New Outdoor Camera wake time is SO Slow

@sharonkissling510​ absolutely nothing! Very disappointed. No need to pay for monitoring. Should have read more before buying. 

@Brianb​ 

  It actually isn't battery related. I am an electrician for over twenty five years and I decided to connect all my cameras to 120V  with 5' feet of each camera, delay is still there. Due to being fed from house voltage the cameras are set to max sensitivity and 1080 for ANY motion. NO dif still 5-6 sec delay. Too much can happen in 4-5 seconds. I have a bunch of hood rats running my street and trying to wake cameras to go live and record is a waste of time.  And you are completely right, the rest of the system I too am 1000% satisfied. I was told by SS to order their mounts for their back indoor camera and that should remedy situation. My response was NO, fix your outdoor cameras

Mike, not saying it’s directly battery related, it’s a power save feature.  The camera goes to sleep because it thinks it’s on battery, even with the power brick connected.  The problem can be fixed with a software workaround.  The device isn’t complex enough to the presence of the 12VDC supply line voltage, but it does have a battery charge sensor, it sends warnings at different capacity levels.  This same sensor could be programmed (@99% capacity trigger) to prevent sleep mode.  This would not impact sleep for battery only cams as they rarely maintain 99%, they would still go to sleep as normal to retain the charge. 

for what it’s worth, my cams have a 10 - 20 delay…the hood rats are already at home asleep before my camera starts recording.  All of mine are also on 120VAC, I set them on  the lowest resolution to speed up connection, it doesn’t help, so it’s not a bandwidth issue.

@Brianb​ I understand your frustration. Yes, we've had a couple of firmware updates this year already, and yes, many of our users have seen improved performance. It's just that your case is proof that our engineering team still has a lot of work to do. We sincerely thank you for your patience as that work continues.

Software v1.7.3.312 on s/n 107DCC1 hard wired to A/C power - wake up time was 15 seconds and it woke to a black screen. Had to exit the live view and go back in to see an image. Doorbell v2.6.2.171 on s/n 05017AE with motion detection limited to people and grid highlighted just to the walkway and it still pings my phone every 3 seconds when the flag (outside the detection zone) waves in the wind. VERY disappointed.

@djmac​ +1. The camera response time is an embarrassment. Especially for cameras that are plugged into power full time like mine are. I’ve followed this issue for a while and realized that my investment in SimpliSafe cameras was SimpliAWasteOfMoney - for fast camera response, Nest and Kasa are the way to go and they’re less expensive.

@meystel​ unfortunately we are not able to provide specifics on roadmaps or launches. The latest firmware version is rolling out now. While it does include some performance optimizations, results may still vary. We encourage you to work with our Support team if you haven't already, to set up your camera for better reception.

@davey_d​  No better service. Cameras are the pits!! We all need refunds on our cameras

@meystel​ Nothing!  So disappointing

meysel & tidurden 

Sorry folks, but dont expect anything from SimpliSafe on this problem.  I've complained to the cows come home, and there is nothing other than hot air.   Davey_d seems like a nice guy, I'm sad for him, he is the just the messenger but gets he bulk of the complaints.   

  Over $1K in useless cameras and solar panels wasted. I have since installed my own high def IP cams and NVR, it all works flawlessly and cost half as much...and it allows smart recordings and has facial recognition. 

Although there appears to only be one problem, there is actually two.    

1. The wake up time, that has been well documented, I'll leave that alone, dont want to get repetitive.

2.  The second is less documented, or not at all.  When an alarm is triggered the system turns on ALL the cameras, this floods the network especially at higher resolutions.  If you only have one camera, not a problem; I have eight, and even when the cameras wake up on time the system only records eight black or partial recordings from each camera.  I've worked previously on intrusion detection systems  for the DoD, their systems will perform a mass record intended to catch multiple points of entry or to ensure continuity as the purp travels from area to area, the difference is that those systems are hard-wired with dedicated switch ports  and are connected logically via seperate VLANS.   The software always gave us the option to "turn off all" or to selectively turn off cameras we didnt want to record depending on the alarm location.   Not SimpliSafe, they obvioulsy designed this system targeting those in apartments with a single entry point and only one - two cameras in use. 

