I have a new outdoor stickup camera and am trying to get the settings correct. It is 9 feet off the ground and 9 feet away from the back porch and door. People must walk or drive up the driveway beside the house to get to the porch. In either dark or daylight, with sensitivity set to almost max, someone can walk all the way up the driveway (about 40 feet), even weaving so they aren’t approaching in a straight line, and the camera doesn’t detect motion until they step up on the first step of the porch 15 feet away (and it misses that sometimes). When I was testing it on top of a step ladder, I could sometimes walk all the way up to the camera and wave my hand in front of it and it still didn’t detect motion. This morning, I backed down the driveway, right beside it, and then returned, also driving right past it, and it didn’t pick up any motion either time, until I walked back to the porch and stepped up on the first step. On the setup screen, the middle segment covers the driveway and the right segment covers my drivewway and even my neighbor’s driveway and much of his yard. I have the left segment currently turned off since it covers only the house wall, but have tried it either way.
While I was gone, I received a motion alert from it, but it never recorded anything. It’s possible that a car drove past 50 feet away but there’s no way to tell.
I have played with all the various settings and none of them seem to affect anything. I realize PIR devices have trouble with motion directly toward or away, but I had hoped for a bit better than this. Does it sound like I’ve missed something?
Hi @RonE. A good starting place is our Help Center Article on proper positioning of the Stick Up Cam Battery here. It sounds like you’ve got it at a good height, which is key for the motion detection to function properly. I would also suggest reviewing this article, which goes more in-depth on how the motion detection in Ring devices works. It should detect and alert you to motion closer to the device rather than farther out at the end of the driveway. Since you have adjusted the settings before, you might want to reach out to our support team at one of the numbers available here. They can take a closer look at your device specifically to help you get the settings fine-tuned. We’re taking additional steps to protect our team and help reduce the spread of COVID-19, so this has resulted in longer than normal wait times. If you are outside of the US, please read our response to COVID-19 here to see how to contact support.
Do you have any ideas on why the cameras send an alert, but then haven’t recorded anything when I go to look at the history timeline later? I have motion verification turned on to cut down on the length of the recording. Is it possible that the movement was so short that the algorithm decided that there actually wasn’t any movement? It happens on multiple cameras.
@RonE In that case, I would recommend disabling the Motion Verification feature to see if that works better for you. If this concern persists, I’d recommend reaching out to our support team for further assistance. You can reach our support team at one of the numbers available here. They can take a deeper look at your device to see what could be causing the motion notifications without a recording.
