WyzeCam becoming more & more unusable?

I’ve been a WyzeCam user since V1 and have multiple cameras (6 at my office and 6 at home), mostly V3 cams with SD cards in all of them, I have the Wyze Monitoring alarm at the office.

I have gigabit up and down internet at home and 1/2 gig and 40Mbps up at work.

I used to be able to power up the app on my iPhone and watch people live at the office or at home and quickly view playback via the SD card, etc.

Lately it seems that 99% of the time I can’t get the video to run on most of the cameras. I have to reboot the app a few times. Then I get a little bit of jerky motion then it goes to zero again. I can barely make SD playback work anymore as it mostly just freezes.

Sometimes I can get the cameras to work, but they are not as smooth as they were when I first set up the systems and they worked great for the first year or so, but lately they have degraded in performance so much, I’m finding them increasingly unusable.

This happens at home and the office. It’s starting to make me wonder if it’s WyzeCam themselves that’s the problem. Maybe their servers are too overloaded? Maybe they are so focused on making other products cameras aren’t their main thing anymore?

Is anyone else out there experiencing a similar degradation in performance?

Is anyone NOT experiencing bad performance? Things are still smooth?

I need to get to the bottom of this (is it WyzeCam causing the problems or is it me in 2 completely different locations with different internet providers causing the problem?) otherwise I’m going to have to look for another solution.

I miss showing off the system to my friends. Look at the smooth video playback. Look I can go back days to see if someone left an item at the studio. I can’t do that anymore.

Everything is always updated to the latest firmware, etc.

I’d like to solve this as I invested heavily in Wyze and I’d like to keep using them. If others still get great performance than I’ll know it’s me and I have to fix something on my end. But if most people are seeing a degradation in performance then I’ll know that it’s not me.

Thanks so much!

Update: I think I’ve arrived at a solution here in this new post I just posted: Here is a Solution to video not playing back smoothly - guest network for Wyzecams 2.4Ghz only

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Seems about the same to me. Frequent dropouts on the streams (I have a 24/7 view of several into TinyCam) but usable, with SD cards NOT usable.

Maybe your WiFi traffic (and neighboring traffic) has gotten busier / noisier?

Edit: Also, when you say work and office, are there cameras at both locations too, or only viewing of the home cameras from the office?

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I’ve been using Wyze equipment for about 3 weeks now (3 v3s, doorbell cam, thermostat, home monitoring) and have experienced some of what you’re reporting. The v90 errors that I was regularly getting virtually went away after I changed the DNS settings in my router and phone. But SD playback continues to be very glitchy. Trying to play through the recorded segments (with noticeably lag) eventually causes the camera to go off-line. I figure if there’s ever any video that I really need, I can just transfer them to the computer.

From your description of how it used to be, I’m guessing you’re right in that they have not kept up with the increase in server demand.

No, their servers have nothing to do with delivering a consistent live or SD card stream.

I have also been seeing much poorer performance over the last few weeks. I’ve a group setup on an internet (w/ 30down/10up and 73Mbps internal) of about 6 active cams and often when I call it up it takes a while, 10 seconds or more, usually I’ll go into individual cams so it will lock in. Before they locked in in a couple seconds.

I’m used to poor performance like this at my Mississippi site, but there I only have 6 down/0.6 up (and 32 Mbps internal if I recall correctly) on a GOOD day.

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No, my traffic is a true 1 GB up and down… I test it all the time and I test the work speeds as well.

I have cameras in both locations.

So you are saying that Wyzecam has nothing to do with the delivery of the video playback? I know that the video playback comes from the cameras, but are you sure they don’t route through Wyzecam servers on the way to us?

I wonder if anyone has tested that.

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Yes. This has been discussed, described, and documented many times. There are exceptions such as some Alexa streams.

Here is one semi-official description of the P2P process. (This means that after it starts the stream goes directly from camera to viewer.)

