Wyze Cam Outdoor - Not recording motion - Troubleshoot with WYZE

The camera is not recording at night. You could barely see anything. Daytime works fine.

Pinned topic as per @WyzeDongsheng

When live streaming your WCO within your phone app via portrait mode: Above the video you will see a small icon to enable night vision or set it to auto. Have you checked that particular setting?

Not sure if it was the last firmware update but it seems that since the last one mine no longer detects motion or people. Had a FedEx delivery yesterday, 9/2/20, and the guy walked right up within 8 feet of the camera and nothing. Ten minutes later I went out to get the package and again all the camera caught was the last 3 inches of the screen door closing. That includes me fully on the porch and re-opening the door and re-entering the house. Last week all was better, far from great, but it would pickup cars in my driveway 40’ away and even cars coming around the circle 80-90 feet away. Not sure what they did but in was not good. Looks like they are letting some rookies play with the firmware and not testing. I did say looks like. If you want to keep customers they need to probably release CAM plus for free to all customers that bought the WOC even if it only works on the older V2 and Pan Cam. Most of us have those and it would be nice to have something detecting people and reporting via notifications. I have left my Pan Cam running with the WOC with the same view and it works about 90%.

Not sure if it was the last firmware update but it seems that since the last one mine no longer detects motion or people. Had a FedEx delivery yesterday, 9/2/20, and the guy walked right up within 8 feet of the camera and nothing. Ten minutes later I went out to get the package and again all the camera caught was the last 3 inches of the screen door closing. That includes me fully on the porch and re-opening the door and re-entering the house. Last week all was better, far from great, but it would pickup cars in my driveway 40’ away and even cars coming around the circle 80-90 feet away. Not sure what they did but in was not good. Looks like they are letting some rookies play with the firmware and not testing. If they want to keep customers they need to probably release CAM plus for free to all customers that bought the WOC even if it only works on the older V2 and Pan Cam. Most of us have those and it would be nice to have something detecting people and reporting via notifications. I have left my Pan Cam running with the WOC with the same view and it works about 90%.

Can you try to toggle the detection settings ( cool down, distance, and image sensitivity ) to a random value, and then dial it to your previous setting ? This was not a new bug with the latest firmware, but we found a rare instance where detection settings went back to default. This will be fix in the next release ( after the current beta one ).

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Still no change and still not working.after following ALL instructions, instructed corrections, and countless event logs, videos and trying to get help through support

It started working all on its own before I could even try what you suggested. This lead me to another thought. How can this camera just change the way it works from one day to another. I did nothing to it and all of a sudden it picked up the garbage truck at the street 80-90 feet away and then my car leaving the driveway some 60 feet away. I may also add that it picked up my car as soon as it was in sight and not 25-30 feet later down the drive. That has not happened before. Usually it is picked up mid way down the drive, 2-3 seconds after it comes into view. The randomness of this unit is a bit iffy, how can I trust it will record when needed. For now I will leave my pan cam as a backup which kind of defeats the purpose of buying this one in the first place. I am still concerned that this unit was put out to the market if it was having these types of issues during the beta testing. I will hang in for a bit longer hoping that something is resolved to make this unit more dependable.

Just this morning it did not pick up my wife until she had got into the the yard. To do this she walked out the door and straight toward the camera, stretched out the garden hose and pulled it into the yard, proceeded to fill up her watering can, started walking away from the house and then it started to record, by this time she was approximately 30+ feet from the camera. That was about 20-30 seconds after the camera should have seen her. 20 minutes later I came out the same door, walked the same path on the porch and it picked me up within 1 1/2 steps. What was the difference? I did do what you had recommended in your last response before any of this just so you know. It did not seem to matter.

Because this camera is using PIR to detect motion, PIR is detecting the heat emit from heat source. A truck will emit more heat than people, so while the camera is tuned to pick up people up to 20-25 feet, it may pick up truck going by much farther.

My suggestion is to make the camera focus the area you want to focus, and make sure it pick up people walking in those areas. Depends on your camera angle and situation, it may pick up cars father away, but not people outside of the range.

It is a bit hard to visualize what you described but does this explanation match what you saw from the video ?

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In order for me to help you, can you list the answers to those questions from the troubleshoot guide ?

  1. Are all the settings correct in the App ?
  2. Are you live streaming while testing ?
  3. When outside of cool down time, wave your hand in front of the camera, what does the status light on the back of the camera do ? Did it turn on ? is it blinking blue, did it turn into solid blue ?
  4. in App-event tab, do you see the video uploaded ?
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I understand about the visualization of what I was describing might be difficult. The vehicles are 60-90 feet away a but are picked up only some of the time. I have the camera mounted at about 7’ off the porch floor on the same wall as the front door with the lower 2/3 of the screen set to catch anyone coming onto the porch which has 2 steps and the door itself. That is about 12 feet in distance at about 16 degrees off level.

About that PIR… The promo copy for the camera says the PIR will prevent picking up swaying branches, leaves, grass, etc., yet that is exactly what it detects (aside from me walking by). Of note, it tends to do this during a three hour stretch where the sun is particularly hitting the stuff in the field of view, so perhaps it’s heating it up, but when you say this wouldn’t happen and it does, that’s not very reassuring.

Also, it’s notifying me of motion detected like every two minutes during this stretch of time. Super annoying. It makes me ignore the alerts, which defeats the purpose. My sensitivity is at 50 because if it’s lower it won’t catch the critters.

I’ve been sharing some of the erroneous detection videos with Wyze using the prompt in the event view, but who knows if anyone sees those.

got it, so you are saying that your wife was in this area, but was not detected ? is it consistently so ? If you won’t mind posting a screenshot of your “detection settings”, it would be more helpful to visualize it.

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Thank you for the feedback. In general, the WCO is much better at NOT picking up tree waves etc. than V2. But it is not 100% immune. In the situation you described, where the sun is strong, it reflect off the moving tree branches, it can still cause false alerts. I see you already dial the sensitivity down to avoid the tree movement. Are you able to adjust the camera angel ? pointing it slightly down may help.

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  1. Yes. They are correct. 2. No, I’m not live streaming. 3. blinks, blue. Does not turn solid. 4. No videos are uploaded.

Instability seems to be the current trademark of wyze products… I dearly hope they sort this out… I have had the same things happen to my cameras, motion and contact sensors… No intervention on my part… Black magic or the company has way too much access to our bought and paid for equipment

If the blink blue does not turn into solid, then it was wake up by the PIR and has recorded the video, but not able to connect to the base station to upload it.

How far is your camera to your base station, and if you live stream, will the stream be kept steady ?

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Not far. Maybe 20-30 ft. At the most 50. Live stream works GREAT to the point it tags motion all day but when doing so doesnt trigger any recording therefore doesnt send any notifications

So your live streaming works well, but when you trigger the motion on the camera, the LED lights up ( means the camera wakes up to record ), but the LED never turns into solid blue ?

If you go to App-> Event Tab, ( pull down to refresh and pay attention to filters ), you don’t see the recorded video ?

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New firmware came out for both the base and the WCO itself today. I’m curious if this firmware fixed problems for anyone? My WCO setup has been solid since the last round of maintenance. Actually it was stable before that, then the maintenance hit and all hell broke loose for 12 hours. In any case, I hope the updated firmware is helping people!

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