Motion Sensitivity picking up pets when set for People Only

@Mannyshere14 wrote:

@Mannyshere14 wrote:

@Mannyshere14 wrote:

@Mannyshere14 wrote:

@Mannyshere14 wrote:

@Mannyshere14 wrote:

@Mannyshere14 wrote:

@justanewbie wrote:

No change - being driven mad by alerts from cats and car lights reflecting on a wet driveway - this is on the lowest sensitivity setting.

Selecting ‘People Only’ mode sometimes limits the number of cat alerts but also misses important alerts that I do want such as cars.

If only there was a cars and people only mode!

People Only mode never really did much to resolve the false detections for me… it just picked up everything and sometimes missed detecting “People”

The sun is shining today and its perfect sun shadow weather :laughing: So the front drive camera is on the lowest motion sensitivity mode - with people mode off - lets see what happens :flushed:

Update

Ok well i am deflated… i thought there would be an improvement but nope the people shadows strike again, also had a magpie trigger a motion alert. The thing is the sun isnt directly hitting the Camera so its not even like its glare from the sun at all.

I am going to give it a few more days and see what happens - i will update Support on this also.

I spoke to support and they contacted a “Lead” and the “Advanced Team” - They remotley accessed and “rolled back the firmware” (If you recall i reported on here that i was told a firmware update broke the motion detection and they issued a firmware update to roll it back, well my cameras never did). I then gave them 24hrs access to some of my camera feeds for observations to see if this rollback worked.

Its been a few hours now and i have not had any false alerts so far on any of the cameras :neutral_face: It is still light here and will await to see what the night holds for them.

They have asked me to update them via email after 24hrs (but we all agreed 24hrs was not enough time to judge anything) - depending on the update they may try another 24hrs with “people only” mode turned off.

I kinda think its working now, but i then keep reminded myself its going to play up again. But i am willing to give it go #faith and hopefully have a better update in a few days :stuck_out_tongue:

Update

Ok so compared to the high number of false alerts i usually get from all the camera’s…

Garage Cam - no false alerts recordings (i have notifications off anyway) - not even picked up the smoke coming fron the boiler flu which it usally does

Garden Cam - No false alert recordings (i have notifications off anyway) - Unless the rodents and birds have gone on into hibernation.

Drive Cam - Had 1 false alert (i have notifications on) - it seems it was the lights from a car that came from the side not directly onto the camera - This cam usually gives off the most false alerts so this is major progress.

One thing i did notice though that there was a longer delay in getting motion notifications then usual - sometimes upto 2 mins after the event - this didnt happen before so will keep an eye on this and provide updates to Support.

So from the looks of things as they are whatever RING did seems to have fixed the false alerts…? :stuck_out_tongue: But understand I am still in the testing phase and i need to provide them with an update on progress still.

Update

Front Camera - So after a few days of lower than usual false motion alerts, things went a little side ways as started to get some people shadow alerts and then more car lights coming from the side (about 50ft away from the camera).

The garden cam picked up the darn rat a few times again!

The garage cam has remained false motion free!

So i have been emailing my updates and then i stopped getting replies to them, i forwarded my findings to the Distributions & Sales Manager and to Jamie the Inventor… pleased to say both of them responded to me very quickly!

I have a call scheduled on Monday ( I think with the special ops team).

The other strange thing i noticed was that for one of the cameras a firmware version suddenly appeared where it normally says “Up to Date” - v2.1.01005 and has remained visable.

when i first got these replacements it showed the firmware version - v1.16.00265 and then they all changed to “Up to Date”.

Update

I am still working on the motion dectection issues with an assigned agent , i have had 2 conference calls since the last update and have another scheduled for next week.

Even though the false alerts have reduced, they still seem to pick up things i would not expect them to pick up… however i am starting to realise tha these are in fact cameras :dizzy_face: relying on software to do the job of a human eye!

What i have been told is that when you first set up the cameras and work on setting up your motion zones (for those cameras that are able to be adjusted size and shape wise), the camera takes an image/inprint of the area. Depending on where you have drawn out your zones when anythings croses those zones the software starts to identify changes to the original scan it took, it then trys to work on algorithyms of differentiation’s covering size, level of heat and level of movement. It then makes a judgement call on alerting or not!

