Motion Detection Optimization Ring Peephole

Anyone know if there’s a way to adjust the Ring Peephole to not record when a car drives by and the sunlight reflects from the car window directly to the camera. I have the motion detection adjustment figured out, but when that sunlight hits the camera the entire lens is lit up causing a false alarm and draining the battery.

Hey @brians702. This is normally triggered from having the People Only mode feature on. You can turn this off in order to help with this! If you go into the Ring app > Main Menu > Devices > Peephole Cam > Smart Alerts > Go ahead and turn this off and let me know if this helps!

Hey Chelsea, interesting how cars and people are associated. Anyhow I went to the settings and it was already turned off. Any other ideas?

@brians702 The reason my first assumption may have been from the People Only mode is because occasionally when in People Only Mode, light reflection, as from an outside window or passing car, can activate motion detection. If you’re getting a lot of unwanted notifications, we recommend to look for reflective surfaces that may be shining light onto your device and turning off People Only mode if you find you have a lot of them. Although, since you verified you have it off, it must still be the PIR sensor on the Peephole Cam that is continuously triggered. Since the Peephole Cam is a battery operated device, it is triggered for motion detection by the PIR sensor in the device. Therefore, while people are generally the major heat signature, larger ones that look like a bright and hot surface, like lights shining into the camera or reflecting from passing cars, could continue to set it off.

Whilst brainstorming ideas, I’m curious - what does this video of a car passing by look like? I’d love to see what this motion trigger is looking like to brainstorm any out of the box ideas for us in your situation! I’m thinking maybe something along the lines of setting up a Privacy Zone box is you find that this reflectiveness is centered in a certain area for every event that is happening for you.

I am happy to share a video url https://ring.com/share/6837165211712732767 As you can see at the beginning, the light reflection from the car passing by is super bright.

@brians702 I see what you mean! Thank you for sharing that video with me. :slight_smile:

So, as a fellow Peephole Cam owner, this may just be the limitation with the device at this time. Unlike the Peephole Cam, we have things such as the Corner Kit or Wedge Kit, which as made to help point the Doorbell away from an area like this that may be setting it off. Since this is limited to being mounted only with the Peephole and doesn’t require any drilling into walls like the other Doorbells, there’s no way for us to replace this camera. Also, considering the videos, the road is right in the center. I would hate for you to put a Privacy Zone in the middle over the road since it cover such a large area.

The last thing I could think of is that we could maybe limit the amount of those events by turning down your Motion Frequency. What do you currently have it at right now? If it’s at Frequent, putting it to Standard could help a lot with this. You can learn more about Motion Frequency in our Help Center Article here. Let me know if you give this a try and if it helps at all! :slight_smile:

I’m glad that video helped. My motion frequency is already set at standard. I was wondering if a firmware update can be requested where your programmers can add a feature where if the light condition bursts over a specific level for a short period and entails every portion of the screen, that the would not cause a trigger.

@brians702 I’m not sure if it’s a possibility, but I will definitely pass this idea along to the appropriate teams for you! In addition, as we value our neighbors’ feedback, we’ve created a Feature Request board. Do you mind adding this to there and any future feature requests there? This will help us to organize and share your requests with our teams here, as well as allow other neighbors to comment and add interest, all in one place.

Thanks Chelsea, I have submitted the request https://community.ring.com/t5/Feature-Request-Board/Car-reflection-false-trigger/idi-p/43622

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