WyzeCam "eating" micro SD cards?

Hi my name is CJ and I live in Monteal. I am an ismartalarm user, strangely, the company owners inCalifornia, have Chinese names. Now, for months my cameras didnt work, then in Feb 12, 2019 their servers crashed, or something. Now many users cant use our CUBE ONE, so that is like the engine of all the cameras, sensors, remote tag etc

A month or so ago i told them i was taking them to the Attorney General, and they sent me not a refund but a new camera, called the iCamera Keep Pro, it looks strangely close to yours, at Wyze. Now, the camera is pretty, fancy, pans about but doesnt pan correctly, It forces itself into a corner, where it cant record from, obviously.

Then i noticed that it kept telling me that there was no SD micro card in it, even though I had one in there. So, I just remove and reinstall. Today it happened again, but when I went to insert it, it just Fell inside the camera!!

Now you might be wondering why I am telling you this, well I realized that the Spot camera and the icamera keep and iCamera KEEP Pro that ismartalarm sells looks JUST LIKE THE CAMERAS WYZE sells, at a much higher prices.

We are being duped. THe color black and white thingy, it has nothing to do with the night settings or IR settings, IT JUST DOESNT WORK CORRECTLY.

Ismartalarm products are made in China, so I assume that the software is also, but both ismart alarm and Wyze say that though their cameras Look Similar,the software is different, but I dontbelieve that, and why? Because Wyze users (i created an account and read the forums) and ismartalarm users have the SAME IDENTICAL ISSUES with their cameras.

Now, today, i lost my sd card inside the camera and i dont think I can get into that camera so I am out 30$ cause I live in Canada and I had a quality micro SD card, and not a cheap one, and I am out the free camera and wouldhave to spend 199$ OR 100$ for a new iCamera KEEP Pro camera because that it how much it costs, regular price and the on sale price.

So, let your friends at Wyze know. It is clear that Wyze is in China because all the team leaders are Chinese, but ismartalarm claims they are based in California, but I dontknow if i can trust anything they say now. Also, there are some very real vulnerabilities that were found in the ismart alarm sofware, and Im sure that those issues are also in the products at Wyze.

To find out or read about the two reports in 2017 and 2018, just do a search for, Vulnerabilities found in ismartalarm CUBE ONE.

Did you get that card from Wyze, the 9.99 one? Because that is very cheap for a micro SD card, and that might be the reason. As i said previously I had the same issue that the camera in my ismartalarm system kept telling me there was no SD card when there was, and when i removed and reinserted it today, strangely, the card fell INTO THE CAMERA!

There are clearly some issues here with the manufacturers of these cameras, and its strange that though they are two companies, they have the same identical issues. Why is that?

It’s no secret that we license our hardware from the same manufacturer that iSmartAlarm uses. There are minimal differences in the hardware between the products and the lion’s share of the differences are in the app and firmware. We design both in-house and the app and firmware aren’t compatible between companies. I’m currently sitting in our office in Seattle where we are based (though technically it’s in Kirkland).

Based on what you said about the microSD card falling into the camera you own, we’d definitely recommend talking to your camera company about it. We’d be replacing that immediately if it were one of ours as that’s clearly a hardware failure. Our microSD cards are less expensive in the same vein that our cameras are less expensive than the iSmartAlarm versions you have been using: We work on a high volume and low profit margin sales strategy. Our products are closer to cost than many other companies sell for. One of the benefits with our card is that it is warrantied for use with our products (as opposed to many of the cards mentioned in this thread that have voided warranties when used in cameras like ours).

It’s interesting to hear that iSmartAlarm is experiencing similar issues. I’ll give this information to the dev side so that they can look further into it. Thanks for the tip! :slight_smile:

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I do own a Wyse SD card. I have it installed in a Wyse Cam v2 camera set to continuous recording. I’ve had it running for months and months. The camera and the SD card have given me no problems during that time.