So even though there maybe false alerts as in non human/people, the cameras are doing the jopb they are supposed to do baring in mind they are not a human eye.

I have been offered replacements again (but we both agreed these will not make any difference, as there is nothing wrong with the hardware), I was offered exchanges for other equipment and also as a last resort a full refund.

For the moment i have decided to continue to work with the agent ( i have to say that she has been amazing and has always called bang on time, follows up on emails etc. - so a Big Thank You to Jon Marie @ RING).

We have tried the following so far:

  • Remotley update all cameras to latest software
  • Reduced the motions zones size
  • reviewing footage - seeking advice from technical

I am currently sending any non human/people alerts to my assigned agent who will be seeking support from technical until my next call.

Update

I had my assigned agent call me yesterday as planned, so since my previous call with them last wednesday i have only had 11 false alerts (which is a massive improvement compared to the 40+ i used to get).

It still picked up a pigeon, rodent, smoke/steam coming of a exit pipe some distant away and cats, However nowhere near the amount. For example the smoke/steam coming of an exit pipe (only in the evening) used to trigger an motion alert every time the heating boiler came on (which could be several times during the evening) it only alerted once in 7 days.

What changed?

  • I had all cameras replaced 3 times
  • Adjusted the motion zones (strange one this as before i had already spent weeks changing these to every possible way and it didnt improve) - minimised them so they are not right close to the boundaries - for those that picked up the dog in the garden i changed the size of the zones that i had placed on the entry wall/fence so lifted them up off from the bottom (no alerts from the dog anymore - but still covers the entry point - havent tested if this zone on the wall/fence actually works if someone jumped over the wall/fence!)
  • Firmware was remotley updated to the most recent version (it seemes the rolled back firmware didnt help matters)

Out of the 11 false alerts were between the hours of 9pm - 7am with only 1 being during the daylight hours.

Even though the false alerts have reduced i still have the notifications for motion turned off during the night between the hours of 10pm - 9am due to the high chance of false alerts happening during those hours.

So not perfect like most other cameras out there in the same category, but for me these cameras are being used to capture better footage at entry and exits points (areas where my static CCTV struggles to capture) rather than being alerted during the event (during the hours of 10pm - 9am) I have the RING alarm as a back up to alert me if there is an actual intruder gaining access and hope the sound of the siren is enough to scare them off :dizzy_face:.

Hopefully as time goes by software will develop/progress to reduce these false alerts during the evening down further.

I could of taken the kind offer of a refund (i might end up regretting it), but decided to keep them for now as they are good cameras! I still have a access to the same agent if i ever need to report to if the same issues occur.

All i can suggest is that try and get an assigned agent to deal with your issue and work with them through it, now it may not fully get rid of all the false alerts but it may reduce them!

If anything changes i will update.

Update 8th April

Well its been about 2 weeks since my last update and pleased to report that i have only had about 7 false motion alerts! mixture of Cat, Bird and spider - the amount of false alerts during this period is a major improvement.

So seems to be going well, the only thing thats bugging me now is the Live View seems to have a lot of weak connection issues (which seems to be an IOS app update related that keeps coming up every time ther is an update).

Would be nice to hear how things are going elsewhere? :dizzy_face:

Manny,

I too have less false alarms lately. I reduced my floodlight sensitivity range which might have helped, but a spider spinning a web around the floodlight sets off the lights and recording/notification. That has happened once in the past week.

Also, same thing with an opossum. It walked right through the middle of the motion zone, set the lights off and the recording/notification.

This only happens at night and I think the lights set the video recording off. Who knows. I don’t count on or expect this device to be the security for “human forms only” I had hoped it would be, based on the claims and the available people only setting. I’ve given up on that. I don’t want to be woken up with false alarms any day of the week, so until the device stops all false alarms for a significant period of time, I’m keeping it “do not disturb”.

I also noticed another disappointment not on this topic. Someone came to pick something up and I observed them through the camera, and not only live, but recorded, I could not zoom in and read the license plate maybe 40 feet from the camera. So even if the camera caught a vehicle doing something nefarious in my driveway, it would not provide a license plate number for police to search.

