Outdoor Camera not launching live view

I was having same issue. Removed camera from app and then from base station. 

then I could only add it from the base station and had to finish setup from app. Very annoying but seems to be working now. 

The problem is annoying.  Plus : what if I am traveling (that's when I need those Cameras the most) , how am I expected to do this easy plug unplug! The software should restart if it is not responding! 

Same issue. It’s not like I can easily get to the camera to re-pair it since I’d have to climb up a ladder again every time. Simplisafe really needs to fix these connection issues with cameras. It’s quite frustrating. 

Hi folks,

For the Outdoor Camera, there are two major connections that can greatly impact the time to livestream (TTLS). The camera sends and receives data through WiFi, but it's woken upon and activated from the Base Station (which uses local RF, and not WiFi).

For both wireless connections though, it helps to consider what's in between. WiFi has a recommended range of about 150ft, and similarly, the Base Station can communicate with components up to 500ft over open air. But both can be severely impacted by walls or other dense physical objects (especially metal) getting in the way. So it might help to move either the camera or your Base Station and WiFi router (or consider WiFi extenders) to improve performance.

Of course, our dev team is still hard at work on improving performance from the firmware side. We've made some progress, but the effort is ongoing. We'll keep you updated!

With all these streaming and connection issues, I just let the battery run out and put the camera in a drawer. After seeing some of these comments about firmware updates and using cellular vs wifi, I decided to see if anything improved. Well now, after charging up TWO batteries, the outdoor camera does nothing but flash a red light. I tried both batteries and when I connect the batteries to a charger there are three white dots. According to help FAQ, flashing red means low battery? I tried connecting the USB cable to the camera while a freshly charged battery is installed as well and there’s still nothing but flashing red. I’ve tried holding down the pairing button, uninstalling from the app (can’t reconnect it because the camera won’t do anything), made sure keypad/base firmware are up to date….I’m so done with this system. Is there a place to send my components so they don’t have to go to a landfill?

Since my Outdoor Cameras were updated to 1.20, the "Watch Live" feature in the web app has been unreliable for the cameras in Performance Mode.

When I click on "Watch Live" on the web page, the status bar says "Contacting Camera", "Streaming", and "Live", but then the video window just shows a gray rectangle with "Watch Live" in the middle, instead of the live video feed. Sometimes it works, but it usually takes a few tries.

"Watch Live" consistently works correctly with my camera that isn't in Performance Mode, which leads me to think that it might be a timing issue -- maybe the Performance Mode cameras are responding too quickly for the web app?

The problem occurs on both Chrome and Edge browsers in Windows 10. I have no problem viewing the live video in the Android app.

These outdoor cameras are really next to useless. Half the problems seem to be the app but also seems like when they go to sleep, they get suck at getting live view. I have one sitting literally under an eero mesh extender with 1GB service in this house and the only thing in the way is a glass window. I have at least 500mb/s wireless at the point of the camera and it still often won’t connect. Base station is maybe 30 feet away. I think these things were really just very poorly designed and simply don’t work well. I’ve tried removing, re adding, re everything. Moving the base station is a tap dance too but I’ve inched it here and there. These things just don’t work. I guess they’re going to serve as overpriced dummy cameras until they can ever get this fixed. 

This system is useless.  I've spent over 6 hours in 2 months messing with these cameras and on the phone with customer service. I've done everything in the book and can never get a live stream except on the doorbell. Is there a solution to this or did i waste $500?

+1 for turning WiFi off in the phone, and just using cellular.  That solved my live stream outdoor connectivity issues. 

SimplySafe — Stop denying that this WiFi-vs-cellular isn’t a clue to the outdoor camera issues. 

I’m having the same issue. The camera records when there is movement, but if I try Live stream, it says waking up camera then connecting and then launching live view. Then it just spins and never opens up. I’ve done all the trouble shooting steps and sometimes it works for a while, but then reverts back to not opening up. This is a common issue by the amount of posts that are posted. SimpliSafe needs to address this issue!

Same issue but on different cameras at different times. One of six cameras will not livestream while the other 5 will stream just fine. I’ve moved several of them to new locations but it keeps happening. Status will show wifi connection as good.

Has there been any resolution to any of this? The app gets stuck in "launching live view" all the time. My husband is out of town and I heard a creepy noise outside and wanted to check our cameras and can't see. Not only frustrating but scary and I'm so sick of this happening. It shouldn't be this hard to just be able to check the cameras outside and it absolutely shouldn't require me physically going out there to hard reset them... that completely defeats the purpose. 

Update to my original post.

I purchased two range range extenders to expand my wi-fi network and that seems to have fixed the problem with my cameras not launching Live View. My camera signals are all reading good and since installing these extenders, Live View has been opening up without issue. Hope this might help the rest of you!

Putting the base station closer is no solution. I have one camera in the front and one in the back of the house. Moving base station to one closer puts it further from the other one. What if you had 4 outdoor cameras? 

please get this system reliable. Look at all the folks on this thread alone that have cameras that will not stream. They pick up motion and upload so they’re connected, but will not stream? Why? 

So I’ve had this problem before, and I can’t remember exactly what I did to fix it (I’m pretty sure it involved resetting practically everything), but today I had the issue pop up again when I brought my camera inside to charge it.

I was trying to turn it off while it charged, but somehow disconnected it from the base instead. Also, saw the base needed an update so I ran that as well (not sure if that’s what caused all this). Once I connected the camera again, the “Launching Live View” issue happened again where it would never load the live view, yet still recorded motion. I tried with WiFi and with 5G on my phone, neither worked.

Anyways, what seemed to work for me today is restarting my phone. Once it was back on, I loaded up the app (using 5G, not WiFi), and the live view finally worked. Switched to WiFi, and it seemed to freeze again, so I restarted the app (fully closed/opened) and tried again, but this time it worked on WiFi. Seems to be working relatively fine now, so hope this helps! Not sure why we’re still having this issue a year later, especially after an update, but hopefully it gets fixed right soon.