Although I am not programmer, I do work closely with security features and options with software development.  A Camera Wake-Up option, and the previosly described "Selective Recording" option would be an easy knock-down to program. Neither involve having to re-engineer any harware, its simply  (no pun intended) an option that could easily be coded and added to the user GUI. 

The issues I am having are similar to those reported.  I'll post mine here, to hopefully bolster those already reported and to make light of some that have not yet been reported:

1. Slow to wake - Yeah, but even more serious, sometimes they WILL NOT WAKE AT ALL.  Just a black screen with the spinny dot telling me "waking up."

2. Unable to view multiple cameras at the same time. This has gotten better, though. I was able to view all cameras except 1 outdoor (I have 1 indoor, 1 doorbell, and 4 outdoor).  When I try to bring them all up now, the last one appears to not want to wake up.  However, I can go into the camera that won't wake up while all the other ones are streaming fine and instigate a speed test on that camera.  -48dB, 14mBit bandwidth available (and it doesn't interrupt any of the rest of the camera streams).

3. Unable to have multiple simultaneous streams from one camera, at least while it is recording.  Frustratingly painful to get a motion alert then not be able to see the video.  Come on, every camera I've ever owned could stream at least 10 views simultaneously!

4. Auto record sensitivity.  It's gotten better with time, yet still I seem to miss some recordings.  The other cameras record some of the action, but it seems intermittent as to whether all the motion gets recorded.  Some gets missed entirely. 

5. Pursuant to #4, a couple of the cameras double for night vision (i.e., to light up the pathway when we come home after dark). These seem to be just as intermittent as the recordings.  Sometimes the light comes on right away and other times after we've passed by (recording, too!), and sometimes it is never activated at all, although a late trigger is much more common than none at all).

These are all still occurring with the 1.7.3.312 firmware (which is about the 5th update we've had since we bought them).  Yes, there has been improvement as well as a few hiccups along the journey.  One good thing is that battery life has improved and there have been less lock-ups (where a cam would have to be reset, disconnected, reconnected to the system completely).

Keep working on them - they are at least usable, albeit small quirks.  Address these 5 issues and there would be no reason not to rate them a 5-star.  When I first bought them I'd rate them a 2-star.  Now, they're a solid 3 stars.

By the way, I should say that all the wireless cameras have a better-than -50dB signal and all report at least 14mbit streams when independently tested.

Our internet is gigabit with a half-gigabit upstream.  We have 3 Ethernet-connected 2.4 GHz mesh routers operating on separate 20MHz 1/6/11 channels, all with the same ESSID.  Each has a separate 5GHz 40MHz/80MHz channel as well.

@almann23​ hope they get em fixed with the next update or 2.

Mike, try putting your 2.4gHZ routers on 5gHZ and save  the 2.4 for the cameras. It was an improvement for my situation but they should still respond faster than they do

@Bigmike​ that's a good idea. Or typically you would be able to create a dedicated 2.4GHz-only guest network in your WiFi router's settings, so it doesn't affect your existing main WiFi network and all the devices already connected to it.

Further tips and tricks for troubleshooting the camera's connection to WiFi can be found here.

But the other piece that is important is that the Outdoor Camera needs to connect to the Base Station in order to activate. That uses the local RF signal, rather than WiFi - the same connection that the sensors use to signal to the Base Station.

The Outdoor Camera's response time can be improved significantly by troubleshooting this connection, my looking for and addressing sources of wireless (other low-frequency devices drowning out the SimpliSafe signal) and physical interference (walls, especially brick or metal, or heavy appliances). Our Support team can help with that part.

@tidurden1994​  I'm stuck with two of them....they will never give a refund cause they sold so many.