One of the most frustrating things about smart home security cameras is the setup process. Sure, it’s alot simpler than setting up your old school fully-fledged CCTV system, but still there are few quirks that vendors need to solve. When setting up most smart home security cameras, you’ll need a companion mobile app where you setup an account with the respective vendor product and scan an auto-generated QR Code.
However, this scanning process often fails. I have experienced this issue while setting up the Wyze pan cam and the Mi 360 degree Home security camera 1080p. After a number of try and error attempts, I finally got it. So let me offer you some tips if you happen to experience the same issues.
Read More: YI 1080P Home Camera Review: an affordable subscription-free security camera
- First check if your smartphone has a good WiFi connection. Pairing process will fail if the network is poor or down. Be sure that your phone has good WiFi Signal by placing as close to your WiFi router as possible.
- Most smart home devices especially home security cameras use the 2.4 GHz WiFi frequency band. So make sure your smartphone is connected to this band. If your WiFi router is dual-band meaning it supports both 2.4GHz and the 5GHz, create dedicated SSID or WiFi names for each band so that you are sure which band you’re connecting to.
- Make sure that the WiFi router encryption is set to WPA/WPA2 which most routers do. The latest routers support the newer WPA3 WiFi security encryption standard. So, just login to your router’s web interface and confirm in the settings that you’re indeed using the WPA/WPA2 encryption.
- Make sure you’re in a well lit area. The QR Code scanning might fail squarely because your security camera can’t read it well. Also, clean your home security camera lens with a micro fiber cloth. Dirt on the camera lens my be preventing the security camera from correctly reading the QR Code.
- Try to move the security camera or smartphone apart or close. Move it back and forth until you reach the optimum distance. Sometimes, the Security camera and the Phone might be too close or too distant from each other.
- Try to factory reset and power cycle the security camera each time repeating the pairing process.
Troubleshooting is not a one-size-fits-all affair and the process that got me through my QR Code pairing issue might or might not work for you (though we really hope it does). That said, we’d also love to hear from you. What’s your experience been? Tell us in the comment section below.
