System Still Limited by 2.4 GHz vs 5 GHz WiFi Bands?

@ jperrine00:  I have Spectrum internet and was always having problems.  I discovered that if you sign in to your Spectrum account you can get to the modem. I just changed the names i.e "ronsec" and the other is "ronsec5G", same password for both.  No problems since I did this. I know next to nothing about all this wifi stuff so don't ask me a bunch of questions as I can't help! LOL  Good luck.

@ jperrine00 I have the original Google WIFI, one router + 3 points.  Like yours, there are no separate settings for 5G or 2.4, however, the way its supposed to work is that the software attempts to connect at 5G, then steps down to 2.4  My experience is that the first or second attempt fails, and then connects with no issues. I have the doorbell cam, lock and 3 simplicams that are all successfully connected. What was an issue was two of the simplicams that had to do an over the air update and then finally show connected.  I literally had to let it be for about 10 minutes when they finally connected.   I would give it another try and let them sit for a while.

Hi jperrine00,

To be clear, our components all connect through 2.4GHz only.

A lot of WiFi routers these days just broadcast both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies under the same name (SSID). This combo feature might have different names depending on your router. For example, I have TP-Link in my own home, and they call it "Smart Connect".

All devices, SimpliSafe components included, should just be trying to connect to whichever frequency is best - though having each frequency on a separate SSID might help with the initial setup.

I do want to ask - have your cameras ever connected before? There hasn't been a change in WiFi connectivity for the cameras, so they should still be able to connect.

- Johnny M.
SimpliSafe Home Security

Thanks everyone. Going to give the "sit and wait' option go when I get back to the house later this evening.

@Johnny M.

Yes, the camera (doorbell and indoor) both have connected and worked flawlessly in the past. The different was the Spectrum I used in TX used entirely different WiFi/router hardware. At my previous location it broadcast different frequencies (e.g. Spectrum-5G and Spectrum-2.4) so it was easy to manually search and identify the correct band. My current Spectrum hardware does NOT do this. The bands are, from what I've been told by Spectrum techs, "bundled' together which has meant that I've been unable to manually choose the correct band. I have not tried the "wait and see' method on the indoor cam but can confirm that waiting does not yield different results on the doorbell cam. Don't want to have to purchase a separate router if I can avoid it but I also have no desire to change security companies as we've been VERY satisfied with SimpliSafe to date.

The 2.1 firmware seems to have addressed this, although i was told it was to deal with Arris routers.

My current router uses one SSID and has had no issues after the update. Before particularly for cameras it was sometimes necessary to disable the 5ghz radio (does your router allow this)

If you have the option for a guest network, enable it and try to connect your devices to the guest network. Some vendors (like Google WiFi) prioritize 2.4Ghz on their guest network. This worked 100% for me for my cameras when trying to connect to the primary network was challenging. (I had to use the distance trick before switching to the guest network.)

It looks like giving the camera time to find the 2.4 GHz band worked but I did have to plug it into an alternate power source to get the battery juiced up and running for set-up. That said, the camera works, the doorbell works, the doorbell notification works BUT the motion detection is not working or sending notifications to my phone. Not sure what's going on now but frustrated to be sure!

@jperrine00 in the phone app, make sure your push notficiatons are set to on, and also the motion setting in each camera is on too. Note I have found the Simplicam motion detection, while improved since release, is limited and I have a separate motion sensor in each room with a camera.

Hey Captain...just went to double check behind myself but I do have push notifications on and the motion settings on my cameras are both on. I haven't had any issues with my indoor SimpliCam picking up motion so far as I can tell. The Doorbell Cam Pro has absolutely not been picking it up though (I stood in front of the camera and waved my hands and did a litlte dance). The doorbell cam does, however, send me a notification when the doorbell is rang. Wonder if there are other ways to troubleshoot the motion sensing functionality.

Hey jperrine00,

So you're not seeing any events on your Timeline either? If you are seeing events, then we know that the camera Motion Sensor at least is working. So we'd want to troubleshoot the app somehow not sending those notifications specifically.

Another thing to try: walk out of the room first, wait a minute or so, then walk back in. The Motion Sensor on the SimpliCam uses passive infrared, so it works very similarly to the alarm system's Motion Sensor - in that it needs a little time to "scan" the room for the ambient temperature, before it can detect intruders.

EDIT: Reading through again, I see that it's actually your Video Doorbell not detecting motion. That unit has two ways of detecting motion. In daytime mode, it uses algorithms to intelligently detect human shapes in the image. In Night Mode, it falls back to that same passive infrared. You'll want to troubleshoot each one separately.
For the daytime detection - do you know if you have the right motion zones selected? And what's the lighting situation directly in front of it - is there glare? Or is it a very dark scene?

- Johnny M.
SimpliSafe Home Security

Hi Johnny M.

Not sure what was going on but I seemed to have resolved the issue with a hard reset of the doorbell cam itself. Once I get it booted back up and connected to WiFi I do not seem to be having any issues with motion sensing or live camera viewing

Thanks everyone for all the help and suggestions!

Ahah! Good to hear, jperrine00.

My theory is that it was a corrupted setting, and resetting cleared it out of the unit's memory.

- Johnny M.
SimpliSafe Home Security