So, this device to me is almost just an amusement or interesting toy. It’s just essentially a camera, the recording can let you see what happened, but may not provide a clear face image for crime solving or a license plate. I’m home almost all the time (even before COVID-19) so the remote features aren’t even regularly useful.

The one thing it definitely does that I could not do before, is allow me to look out that end of the house without running all the way upstairs to the only window that faces that way. Sadly, when I get an alert…IF I’m actually near my phone, by the time it allows me to actually see the view, a lot of stuff has already passed by. It’s useful in combination with my driveway alarms in that, when I hear them, I can pick up the phone and see if and what just drove down my driveway without peering through that window

@Dude wrote:

Manny,

I too have less false alarms lately. I reduced my floodlight sensitivity range which might have helped, but a spider spinning a web around the floodlight sets off the lights and recording/notification. That has happened once in the past week.

Also, same thing with an opossum. It walked right through the middle of the motion zone, set the lights off and the recording/notification.

This only happens at night and I think the lights set the video recording off. Who knows. I don’t count on or expect this device to be the security for “human forms only” I had hoped it would be, based on the claims and the available people only setting. I’ve given up on that. I don’t want to be woken up with false alarms any day of the week, so until the device stops all false alarms for a significant period of time, I’m keeping it “do not disturb”.

I also noticed another disappointment not on this topic. Someone came to pick something up and I observed them through the camera, and not only live, but recorded, I could not zoom in and read the license plate maybe 40 feet from the camera. So even if the camera caught a vehicle doing something nefarious in my driveway, it would not provide a license plate number for police to search.

So, this device to me is almost just an amusement or interesting toy. It’s just essentially a camera, the recording can let you see what happened, but may not provide a clear face image for crime solving or a license plate. I’m home almost all the time (even before COVID-19) so the remote features aren’t even regularly useful.

The one thing it definitely does that I could not do before, is allow me to look out that end of the house without running all the way upstairs to the only window that faces that way. Sadly, when I get an alert…IF I’m actually near my phone, by the time it allows me to actually see the view, a lot of stuff has already passed by. It’s useful in combination with my driveway alarms in that, when I hear them, I can pick up the phone and see if and what just drove down my driveway without peering through that window

Hey!

Thats good to hear! i am also kinda following what you have ended up doing, disabled notifications during the night as it does seem this is when most of the false alerts happen even though they have heavily reduced.

Also i do find it hard to pick up plates, as soon as you start to zoom the footage/picture is unusable, however the image and footage as it is without tinkering with it seems really good even more so when there is some sort of ambient light around the area.

The delay in motion notifications when you need them is a pain and you tend to catch who it is when they have already been in the zone for a while or have walked away - not all the time but it does happen. The 4 cameras are covering areas closer/better than my normal CCTV system so i suppose thats a bonus!

I have spent more time looking for alternatives that have the same features but they all seem to have some downfalls… my advice is always check the community forums for any device thats where you will pick up any issues the devices have before you buy so you are then fully aware of what you may suffer with - but not everyone has the same enviroment that a particualr product/device may be installed in so that is also a factor to bare in mind, as some may have a particular issue and others do not - and lets not forget that is may just be that the user has not set up something correctly etc.

Holding onto the next updated version of my Ring cameras (hopefully with 5ghz and improved detection) and Ring kindly provides me with some free upgrades/replacements :laughing:

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I am thinking a way to get rid of cats. They come into my property everyday at 10pm and 2am. I tried lemons and will have dogs soon. Ring, please help us with a major announcement. You can see how many complaints in the last few days.

Hi,

There has been no difference in my 4 Elite stick up cameras motion detection. I constantly detect cats, spiders other small animals. I have now resorted to turning my cameras off every evening and part of every day to escape the constant false alarms. My cameras are only used at present for a live view, which really defeats the object.

I guessing due to this problem being unresolved for such a long time that it may never be resolved.

Despite requests many weeks ago i have not received any updates as to a possible fix for this ongoing problem. I was contacted by a Ring advocate who promised to provide a personal service until this issue was resolved but unfortunately my emails are no longer answered and just bounced back - i understand this could be due to the worldwide problems we are all experiencing but any acknowledgement would be appreciated.

Guessing its now time to return for a refund!

