Cameras & doorbells

[Charlie6123]

Don’t worry.   Bought 2 outdoor cameras about 2 months ago::: worked for a few days and NOW NOTHING Triggers them!! Tried EVERYTHING.  NOTHING works. About to get rid of my so called Subscription!! ROKU CAMERAS are **bleep**!  So you guys are NOT alone !! They Monitor just fine BUT I bought them to let me know when someone is on my property!! JUNK

[RokuERey]

Hi @dakopyc,

Welcome to the Roku Community!

Just wanted to say thank you for reaching out, and we appreciate your attempts to resolve this.

We have communicated this information to our Support team so that they may offer additional assistance. Please be sure to keep a close eye on your email address as it is how they will communicate with you.

Let us know if there's anything else that we can do to further assist you.

Thanks,

Rey

[dakopyc]

Yep. Same issues. Basically after investing a few hundred bucks in this Roku. I'm about to take it all to the Goodwill -- and mark it with a big red pen stating how it will only work as a "live monitor" and not an intrusion/triggered security cam. Gah. What a disappointment.

[dakopyc]

So, what's the timeframe I can expect for these "capture" issues to be fixed. And in what version of the app and camera firmware?

Please provide specifics, not generalities -- as this is a point of real frustration for many customers.

Apparently there are are "release notes" around "what was fixed" for each version of the firmware, for each type of Roku camera device. So, when support writes a reply, they should refer to these release notes and whether the bug reported has indeed been addressed. Thank you.

Example Release Notes for the Wired Camera:

And (in the app), the versions of firmware for the Base Station, and all connected cameras can be seen here:

[RokuJohnB]

Hi @dakopyc,

Thank you for keeping us updated!

We would be delighted to help you further with your Roku outdoor camera problem. Did you try the troubleshooting steps that @RokuArjiemar provided above? If not, please try to do those steps.

Please let us know what you find out.

Best regards,

John

[dakopyc]

Please provide a direct link to the steps you are recommending -- the forum is difficult to follow with all of the posts and replies, thx.

[RokuJohnB]

Hi @dakopyc,

Thank you for keeping us posted!

We're happy to help you with the issue you're having with your Roku Smart Home devices, which is that they're only capturing still photographs and no video. Please be aware that if you have multiple Roku Smart Home cameras, we highly recommend updating your subscription to the Plus Plan for $3.99 per camera for 1-2 cameras. Your other cameras might not be able to record video because the $3.99 membership only covers one of your cameras. For $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year, the Plus Plan allows for the addition of up to 99 devices. Your Roku Smart Home subscription lets you choose which cameras and doorbells to utilize. You can include cameras and doorbells.

You can check here for more details about the Roku Smart Home Subscription.

If there's anything else that we can do to assist you, please let us know.

Regards,

John

[dakopyc]

UPDATE: Okay, well... updating my subscription to the "3+" package seemed to (finally!) fix the issue with events not being uploaded to the cloud as video clips -- finally I can see the short clips from the third camera!

Gosh, why didn't someone just say this earlier? Here we've all been struggling to check firmware versions, restarting the cams, un-plugging and re-plugging, uninstalling the app, signing-in and signing out -- all this rigamarole and it was a *subscription* limitation the whole time? Gah. Frustrating.

FYI here was my "original" plan -- which, I assumed was going to be *good* for the 3 cameras, even once the promotional period ended. There was no notification about a change in the plan -- that now, apparently, requires me to use the $10 a month option.

Original subscription was $2.99 per month (3 per month promotion); renewed Dec 18, 2022

Promotion ends Feb 18, 2023, $3.99 per month afterwards.

Oh well. But just so you know... and any other "early adopter" customers who are reading this post:

IF YOU HAVE 3 CAMERAS, you need the $9.99/mo PLAN!".

There will be NO ERROR MESSAGE telling you what's wrong -- but you'll see only still images from your "additional" cams when events are recorded -- not the video clip -- until you upgrade your subscription.

^^^ SUMMARY 😕 😐 

[olderguy]

Our new ROKU outdoor camera SE will not record events either. We formatted the micro SD card, restarted the camera, selected "events" on the app but nothing happens. After 8 days of trying our "free trial" is coming to an end and our fancy outdoor camera won't record by itself. If you manually select "record" it will record until you stop it. But the motion trigger that is supposed to work does nothing. I think  I made a mistake spending $73 on this at Walmart, but at least I can return it there since it does not work. Be wary of these ROKU "Smart" devices because they are not as smart as ROKU makes them out to be.

[dakopyc]

Ah. So you've had a disappointing experience with them as well @olderguy -- yes, it's been quite frustrating. For me, it turned out that the issue was I needed to "upgrade" my cloud plan with them -- since having 3+ cameras, apparently requires the $9.99/mo subscription level. Otherwise, your "third" camera will only capture a single "still frame" of any motion event (i.e. basically useless) -- instead of an actual video clip showing however many seconds of the scene.

In your case, there's a couple of other things I could suggest to try -- before returning the camera outright -- and that would be to bring the camera indoors, near your WiFi router, and test everything while you're at a table and can just wave your hand in front of it to trigger it. Also, you should check the "firmware" version of both the camera and the "base station", if you have one. Also the app version. Make sure that everything's up-to-date with the latest -- there's a place in settings to do this.

Anyways, hope that helps determine whether or not it might be a "connectivity" issue, at least -- gosh, it'd be really helpful if Roku would add some "error messages" or diagnostics to their setup so that folks can resolve these issues -- or at least know "why" it's not working!

best, --dk (just a tech-savvy customer... :))