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This falls into the “Great, misery loves company, I’m not the only one this is happening to” category. I’ve read almost all the comments and yes, I too have this problem. I have purchase many SD cards (all the higher priced and class 10 and I usually notice it doesn’t work when something happens and I go to watch the playback and I get the “NO SD CARD INSTALLED” . Very frustrating. If I were to go look at a camera right now and look at my garden…it would play back perfectly. If I had a neighbor say “there was someone climbing over you back wall” and I went to watch it, I would get the error message. Murphys law in effect as well. I’ve been dealing with these cameras for over the last year and half and am just ready to throw them away and get another company and cameras to do the trick. The price was great, but if I’m always trying to fix them…its not doing me any good. ALSO, now I can’t call anyone, I have to leave an email and have someone reply back with a different answer regarding something I’m not asking.

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As a quick note, our phone number is still active. Here is the number to call: (844) 999-3226

We’re sorry to hear that you are also experiencing this issue. What troubleshooting have you tried so far?

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I tried everything from taking the sd card out, putting new ones in, rebooting and reinstalling all cameras…it still happens. Obviously happens to a lot of people too.

Thanks! Have you tried a full format of the microSD card using a computer? This often helps with this issue.

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Yes, I believe one of your support people walked me through that last year. Is there a step by step process that can be emailed to me? I can try it again.

Thank you for being open to trying this again. Heads up, I’ll send you a message shortly! :slight_smile:

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I think the common problem here is that the majority of people want to use larger than 32 GB cards so we (including myself) have purchased 64, 128 GB cards to get longer recordings and even the expensive high endurance cards from Samsung, only to find that they don’t work properly in Wyze cameras. I understand Wyze recommends 32 GB, Class 10 cards, formatted to FAT32 but that seems so restrictive in this day and age. Can’t Wyze support larger 64 and 128 GB cards formatted to exFAT so that we can use higher capacity and high endurance cards?

It makes sense! I don’t have a LOT of detail about this but we only support up to 32GB microSD cards. There’s a slight hardware difference that would need to be made to actually support larger cards. At this point, sometimes larger cards work and sometimes they don’t.

I have bought many devices that limit their support to smaller capacity cards. But most work with larger.
From the Amazon ad:
“Wyze Cam Pan supports local storage of recordings to a microSD card (sold separately). Play back videos with your Wyze app to solve life’s mysteries.”
Doesn’t really say 32Gb limit.
Perhaps more effort should be put into advertising the limit
I’ve had varied success with 64GB cards, but I don’t trust them. My Wyze 32GB have been fairly rock solid, until i did an upgrade with them in the camera. But a reformat fixed that.

But I worked for years with a 640K memory limit. I’m pretty sure Wyze can break the fat limit.
But if I had to vote for either breaking the fat limit OR getting RTSP I’d vote for RTSP.

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Hear hear!

So it looks like I have the same problem…no SD card detected.

Tried restarting the camera, unplugging it and also
pulled out the SD card and tried to format It but my computer can’t even read it at this point.

please post the specs on your sd card and what you are trying to format it with (Windows quick format Windows regular format, iOS, or the special formatter by the SD card group, or other)

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This is the sd card I have been using, since purchased in July 2018

SanDisk Ultra 32GB microSDHC UHS-I Card with Adapter - 98MB/s U1 A1 - SDSQUAR-032G-GN6MA

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B073JWXGNT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I am unable to format it at all as it is unreadable in my Windows 10 PC

A second of the same SD card in my second Wyze Cam is still working fine

look into getting a for of endurance card. although the speeds are good for read write that particular card is not meant for continuous read/writes and using in such devices is known by the company and is mentioned in their warranty for the card that use in security cameras or dash cams ( continuous read write cameras) will actually void the warranty on the card.

here is a topic of members discussing what cards work best or worst in their experience.

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Thanks @Bam
Good to know.
I’m only using it for event recording but lots of movements being picked up by the front camera so maybe that falls under the category of continuous read/writes.

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Did anyone else catch that the Title on the official SD Assoc link for formatting SD cards has Association misspelled as SD Assoiciation…can we trust that this is legit?