I had to put a WIFI extender in my garage to provide wifi to the wyze lock and the wyze doorbell.
I wanted a wyze out door camera 4 port hub to be in the garage also because of four camera’s on that end of the house. The Wyze camera hub was connected to my router via a pair of power line ethernet adapters.
When I powered on the Camera hub, it would kill the wifi signal to the lock and doorbell. Took me awhile to notice this but I could repeat it easily.
Solution. I installed a netgear ORBI wifi mesh system with the satellite in the garage. SInce the signal between the two orbi units did not interfere and I eliminated the wifi extender everything now works as it should…
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One of the things that WiFi extenders do very well is substantially increase the RF pollution in your immediate area - and worse, on the channel you are using. Mesh systems often use a different frequency or better y6et, a different band for linking between the devices. I am not specifically familiar with the ORBI mesh system, but my speculation is that it linked out to the garage on 5 GHz.
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yes the system uses the 5ghz band between nodes so that solved my problem…
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New tech. Good idea. Was probably a good investment and prevent other problems later. Again, good idea.
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I love it when people come here simply with solutions. especially when people weren’t seeking them directly. no doubt my fellow mavens and I will refence this post quite a bit in the future.
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I tried several name brand and off-brand boosters/extenders/repeaters trying to get WiFi out to a v3 in a far corner of my back yard. (Amazon return policy is great). The signal strength in the app did not improve, even though the devices were connected. Wife knew I was getting frustrated, so she bought one of those ‘click bait’ extenders that ‘superboosts’ your WiFi signal just by plugging it in! Gotta love her for trying.
Ended up getting a mesh router with 3 nodes. Signal strength vastly improved because the camera is only separated from the node by 1 exterior wall.
I think most mesh and (what do we call non-mesh - older type routers?) routers can give you a count as to how many devices are connected. If so, do. And check the router/mesh system for how many devices it allows to connect. Don’t exceed that spec number. If you do, devices will drop offline and there’s no hint why. You will like waste alot of time trying figure why maybe a distant camera will not connect or stay connected.
I had some devices on hubs that keep going offline. I replaced a new eero 6 mesh system with a ASUS ZenWiFi, to solve the problem. Don’t waste time and money doing what I did wrong.
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Love my ASUS as well. I had TPLink Deco P7, then TPLink Deco x60, finally got ASUS Zenwifi mesh setup and my issues went away.
Impressive devices
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Add me to the list of people that had an insane amount of connection issues, went through several different routers and nothing fixed the problem until I got an ASUS ZenWiFi mesh with 2 nodes, and then suddenly all my connection issues went away like magic. I tried TONS of other routers, including trying several WiFi extenders (which I thought would make it act like a Mesh network), etc…nothing worked…Got the ZenWiFi mesh, and it’s been basically bliss since then.
I see people in the forums blaming Wyze devices all the time and saying their other devices don’t have any problems. I’ve been there…in my experience it’s a 90% bet their issues aren’t Wyze, but involve either the router, ISP, bandwidth, DNS, etc…I changed all those and magically all my Wyze devices are great despite having over 2 dozen cams with cam plus and dozens of other Wyze devices constantly using my network.
Whom here has less Internet devices on their network today than they had 6 months ago? Hold up your hand. One, two, three,… okay, you guys go on to the next post. The rest of you read this.
I absolutely agree that many of the reported Wyze devices failing to connect or remaining online are “exceeded the device count” issues. We tend to dismiss this as a problem because it not something we see until we begin to have device drop offline. And even then its not frequent enough to blame the device count. And this is why I am writing about it. Not to complain but to remind everyone to take inventory and see what your router support and do a count.
We are almost only going to hear about Wyze products not connecting or staying connected here since this is a Wyze forum.
Let me give you a scenario that may help you. I am suggesting this may be a hint that you have “exceeded the device count”. Ask yourself, think back, is this accurate for your issue?
Do you have a Wyze cam fall off the network? Or do you have one you are adding/adding back and it won’t finish adding? Does it get close to the end of the process and then not complete? Even when you try it a couple of times? STOP - LEAVE IT ALONE. Leave it pulled into power and walk away. A couple of hours later come back and check. Is it online now? Can you view an image? If YES, then it could be that some other Internet device you own on your network is offline, not connected, turned off, (maybe your child has left the building with their phone) and the Device Count has reduced, so the Wyze camera that had nearly completed its process to join, did in fact join but needed 'a space/slot" to come up on the network. Are you have any problem that sounds like this scenario, but is maybe not Wyze?
I say again, check your routers specs for how many devices are allowed and find a way (such as using the free product called Fing) to perform a device count. Exceeded the Device Count could be your intermittent issue.
I read often here of complaints that “my Wyze camera is suddenly offline”; “my new cam can’t connect but two other brand news ones just did”, “my Wyze bulb works sometimes at night and then in the morning its offline”. Think about it. This could be some strong signal device just crowded your Wyze cam or bulb off the network. And before the kids get home, its found a slot and reconnected.
Do a Device Count What’s it going to cost ya? Ans: A little time, and that may be an investment in staving off a frequent problem next week/month.
Am I trying to sell you something? Maybe, if you need it. I have an eero 6 dual band 2 node mesh system on eBay that I outgrew. Good price.
Yes, and I think the fact that Wyze devices go offline when “other devices don’t go offline” isn’t because Wyze is “worse” or at “fault” but rather that the router gives preference to whatever is using constant internet. So your phone or your computer or your TV might stay connected because they are CONSTANTLY using the internet, while a light bulb or something gets kicked off because it is so intermittent that when the router has to choose what to boot, it picks something not using as much internet at the moment.
So if others stay online more, it’s not necessarily that they are “better” but sometimes that a person has exceeded what their router/bandwidth/etc can support, and the devices staying online the most are the ones actually causing the most trouble as they are the ones mostly tying things up.
I like that Wyze has most of their devices use as little internet as they reasonably can…but when you have a lower end router, low bandwidth, or a bad ISP, they’re the first things punished for not being greedy/demanding enough.
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Yep. Persistent connection. And that router is just doing it job the right way, giving preference.
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FYI, a lot of consumer WiFi access points can only handle a couple dozen connected devices. I recently ran into that on a public safety event where the consumer router / AP could only handle 24 devices. Sometimes the limit is a function of the router and sometimes a function of the access point.
BTW, commercial grade APs generally can handle far more. I just looked (cause I did not remember), but my older APs can handle 256 devices each and the newer ones can handle 512. My router can handle thousands.
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I agree. Some consumer routers are misleading too, like they’ll suggest they can support 256 because they’ll allow that many IP addresses, but they won’t function right if there are more than couple dozen. And then it depends what kind of devices. Some will do fine with a couple dozen smart bulbs, but not be able to handle that many streaming devices (TV, computers, Cameras, etc) all using the bandwidth. Some of them can only handle a few high usage devices, so when they say a couple dozen, they’re not being totally honest as their limited resources (processor, RAM, etc) will collapse under that much use.
People think if they have a good signal, that’s all that matters, but that still does not mean it’s not your router causing the real problems.
You’ve got a pretty fancy router. What are you running?
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Meraki enterprise grade access points, and Mikrotik small business router.