I understand this topic is a duplicate to many others. I’m submitting a new post because I want to add additional information about the router configuration and also comment on what I believe is a Catch 22 issue with trying to submit logs. Would really like to hear from the firmware engineers on this on.
I had high hopes for these plugs, especially because the price point is lower than similar WiFi enabled plugs. I have purchased four of these over the past year and have become very frustrated with the devices over the past few months. Specifically, the plugs randomly lose their connection and enter pairing mode (slow blinking blue light?). I’ll often find the light on the front of the device blinking and the ON/OFF icon in the app replaced with a crossed out cloud icon, indicating the device is offline (or not detected?). I can log into my router and see that the device is connected to the router and has an IP address. The only way to fix the issue is to re-pair the devices back to my Wyze App/account. This defeats the purpose of having the plugs; when I’m away from home I cannot fix them. Ultimately, these plugs (probably their firmware) are not meeting my “reliability” and “availability” expectations.
Once I noticed that a device that entered this offline mode did manage to fix itself and recover. But I’ve only witnessed that once; don’t know if other devices have done that as well.
Currently using firmware version 1.2.0.179, which the change notes say fixes a major connectivity bug in v 1.2.0.176. I have been in contact with Wyze support over the last few months (while using the 176 firmware) and have submitted logs for their tech support and engineers to review. I was really excited last week when I saw that they released 179. Unfortunately, it’s made the issue worse.
I have a fairly expensive Netgear router and I know how to configure it. I’ve tried allowing the devices to obtain an IP address dynamically, and I have also tried allocating static IP addresses. I’ve also tried different 2.4Ghz channels to make sure there was no conflict with nearby signals. Also confirmed that the 2.4Gz channel is at 100% power. All four of my devices are within 20 feet of the router. In the end, all four devices will randomly go offline one-by-one and require me to re-pair them to the account. All my other IoT devices on the 2.4GHz channel seem to remain online (or more likely, have firmware that is robust to connectivity issues).
I appreciate that Wyze provides a tech support phone number; I have used it multiple times over the months to try and resolve this issue. I’ve spoken with a supervisor on the tech support team, but they too are not understanding the issue. They have suggested multiple times to submit support logs through the Wyze app when a problem occurs. There are a few issues with this suggestion:
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I’m assuming the device event logs are retained on the plug itself. If this is the case, the only way to submit those logs is to go into the Wyze app, connect to your Wyze plug device, and submit the log. But this is a Catch 22 kind of problem! If the plug goes offline, I cannot connect to the device in the app to tell it to submit the logs to Wyze’s support team. The tech support supervisor claimed the logs are stored on your phone, which I think is very incorrect. My Wyze app is closed on my phone so I don’t think it’s downloading logs all the time. Also, if the device goes offline, it cannot communicate any additional event logs to my phone! So even if this were true, my phone would only have logs entries showing normal operation. The supervisor said that the logs on the device are cleared when it’s re-paired (reconnected) to the Wyze App/server. This means that the device does not have any log permanence. Bottom line, there doesn’t seem to be a way to get the log entries from after the lost connection, so I question whether the logs are even useful!
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The supervisor recommended I write up as much information in the “submit log” request on the Wyze app. This is also frustrating because there is a very small character count allowed in that field of the app; it’s impossible to document enough information to be useful!
Wyze needs to address the following:
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Most importantly, the Wype plug firmware needs to be fixed to be more robust to lost connections. This should be a very simple thing! If the device loses its connection, it should NEVER enter pairing mode (slow blinking blue light?). Instead, it should be storing the WiFi credentials (and any other necessary credentials to make it accessible by the user) in EEPROM. When a connection is lost, it should indefinitely try to reconnect to the servers. Based on the symptoms in version 1.20.0.176 and 1.20.0.179, there’s some timeout that causes the device to give up; this is a poor design!
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Make sure that the devices retain their logs in memory. Recommend a log rotation system that keeps logs for X days. Ensure that if the device loses connectivity (as described above), the device can be re-paired/reconnected to the app and server WITHOUT clearing the logs. This ensures that the user can reconnect to the device and submit the logs to the support team/engineers. These logs would clearly show what was happening the moment after the connection is lost.
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The Wyze app needs to be improved so that the user can enter a sufficient amount of information into the Submit Logs description field. Recommend increasing the word count a lot.
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The Wyze support system needs to have better feedback. When I submit a log, I’m told it gets to the engineers. But I’m also informed that I will never hear back from them. At some point, the engineers should be able to get on a call with willing customers to gather more information.