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You know what i have noticed the same issue and i have 3 camera issues
1- won’t connect period
2- Shows up as offline turn off in the app but when i click on it. it shows the cam on and then in the app, it shows up as off again
3- Outdoor cam can record period to SD cards

Mostly i have noticed for the past month and so. so so many updates and cameras are totally useless and i spend so much time trying to troubleshoot them instead of just plugin and playing and moving on.

Plus i notice since 2021 Wyze is making us pay more and more for services but the actual products dont even work with so many updates they push and break the camera to point of now they are trash.
I am thinking to look for other brand cammera that actually work then wyze to be honest i have 8 cammera and scale from this company and i just order the car i hope i did not make big mistake buying the car with battery

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TUTK establishes a data channel (just channel, not data)…

So this tutk thing talks to the camera and talks to the app on your device and arranges a path for them to exchange data by? It informs both device ‘parties’ of the path determined and then effs-off?

Is that the jist?

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Yes that is the gist. Its only role is puncturing any firewalls and handing off the connectivity so the camera and phone each have a direct path to the other.

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Wow interesting we currently manage over 57 cameras at over 12 sites,and when we do a firmware upgrade and all of them in over 2 years we have not lost any cameras and our managed customers camera systems with no issues found,and yes a mix of V2,V3,wireless outdoor and PTZ V1,and PTZ V2

Is it pronounced different the way you spell it? :grinning:

Hey kae

How do your techs determine if wifi signal interference and channel congestion are to blame for poor/erratic performance and what do they do to fix it?

Yes it’s pronounced “correct”. :wink: Although you did make me just double-check m-w.com to see if yours were also acceptable; nope sorry. :frowning:

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:rofl: :+1: No worries, I looked it up first and STILL spelled it wrong…

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I only have the one Outdoor Cam at the moment. But I’ve only had one issue where I had to lose/reopen app. Probably not the best comparison tho…

I just spot-checked my 7 cams (and microSD cards), and, my HMS, and everything seems to be wyrkin’ normally.

If I was having issues, I would also be bouncing my router, checking to see if the cams are werking via WYZE, and, checking to be sure my phone’s operating system is up-to-date.

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My modest collection of v2s…

  • via a Wifi-only client
  • 400 down / 20 up broadband
  • well-connected signal-wise to an uncrowded (20) local mesh intranet that says it can handle (100) connected devices
  • with a good amount of variable signal interference and channel crowding from my many many nearby neighbors
  • VPN with Wyze app excluded
  • DNS alternate (non-ISP) set at router level
  • with firmware and app current or nearly current
  • accessed via the Wyze app (versus tinyCam or Wyze-app-android.7-emulated through Bluestacks)
  • on a high quality old tablet running android 6.01, with a GPU but incompatible with Wyze app decoder
  • no simultaneous access granted (no shared credentials or Wyze account Shares granted)
  • Live View resolution set to HD (1 cam with the weakest reception set to 360p)

…operates WELL when cams viewed individually and well/variably when viewed in a group of six.

Haven’t noticed performance degrade recently. If anything it ekes out an ‘improved.’

Via tinyCam though, it has degraded, which sucks, because it’s my preferred viewer.

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Isolate Wifi (local intranet) from Cellular (remote LTE) performance

  • Choose a client device with WiFi-only capacity (or disable LTE on phone.)
  • Connect to your local intranet with a good signal.
  • Assure any users with whom camera(s) are Shared won’t attempt to access them during testing

Test intranet overload/interference by client devices

  • Unplug all other intranet clients
  • Unplug all cams
  • Choose a convenient cam close to a WiFi Access Point
  • Remove the SD card, and plug it in.
  • Check Live streaming performance.
  • Unplug it, install SD card and plug it in.
  • Check Live streaming and Playback performance.

If performance is poor it suggests… X.
If performance is good it suggests… Y. Add another camera and repeat.

Someone who knows this stuff better than I could jump in and correct/improve this ? Or just dash the whole thing and make a better methodical?