WyzeCam becoming more & more unusable?

New firmware for the Ve,ptz version 2,and outdoor wifi plug,all updates went smoth

Here is my experience and frustrations

Nothing seems to work. I have played with QoS on the router, replaced the antennas with higher dBi, reduced the number of devices, ignore audio, etc.

Nothing works. It still freezes and often when it starts recording. I get lots of those clips with something / someone moving and stuck for a long time then disappears because of the freeze. Very frustrating.

Wyze needs to look into this for sure.

3 Likes

Hate to tell you but the issue is on your end you eater have a bad camera,or your router is dieing, get another device and try it

The router is new and I even added extender to make sure I get super strong signal.

The freezing / dropping issue appears to be happening for many V3 owners.

Search and you will see.

2 Likes

Well we are a service company and we manage over 87 wyze cameras and I asked our site technicians about your issue, and they said that we have never had that issue,and that it’s not a Wyze issue and that you should have your internet provider do a service call for you,and our technicians said your issue is caused from band with/and or interference…

 
Cell phone LTE - Strong radio/signal
|
Cell Tower/system - STRONG radio/signal
|
ISP system
|
Router Wifi Good radio/signal
|
Mesh AP Good radio/signal
- Wyze cam fair radio/signal
- Wifi tablet fair radio/signal
 
One ‘fair’ radio link for cell LTE remote streaming
Two ‘fair’ radio links for intranet local streaming

?
 

My 4-up is on a 7" tablet. Maybe alex is detecting your larger display?

Good get on the link! :+1:

1 Like

Bought v3 in July, had been working smoothly until 2-3 weeks ago. Now having the same issues these few weeks - SD card playback always with problems such as showing no SD card record always, could not load videos, freezing always, live view always with delays and freezing all the time, wasting money. Wyze should fix the issues ASAP.

2 Likes

Agree that Wyze needs to do something ASAP.

1 Like

Hi @chaz! I’ve been around Wyze for a long time too.

It seems like as Wyze grows in customer numbers and the one-app-fits-all, kitchen sink bloat of products, the “experience” has deteriorated.

I also question the quality of the “open beta testing” process. Long ago, there was a fairly small, consistant, dedicated group of beta and alpha testers who took the job seriously.

Now it seems like every new app or firmware update has problems that makes me wonder how they even got out of beta testing. Something has slipped.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a Wyze fan. I just wish Wyze had remained focused on cameras … but alas, I think that ship has sailed.

@WyzeDongsheng

3 Likes

Not only has it sailed it’s arrived and ‘docked’ (chock full) in the harbor. :slight_smile:

(@chaz is on a beach in the caribbean sipping something cool and plotting his next move. :wink: )

As it happens, @chaz, once trouble-free, is now @chaz, trouble-beset, so he may have some fresh insight into the following   :slight_smile:

 

1 Like

It’s not you. I am also having all kinds of issues lately a variety of camera types. SD cards don’t work all of a sudden even though I’ve replaced them numerous times with the wyze brand, just not recording activity, missing activity, keeps trying to authenticate over and over, won’t stay connected, can’t synch time-get error, duplicate recordings of what does record, etc. I think it started in October.

4 Likes

I have to agree with OP. My Wyze Cam Outdoor is basically useless. I originally had an issue with the battery only lasting for around 8 hrs. Then I followed all instructions from support and still no remedy. I set it aside for a while. I tried again only to find another update for both the Cam and the base. That corrected the issue for one day. Now the Cam will only stay on for about 15 minutes and shut itself down. NO more Outdoor cams for me.

1 Like

Wow we currently have over 22 of them and all are on solar panels some over 2 years old and no issues at all

We’ve had some discussion but I’m not really seeing much consensus in this thread that “performance” specifically is a new, changed problem. Wyze has sold millions of these things. At any given moment thousands are going to be having issues for one reason or another…

After all, other than event playback, most communication is happening across our local WiFi…

2 Likes

Good summary, I think.

Then there’s this.

I’m an edge case on a few issues at the moment.

Sometimes I think WiFi IoT is calculated to make Man mad. Don’t think about what’s happening. It’s daunting.

So, what I’m getting from the responses is that:

1 - The video stream goes directly from the cameras to my iPhone and is not routed through WYZE’s servers, so it’s not a congestion or bandwidth issue on their end, it’s some kind of issue on my end.

2 - Others seem to have noticed a downtick in reliability, though some others seem happy even with multiple cameras, including a mix of V1, V2 and V3 cameras.