@phil3985 wrote:

Hi,

There has been no difference in my 4 Elite stick up cameras motion detection. I constantly detect cats, spiders other small animals. I have now resorted to turning my cameras off every evening and part of every day to escape the constant false alarms. My cameras are only used at present for a live view, which really defeats the object.

I guessing due to this problem being unresolved for such a long time that it may never be resolved.

Despite requests many weeks ago i have not received any updates as to a possible fix for this ongoing problem. I was contacted by a Ring advocate who promised to provide a personal service until this issue was resolved but unfortunately my emails are no longer answered and just bounced back - i understand this could be due to the worldwide problems we are all experiencing but any acknowledgement would be appreciated.

Guessing its now time to return for a refund!

Hey

I was also at a point of returning for a refund, but i emailed the founder and my countrys distributions head. Like i have said before i got a reply the same day from Jamie and the head and a few days later i was assigned a helper.

We worked through all the issues and solutions (now you will never get rid of alerts for spider, cats etc.) because thats what its designed to do pick up motion, however i agree they pick up far too much of them even though when on “People Only Mode”.

But with some remote software checking, updating and readjusting the motion zones things got a lot better to what i was going through (mind you the cameras were replaced a few times prior to this).

Dont get me wrong it took a few weeks of support from the assigned person at RING and testing to get to this point.

If you have the ability to get a refund by all means go for it, but i decided against this option as i was unable to find another device offering the same features trouble free!

“Ring, please help us with a major announcement. You can see how many complaints in the last few days.”

Ha! Dont hold your breath, did you notice one of the mod’s has marked this issue as solved?

“We worked through all the issues and solutions (now you will never get rid of alerts for spider, cats etc.) because that’s what its designed to do pick up motion, however i agree they pick up far too much of them even though when on “People Only Mode”.”

The issue is when the lights come on. I never have a problem with this in the daytime. I think the lights, which are supposed to pick up all motion, are triggering the camera/record/notification. There is never a time when the lights aren’t on when I have false alarms…like a little spider that may have crawled out of vision of the light sensor but did trigger the camera for instance, giving a night vision recording of the spider. It’s usually some sort of weird string of beads looking thing attached to the web (egg sacs? I don’t know, I cant find anything out there to identify it) that swings in front of the floodlight. Then sometimes the spider is visible like in a subsequent video just a minute or two later, but the lights are always on with recordings at night.

I have to say, this is not happening as much for me, but still happening. I don’t feel like losing sleep over it so I keep do not disturb on my phone when sleeping. Fortunately I am in a low populated area with not much crime and hardly ever people walking our road…and my house is hundreds of feet off the road. I have driveway alarms that detect any vehicles coming down the driveway. The camera is a neat little toy though.

I’m seeing similar problems with my hardwired security cam / floodlight. If I disable People Only Mode it triggers on just about anything - cars, people, animals… even bugs. Turning the sensitivity down to the minimum makes zero difference, it still goes off every few hours at night. People Only Mode seems to work as advertised, but naturally it ignores cars which makes it somewhat useless in a driveway. So now I’m stuck with a hardwired camera that doesn’t really work particularly well mounted on the front of my house.

Any ideas on how to make this thing detect people AND cars without triggers every time a bug flies past would be appreciated.

Wish I could help you. These simply don’t work the way we would want or expect them to. It’s that simple.

My false alarms have been less but I have no idea if that’s because what triggers them is less or if the camera and software are working better.

To point a special point on it, I got a false alarm at around 4AM the other night…and in the video is both a cat AND a spider. I had to laugh…more out of insanity than humor because it was quintessential

Personal Opions based on my experience :flushed:

‘People mode’ and motion detection are 2 different things, and t the moment I doubt they work as they should together.

poeple mode from experience just reduces the amount of false alerts from things without a heat signature, the issue here is that it’s not able to 100% notice the difference between a cat and a human - you will find that it mostly false alerts during the night on these as all the sensors are working together.

the motion dectection is basically doing its job as in detecting any kind of motion - just a shame that at this stage the ‘people only mode’ isn’t fully ready yet. The only way to reduce the false motion alerts is to readjust the motion zones so they kind of avoid the particular area where the false alerts are picking it up from or slightly reposition the camera.

keep reporting to RING if you haven’t done so already and best to do this via email. Get them to check the feed into the camera and make sure they software is up to date! (i was originally told mine was a few times but then someone realised not all of them updated properly and did them remotely).

