Outdoor Camera Firmware 1.18 (September 2023)

@andy_192730​ The Outdoor Camera needs to communicate to both your Wi-Fi router and Base Station to function. Since your cameras have a good Wi-Fi connection, I would try moving the Base Station closer to them to improve their communication.

I've had good performance with all indoor stuff and doorbell CAMS .
I so wanted two outdoor cams    but the fact they can't get their fixes TO the outdoor cams in a timely manner
makes me unwilling to pay even their sale price.
I'm sure they are made overseas & thus still have a lot of unsold stock with 1.15
No big deal if they had a better system to ship/install the darn firmware.
I manage a support group for a software co. I co-founded.
If I couldn't get fixes to my customers, uh..  they'd all be "upset"  like we are.
SSafe can do better.

@emily_s​ hi Emily. First of all moving base station doesn’t work because cameras are front and back. Move it means it’s closer to one camera but further from another. The actual fix was simple. I was given one of your extenders and connected all cameras to that. Extender only works at 2.5g . Network operates at 2.5g and 5g . Your cameras only work correctly at 2.5. So forcing them to the extender fixed the issue. Cheers

I wish you luck with your system, if you are still able to return your system i would suggest you do so. Ever since they introduced the cameras they have been unreliable and to be honest JUNK. Return if you can and look into another security system. Take it from someone who has been through this nightmare.

Well  I can't edit  my query to support
I also just got the big discount email

but based on what I'm hearing  I dooubt I'd try the outdoor camera unless it drops to $50  AND has at least 1.18  LOL

@ktmash​ Firmware updates for 1.18 are now rolling out slowly to all our users. You should see this update on your camera(s) soon.

Our devs deliberately rollout all software releases gradually on their end. When you see a notification to update your Base Station on the Keypad, that’s after we’ve made the update for the device available on our side. 

When updating the Base Station, your system will go offline, which is why the user should initiate it so we know you're home. However, when it comes to updating the cameras, the process can be paused/resumed. For example, say there’s an alarm while a camera is updating its firmware: the download will automatically pause so your cameras can record the event, and then they will resume updating their firmware once the alarm has been canceled.

Emily................

1 - great to hear the 1.18 firmware is slowly rolling out now (though I thought we were told this once already)......to be honest I'm not holding my breath on getting this update since I never got 1.16 or 1.17 - why would I believe I'll get 1.18?

2 - That's nice that the camera firmware download will pause if there is alarm but to be quite honest it is not really relevant to this thread.  None of us are concerned about that particular point.  What we would like is the ability to manually tell the camera to 'check for updates'.  

@PhilliesPhans​ holy crap ypu are right, I just checked and all mine are back to 1.15 wth is that about.

It’s just crazy they refuse to comment on why cameras are rolling back to 1.15. FWIW with 1.15, vs. 1.16, I no longer have battery life problems, so clearly 1.16 was bad, and maybe 1.18.

The least they could do is update us.

I’d be fired from my IT support job, if I ignored my users like they do.

To provide context, since summer, we have had to remove, reset, and re-add each of our 5 cameras every time the battery is removed for charging, due to them always becoming unresponsive with a blinking blue light on power up (that issue is discussed in another forum thread). That’s the reason we’re anxious to get updated firmware. One of them was out of commission for over a month because we couldn’t re-add it to our wi-fi (red blink) but today at least that part was resolved when we discovered the cause (it was being blocked by our firewall). As we were finally re-adding it today, it downloaded a firmware update to 1.15 even though we think it was already on that version. That would lend credence to the idea that they are serving 1.15 again with an updated timestamp (the last part is speculation). To the engineers: we have never seen the cameras’ light turn yellow, even when installing a firmware update. Whether that is because the update is interrupted by detecting motion when we’re looking at it is an open question, but something to check on and potentially add to your issue tracker.

@eamail2001​ They refuse to communicate.

I can also confirm my cameras reverted back to 1.15 after successfully updating on its own to 1.18

My guess is that stability from .16 to .18 was so bad they pulled it. My camera was rock solid until somewhere around .16-.17.

for me .15 works and is stable.

1.16 was the first firmware version to add support for the new indoor camera, and it looks like every version since (including that one) may have gotten pulled from the outdoor camera. Have seen no evidence that 1.17, if it existed, was ever even released. Wondering if there is any correlation.

@jtjordan​ Yes now that I am back to 1.15 my battery life has improved 100%. Mine were running out in days.  I was on 1.16.

@PhilliesPhans​ if they pulled any version then they should do what all other software companies do and note that the software was pulled and/or replaced with a newer version.  If they feel that the latest version potentially has issues - ensure the employees and customers know there are issues and they are being looked into.  

Either simplisafe has had a series of bad firmware and pulled it with out proper documentation OR the 'update system' is also garbage and does not work correctly...............or both.

No matter how this is sliced SimpleSafe has problems related to these cameras and problems with communication with their customers.

Makes me want to buy 2 !!  What I need is older firmware, slow response, etc..

@dlpsr​ your lucky lol all mine have been on 1.15 forever and never received a 1.16 until they did 1.18 then right back to 1.15 smh. No response as to what happened or what they are doing and I think that's sad to not inform us. Anything like we found a bug in the new update and we are working on a fix then we will roll them back out but nnoo nothing