That leaves the potential problem points to be:

1 - Internet Bandwidth on my end
or
2 - WiFi congestion on my end
or
3 - possible degradation in reliability in the camera firmware updates
or
4 - possible degradation in reliability in the software updates.
or
5 - possible degradation of my phone hardware.

#5 - To answer #5 first, I am always using the latest iPhone with the latest versions of operating system and Wyze’s software, and my iPhones have been getting more powerful over the years. I always go for the Pro Max versions… the most powerful phone Apple makes. So I think it’s unlikely my phone hardware has been getting worse.

#1 - As for bandwidth, my bandwidth at the office used to be HALF the bandwidth it is now when I first started with Wyze and I had perfect reliability in the beginning with 6 cameras there. Was 20Mbps up/300Mbps down is now 40Mbps up/ 650Mbps down. My bandwidth at the house is 1GB up and 1GB down. No change there… and it’s a true 1GB (~970Mbps) each way.

#2 - WiFi congestion. I would think WiFi congestion could be an issue because my studio does have a lot of people in it at times, up to around 15, so I was thinking that that was a possibility, but then I get similar performance when trying to look at my home cameras, and we never have more than 5 or 6 people in the home and when I am looking it’s more like 2 people. It’s a free-standing house, so there would be no interference from neighbors. Plus I never seemed to have WiFi congestion even at the office with lots of people at the beginning when I first set the cameras up.

So that leaves #3 and #4 - These two possibilities are why I wrote the question in this forum in the first place. I thought perhaps it was a congestion issue on Wyze’s servers, but I was informed that the video streams do not go through Wyze’s servers, Wyze’s servers are only used to direct the cameras where the video should go or where it is located. (Perhaps there could be some potential congestion if the Wyze app pings the Wyze servers every single time it accesses the cameras, but that is probably not the case).

Which leaves me to believe that perhaps there is another kind of congestion going on here and that is that the WyzeCam developers are getting overloaded with all the new products that Wyze is bringing out and they are not able to spend as much quality time improving the Camera firmware and phone software as they used to be able to spend and it’s possible that the quality of the software is getting worse over time. Perhaps the software is becoming bloated, meaning, too may features are being added and it’s affecting the performance of the software on the whole.

This is not a BS possibility as many big companies experienced similar things when they grew rapidly as well, for example, Microsoft Word became so bloated at one point, it almost became unusable.

I think that’s what we’re experiencing here, either bloat or camera neglect due to so many new items being introduced. I have some of the best Internet connections you can get (my office connection costs $200/mo and my home connection of 1GB up and 1GB down is only $40/mo, but it’s consistent.) I have one of the most expensive phones on the market. And my wifi connections at work and at home are WiFi 6 running into gigabit ethernet, where I can test for wifi congestion.

I used to be able to whip my phone out and show friends how seamless Wyze was in watching video, to see how your kids are doing in bed, to see what’s going on at the office, to show how I can go back in time and see video from yesterday and all of this for just $25 a camera! I sold so many cameras over the years.

I have not been able to do that lately, because it just freezes on me more times than not, and I quickly lose the interest of my friends when that happens resulting in no additional sales for Wyze.

So that is my summary of the situation. Take it for what it’s worth… (probably nothing, but it’s my perception of what is going on.)

6 Likes

Same problems here.

1 Like

What you want is to get back what you had with minimum disruption to your routines. Right?

If you can afford it, find a local professional with a stellar rep and pay up. Let them fix it for you some weekend when your home is empty and your business idle.

Pay up, my friend. It’s worth it. :slight_smile:
 

First draft

My impression is you’re smart enough, wealthy enough and busy. You want back what you had but you’re unwilling or unable to simplify your troubleshooting by isolating to a single camera accessed locally via WiFi at a single location where all other devices have been disabled while testing and any simultaneous access by shared users is prevented.

Can you get a single camera to stream like a champ via WiFi on a local network empty but for the cam and your phone?

The concept is reduce the variables to the minimum possible. Get one thing to work. Then add another.

You will probably pay a local professional to attempt a fix before you avail yourself of the pretty good advice you’ve been provided here free. You may feel that the advice is worth what you paid for it: bupkis. That would be my guess.

I’ll say this, if you did have the time and patience and could endure the disruption of your networks while testing, there are enough smart, extremely well-informed and experienced professionals lurking here who could and would help sort you out. Out of the sheer challenge of it. For the good will. And esprit de corps.

But most folks don’t have the time or patience to be methodical. That’s their loss.

1 Like

I have a dashcam (Rove R2-4K) that started operating poorly. Support informed me a worn out SD card causes performance issues after being written over so many times. Might want to switch a couple out and see if performance improves.

2 Likes