@JAW1973 wrote:
I saw a lot of similar things that you did. The first time I set it up the system seemed great… would miss people walking on the sidewalk, but I would get notifications of my neighbors at the bottom of their driveway parallel to mine on both sides…not a problem… . but then I realized it would not read anything in my driveway until something was 2/3rd up the driveway. This is not useful at all considering someone could do something to our cars without the camera ever detecting them… It is almost like the motion detection area is concave verses the convex circle that is shown in blue.
I did see the same thing as you when I was trying to adjust… eventually the camera just stopped recognizing any motion at all.
Also, I asked ring about it, but I do notice there is a standard motion light type sensor at the bottom… I dont’ know what this is for since Ring said that the camera is what detects the motion… So I’m not sure if the bottom part is a light sensor so that it knows to turn the light on or not…
Thank you for all of the detail. I will try some of the things that you said and see if they help, but we really shouldn’t have to do all of these things… I should be a simple set up and should work. It really should be a simple fix for Ring…
Totally agree. Setup should not be a week long project of adjusting and testing. You should, in my opinion, be able to put the camera up, aim it to get the visual you want, and then use the app to fine tune it. With the battery cams, we have 40 - 50% of what the wired cams have if that, when it comes to customization/fine tuning from the app.
I had to do an awful lot to get my cam working the way I want it to work. Up and down the ladder for a week… ugh. That sensor on the bottom of the camera is a PIR sensor (Passive Infrared Sensor), and its designed pick up on the heat of objects. Since humans have a higher temp, it supposed to pick up on them. Same for cars etc.
Its those motion zones that we can’t adjust that are the entire problem here. I can’t imagine that the motion sensors are different in the battery cams. It wouldn’t make much sense from a manufacturing standpoint.
For me, I’m on my 4th day of “camera working almost perfectly”. I’m still not picking up on every single car that passes by, and just the occasional one that happens to go into the motion zone. I’m picking people up in the driveway, but only when they get about 1/3 of the way in. Not ideal, but acceptable.
No more camera adjustments have been done since Monday or Tuesday. Sensitivity still at 3/4 and Frequency still at Standard. For me, it was the height adjustment, flipping the mount, and making the blue zone on that motion detection setup just inside my driveway. That seemed to get it right. A lot of manual adjustments, for a camera thats supposed to have a robust app. True for some of their other models, but not true for the battery cams. I can only imagine the frustration of other users that have not been able to get their dialed in such as yourself. The only other issue I’ve noticed is when the camera “sleeps” between detections. It will detect me or my wife when we pull into the driveway. But, if get out at the right moment, we can walk up to the front door virtually undetected because the camera is in its sleep interval. Last thing I did to offset the motion zone weirdness, I move the cars closer to the house after the kids are done playing outside for the evening. This puts the cars right in the sweet spot pointed out by the admin, and person detection happens 99% of the time.
A friend of mine I’ve spoken to, said “well I had no problems”. But, he has a property that has no busy traffic near it, and his work as intended for him. Those of us on busy streets will have motion issues. But for him, on his nice big property and long driveway, he just needs to watch whats close to the house for him. So its a set it and forget it kind of situation. Those of us on smaller properties, denser neighborhoods, and a lot of traffic… welcome to the manual adjustment game. Hopefully they give more customization in the future through a firmware update or an app update.
I have to install another cam on my back patio. I was going to go battery with it, but I might just replace the porch light and do a wired cam back there so I can have the customization options.
Good luck with your cam! Like the admin said, trial and error is key but it sucks. Eventually you’ll find the sweet spot. One more thing they were right about is the motion “sweet spot” being in the middle of the blue zones. That should help too, but you’ll find the limitation might drive you insane; you’ll pick up every car that passes.