I tried using the Privacy Zones feature and have found it to be totally unusable for two reasons:
The Privacy Zone feature is incredibly “buggy”. For example:
You never know what size, shape, and/or location the privacy zones will appear at any given time.
Deleted zones are not necessarily deleted. They tend to appear and disappear over time.
Unfortunately, even if all the bugs were fixed, the feature would still be more or less worthless because Privacy Zone shapes are limited to squares and rectangles. This means there’s no way to block what you want to block while being able to view what you want to view.
I think the privacy zones take a few mins to refresh if you had just deleted it. I noticed it stays there until I go back into privacy settings like 2 or 3 times. Then it clears. If you wanted to readjust the box, you need to make sure you click on the box you want to adjust, then after readjusting and saving, it will look like you have 2 boxes until a few mins or a few refreshes out and back into privacy settings. The box shouldn’t move on its own though. Not unless you accidentally set up more than one. Just be sure you are clicking on the correct box if you have more than one, it will say privacy zone 1, privacy zone 2…etc.
Yeah the lagged refresh and update of the saved zones suck for sure though I totally agree 100% on that. However I think the adjustable square is workable… Not like a circle would be that much more of a difference in setting up a zone. If they made it like the motion zones it would be perfect but in reality, who would need to set up a privacy zone needing that many points? I figure privacy zones would tend to be small areas out of the camera recording frame?
And by the way… the privacy zones are meant to not trigger camera recording for anything detected in that box, it’s not meant for blocking your view of that spot. Like setting up a zone for your neighbors window of they are in view of your camera… Or in my case, I set up a privacy zone right where my car window is since I tend to sit in my car which is on my driveway, and since it’s in the motion detection zone it would trigger multiple notifications. So with the privacy zone, I won’t get multiple notifications just for turning my head or looking up while I’m in my car. One thing to note though, that box stays set there… So for example in my case, if i move my car, there will be a little black box on my driveway where it will not trigger detection for recording… Although you are the only one who knows that fact so I highly doubt that will make any difference in terms of security.
Hi Frustrated427. Glad you’re still with us. Are you saying it would be better if a circle or ellipse would be available for privacy zone? What do you feel is the limitation of the “stretchy box” approach? Are there objects etc. you think would be blocked better by other available shapes?
Just to be sure we are talking about the same Ring App feature… are you referring to “Motion Zones” or “Privacy Zones”? I was under the assumption that “Privacy Zones” were NOT related to motion detection.
As you know… camera lenses often perceive a scene differently than the human eye. For example, if you look at a Ring video clip of my side fence, it appears as if the fence runs at a “curved” diagonal, rather than in a straight line. The fence segments also appears to “twist” (as if they were made of some type of flexible (rather than rigid) material.
Because of a variety of factors, including the ones above, there seems to be no way to create Ring video clips which show what I want to show but block out (or omit) the rest.
The only workable solution would seem to be to use the same strategy for creating Privacy Zones that is used for creating Motion Zones. In other words, to allow the user to drag the points of the colored “box” to create customized shapes.
Hi. Thanks for the clarification. I have the spotlight cam, but know what you are talking about with distortion with the doorbell cams.
I never played around with privacy zones but just gave it a go. I see it is a simple four point square/rectangle type of shape. The motion zones have six or even eight points to adjust as I recall, so it is already limited by less points to adjust. It is odd that the number of points is different for Privacy as compared to Motion Zones. You raise an interesting point here and I would imagine it would be a super simple change for Ring to have the same same number of adjustment points. How about creating a post for this on the Feature Request board?