verified that the IR emitters are on, I can actually see them on and glowing when I’m in the room, and I’ve toggled Night Vision between auto, on, and off. Here’s the strange thing - if I toggle from Off to either Auto or On, as soon as it turns on, the image immediately gets brighter and I can see the room clearly but after 1 or 2 seconds, the image gets pitch black again. Even when set to “on”, it’s like as soon as night vision turns on, it immediately becomes more sensitive to light and can see the room in the dark but then it gets dark again and will stay dark.

The same thing is happening with my living room camera.

Is this normal or am I doing something wrong with my cameras?

Here are pics. The one you can see in is right when I turn on night vision. The pitch black one is what happens about 2 seconds later and it stays that way.


that is pretty much normal when you switch it , but I wouldn’t call that pitch black , you will get a brighter image if you move the camera away from that white sign that is glaring, you are also getting a small amount of glare from the door whatever at the other end of the room.
Move the camera so the white sign is out of view and see what you get

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OK. The glare you’re seeing in the background is a tiny sliver of daylight coming through the sides of the door but at night without any light bleeding into the garage the camera does the same thing. The sign you mentioned on the right side of the image is a “caution” sticker on the side of a ladder that’s right next to the camera. I’ll see if I can move the ladder or just cover the side with a towel or something so it doesn’t reflect.

BTW, the top image would be pitch black if not for the sliver of daylight coming through the sides of the door. At night you can’t see anything through the camera.

What’s frustrating is that the image right when I turn night mode on is perfect and as you can see in the pics, you can see everything clearly. Why does that only last for 2 seconds and then turn pitch black instead of the camera staying like that all the time when night mode is on? Since the camera is physically able to produce that type of image in the dark, you’d think it’s something that is or could be controlled via firmware or something like that.

Just wanted to add an update - I’ve continued trying to figure this out and here’s where I am so far. I pushed the ladder back a few inches to where it’s out of the camera’s field of view. This seems to have worked and now the image looks like the brighter picture I posted.

Is it possible that the IR lights were reflecting off of the surface of the ladder which was causing the camera to dim?

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yes that’s why I told you that, because it will reflect off of light colored objects and you will not get a bright image

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Yes, any surface that strongly reflects light, especially IR light, will cause the synthetic aperture to step down. Having a reflective surface near the camera is the worst possible situation for night vision.

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Got it. Thanks for the info. So I guess to answer my own questions in the first post, it’s normal and I was doing something wrong with the camera!

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Now ya know :slightly_smiling_face::+1:

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Nothing wrong at all just a function of IR sensors. And IR reflects off the darndest things so the only way to know is experiment. Nothing you did was wrong at all.

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Well, “wrong” in the sense that I expected night vision to work properly when the IRs were reflecting off the ladder.

I’ve since verified this by pointing the camera just slightly in the direction of the ladder and as soon as the camera picks up even a hint of a the IR reflections from the ladder, the image goes pitch black.

So the night vision on the camera is just fine, it was just me pointing the camera in a way that it was picking up IR reflection and going dark.

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One thing I have done is I bought an external IR illuminator and turned the cameras IR lights off. This tends to be less susceptible to reflected light since you can position the illuminator independent of the camera. And it provides A LOT more light than the camera onboard lights can.

CMVision IRP6-940nm Invisible WideAngle 6pc High Power LED IR Array Illuminator Amazon.com

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Good to know, thanks. That’s a little much for my small garage but if I need to cover a larger area I’ll look into something like that. I’ll test my other indoor cams later tonight to see how they do in the dark.

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you did everything right as far as you could, going even as far as to verify the IR leds were working. most wouldn’t even do that. well played.

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I use similar in my garage and basement… works great for my v2 cams. I think the only difference is IR wavelength:

https://www.amazon.com/CMVision-IRP6-850nm-WideAngle-Power-Illuminator/dp/B00Q14OO4W/

Some fairly extensive testing done by forum users has shown that the V2 and Pan “see” equally well on either the 850 or 940 wavelengths. Since the 940 is invisible to the human eye whereas the 850 is perceived as a dim red glow I prefer the 940 as they don’t look like a baby demon. :grin::grin::grin:

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Awesome. Good to know! I’ll order the 940nm version and try it on my short range outdoor deck//critter cam. :+1:

This is what my external IR looks like outside at night.

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Hilarious you mention it looking like a baby demon. When I first saw the IR lights the first thing that came to mind was the Jodie, the demonic pig from Amityville Horror.

image Image result for amityville horror jodie window

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