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Nest Floodlight Camera setup problem

BD8
Community Member

Got a new Nest Cam with Floodlight two days ago. Initial install and setup went just fine and the camera/floodlight worked somewhat as expected for a few days. The only problem was that I was getting multiple "camera offline" notifications throughout each day.

I checked my router and found that the camera would have a good connection while working and then a very poor connection when 'offline', so figured it was Wi-Fi related, although every other device, phone, doorbell cam, etc. works just fine on the same wifi (WiFi 6, WPA2/3). The floodlight camera is the only one with connection problems and it is 5 feet away from a wifi satellite with fantastic connection.

I tried a soft restart of the camera, and it reconnected only to go offline again an hour later.

Then I tried a factory reset (remove device from app and/or hold down the button on the back of the camera) and now the camera won't complete setup in the Google Home app. I tried the QR code and the setup code methods of setup and both ways get to the last step ("finishing up") and then I get the message "something went wrong" and I'm forced to exit setup. The Google Home app is updated to the latest version, all of my devices are on the latest hardware versions, and yes my wiring is correct. So I'm about to return the **bleep** thing and get something else because it seems either defective or incompatible with modern WiFi. Any suggestions that are not what I've already tried would be welcome.

5 REPLIES 5

BG
Bronze
Bronze

I have seven floodlight cameras around my house perimeter, and the only time I had a "camera offline" problem, I found out that my router was the issue. I rebooted my router, and the camera immediately connected and was fine. You should really never really have to factory reset a camera once it connected. WiFi routers play a demanding role if you have a lot of devices, and you might as well assume that you do, because there are usually many more devices that you do not even realize are connected. There may be a port or NAT issue on the router causing communication issues with the Nest Aware servers (and Google Home app) and your local camera. I have seen that the WiFi router is 99% of client's issues. I personally replaced my router with a powerful router and quad core CPU designed for large homes that could handle many cameras streaming at the same time, plus all my other devices and family stuff. The router is the key, it works extremely hard and is worth the investment in good infrastructure. It's like people buy all these electronics, and plug them into the same extension cord and wonder why the breaker keeps tripping.

Just make sure you have good infrastructure, good internet bandwidth (upload bandwidth, not just download), and a good WiFi router, switches, etc. There are bottlenecks everywhere, and I even found a patch cable I had the other day that was Cat 5 (not Cat 5e) that was preventing my whole network from being a GB network and slowing things down.

Hope you get it running.

janthadeus
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey BD8,

I just wanted to follow up to see if you still need our help. Please let us know as we would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

I appreciate the help here, BG and Brad.

Thanks,

JT

Brad
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi there,

Thank you for your help, @BG!

Just checking in to see how the conversation is going. Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Best regards,

Brad

BD8
Community Member

I returned it and am trying a different product from a different company. 

janthadeus
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi there,

 

We're sad to see you go. We hope we can make it up to you in the future. We're always here to help if you ever change your mind. Please let me know if you have other questions or concerns as I will be locking this in 24 hours if I won't hear back from you again. Feel free to start a new thread and we'll be happy to help.

 

Regards,

JT