Yes I still get false alerts for spiders (nighttime), cats (nitghtime) and birds early hours of the morning usually between 6am - 7am - any other time the cameras never picks them up. But the amount has deffo reduced - no longer get alerts for bushes, trees, steam/smoke, shadows and car lights.

I am still yet to find a similar camera that does not have issues like this!

1 Like

On my video doorbell 2, people only mode works as intended… but on my wired spotlight cam I get alerts to my dog, neighborhood cats, birds, and even leaves moving.

Phone support reset the device and it worked fine for all of 5 minutes, but I’m guessing that may have just been due to an update after resetting.

I have been advised to share any video not containing people to help@ring.com explaining why I’m sending the video; “people only mode is turned on the spotlight cam wired but has detected bird…”

I am having the same problem. I have had to turn off motion detection which means the security camers are now just recording devices NOT security camers. For the price you would expect this function to work properly. Even a little spider can set off the motion detection. Utter Rubbish product!

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How is this SOLVED? I have spent over £500 on security camers that don’t allow me any security whatsoever unless I am prepared to be woken up every night by any moving object no matter how small. Cat’s, Mice, Leaves, Even little spiders. Utter rubbish product which I shall be returning to where I purchased it from and buying somthing else.

2 Likes

@Jennifer_Ring wrote:

Hi neighbors- the team needs examples! Please give our support team a call at 800-656-1918 or here, describe the situation you’re having and share videos with the them. That way, the team can take a further look into this and continue to improve the ‘People Only’ motion detection feature.

@Jennifer, the ring team customer support needs to be made aware of this issue and how customers should submit videos. I only found this after my own searching after several calls with support agents who knew nothing about this.

i would suggest ring implementation of a “flag” option within the app for users to flag videos directly to support as “this is not a person” or have multiple options to improve accuracy such as; “this people only motion event was a cat,” “this people only motion even was leaves/tree/Bush blowing”

3 Likes

I am presuming that as our backyard camera is picking up spiders on their webs some 93 times/alerts a night, that the issue of people only motion detection has still not been resolved?

Any updates from the developers as to a functioning people only mode setting? Both of our floodlight cams still get triggered by many non-people movements. This includes birds, plants, cats, moving spider webs, moths, etc. For example, it’s windy tonight, and the cameras are getting set off every few minutes. I have zones set to avoid some of the branch movement. But if the zones ignore that whole area, then half the yard is zoned out.

And the video doorbell 2 still regularly records and triggers on cars. Not all the time, but enough to be a little bit annoying. Also, not entirely sure if this is related, but it seems that with the people only setting, it is more likely to miss actual people more often. Several package drop offs have not been recorded.

There are thousands of posts over the internet for this issue. Had I known that this would be such a huge problem I would have never ordered the product. The claims and application are completely fraudulent regarding this product being able to detect human sizes. They will give you excuses about whether, then when that changes, that excuse fails on its own merits as soon as the weather clears. It’s dry here and a nice 70 degrees, yet s small car still alarms…
Who wants to join a class action lawsuit for fraudulent advertising and leading the public to believe they were getting one thing, when in fact, we were getting the same old crap the snake oil salesmen have been selling for eons?

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Hi @Justchad555! Our team is constantly working to improve or add to our devices and features. At this time, the People Only mode is intended to reduce alerts to those that are triggered by humans only. Of course, this feature paired with the other available motion settings in your Ring app, will help to fine tune the experience. Adjusting these through trial and error can really help to optimize detection in your area.

Keep in mind, certain objects such as reflective surfaces might still trigger motion. If the People only setting is not working as expected for your environment, feel free to try motion without the setting enabled and other settings fine tuned. Check out our help center article about People Only Mode for more information on its operation. As we always value our neighbor feedback, we will certainly share this with our teams here for future consideration. :slight_smile:

Amazing the response you get in here. As fraudulent as the sale activity! Didn’t even read that I spent days and hours on the phone with tech support and got nowhere, yet somehow the FAQ is going to solve this

BELIGERENCE!!!