Spotlight camera didn't record person but keeps recording objects.

Two spotlight battery cameras didn’t record someone coming to the door. They walked across the cameras inside the motion zones. But the cameras keep recording outside of the motion zone of moving trees and cars. People Only Mode is on and Motion Verification is off. Motion frequency is set to standard because frequent was getting every single car that drove by even though it’s not in the motion zone. Standard gets a little less triggers. Any ideas why it didn’t record the person and how to fix it so that it records people and not cars and trees?

Hey @comment. Could you let us know what your motion sensitivity slider is set to for the Spotlight Cam Battery cameras and also what the Live View looks like for both?

Hi Chelsea,

Thank you for your reply.

There’s two cameras that missed the person:

Camera 1 - Motion sensivity slider is approximately 1/3 away from min and the blue section goes up to the side walk. The live view shows beyond the side walk. It shows the whole street, the whole driveway, part of the front yard and path that leads to our door, the neighbor’s house across the street.

Camera 2 - Motion sensivity slider is approximately 2/3 away form min and the blue section covers the whole path to our front door and halfway into the front yard. The live view shows the entire front yard and streets.

Both camera are installed in locations where a person has to walks across the camera and not towards the camera.

Both cameras are recording cars go by on the street even though the blue section is not on the street.

I also have 3 other cameras that keep recording shadows or moving trees even though it’s set for people only and sections with trees are removed. Here’s those settings too:

Camera 3 - Motion sensitivity for only the middle zone is approximately 2/3 away from min and the blue section covers just in front of the window and side yard and a tiny section of the side walk. None of the blue is on the street but it’s still recording cars way past the blue section. The live view shows the side of the house and side yard and street.

Camera 4 - Motion sensitivity is max and blue section covers half of back yard and a sliding door. The live view shows all of the back yard.

Camera 5 - Motion sensitivity for only the middle zone is max and blue section covers part of back door and part of yard. I removed the blue section where the tree is but it still records when the tree moves. Live view shows the whole back door, walkway to front, and almost all the yard.

Thank you so much for your help. I hope this makes sense.

@comment Thank you for getting back to me and describing how you have your settings for all these devices, even these new ones you’re having a concern with! To help clear up any confusion, please know that when you move this Min-Max slider, the blue arc that you see will not change the position. The blue arc also is not there to give you a visual of how “far” it is seeing out, so I want you to know that! I know this has caused confusion for other neighbors in the past, so just wanted to clear that up as well.

For these cameras, it would be most helpful to also how their positioning and seeing what they’re seeing. Do you mind taking a screenshot of each Live View for each of the devices and attaching it here? Feel free to label which screenshot is for what camera as you have with all of these cameras by labeling them Camera 1-5 when describing it. In addition, if you can confirm for me that these are all Spotlight Cam Batteries (or if they aren’t, just clarify please) and how high they are mounted, I would appreciate that! If you’re not super comfortable with showing the Live View, our support team can do this deep dive with you on your account.

If you’d like to go to support to have it be not on a public forum and for a quicker response, please give our support team a call at one of the numbers available here. We’re taking additional steps to protect our team and help reduce the spread of COVID-19. 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. Also, if you do go to support, please let me know what they do for you and what conclusion y’all come to! :slight_smile:

I am having this exact same issue with my security cam. It is attached above and to the left of my garage door. I have everything set exactly like this other customer does and I’m getting notifications for every car that drives by but not people that walk right up to it. I haven’t been notified once for the mailman or delivery driver. How do I fix this? Is the problem that camera is too high?

Yep, they are all the battery version.

I prefer not to post the camera view on a public forum so I spoke to a support team member and they could not help. They said one incident is not enough to go by and they don’t see any errors on the camera. He recommended to just play around with the sensitivity and zones to get the right combo. He had me turn motion verification back on because there’s an extreme amount of videos of cars from the street. I had it on originally and turned it off after it missed the person actually walking up because I thought that was the cause. Hopefully it doesn’t miss another actual person by having it on again. He also had me change the frequency back to frequent instead of standard so there’s less sleep time. I did notice that when it was on standard it missed my spouse leaving the house because a minute or so before they left the camera recorded trees moving. So the camera was probably on “sleep” when my spouse left, but the camera should not have recorded the trees earlier.

If the blue arch is not there to give a visual of how “far” it is seeing out, is there any way to decrease how far the motion activated zones extend without decreasing my live view field of view? Or is what I see in the live view the whole motion zone, so the only way is to tilt the live view to not show the street? Hopefully that makes sense. :smiley:

Right now all the camera’s motion domes are parrallel to the ground as suggested by the set up guide and around 9 feet from the ground… maybe less.

Thank you for your help if you can. I understand if it’s difficult or you can’t without the screenshots. Thank you.

@comment Thank you for getting back to me and letting me know how this goes! I definitely recommend playing around with the motion settings as well, and possibly looking into changing the position for sure. You will definitely need to tilt the camera’s Live View angle to avoid the street if do not want the street in it’s FOV at all. If you have the option to do this, it should help it avoid getting the excessive motion from the passing cars! Let me know if adjusting the camera’s viewing angle seems to help with the motion detection, and ensure you do not tilt it too far down, as it is recommended to be parallel to the ground, but you can do some tilt downward to have this improved motion detection for your situation! :slight_smile:

Sadly I have to return them all. They don’t work for what we want. I can’t change the position to remove the street from the FOV and all different senarios for the settings still record the passing cars but miss us walking by. We really wanted it to work but since we cannot change the motion detection zone without changing the FOV then doesn’t work. Thank you for you suggestions in trying to help find a solution.

Are there any Ring battery cameras that allow more custom/can shrink the motion detection zone?

Does the wired cameras allow custom detection zones?

Hey @comment. Thanks for getting back to me and no worries! Sometimes things just aren’t meant for certain setups and that’s ok, as the wired devices do in fact have more customizable motion detection, which you can learn about here. I recommend seeing if a wired camera can work for you, and this may be the better option for you all along! :slight_smile: