Solved: “People Only Mode” is not people only

I am getting false motion alerts all the time. We installed it today and I figured it was an app setting. It is on people mode. It does not detect people. It picks up everything else but when we leave the house and walk down the walk that is in direct line with the camera, the camera does nothing. Where have we messed up a setting? I see there are issues with the app. I did the custom zone to leave out the tops of the trees, have adjusted the motion sensor 50 different ways, used people only and turned people only off. It is like it see a person one time and if that person walks back in front of it, it doesn’t see them anymore - like it is a one time thing and then it’s done. I would appreciate any help with settings or such that anyone can offer up. Wind is a problem at times and I don’t have an issue with that but its giving way too many notifications on nothing and way too few on people actually coming up the walk.

Nope, nothing works to fix this POS. My phone goes off constantly while I’m at work. It annoys me and everyone else in the office. I have done everything. This thing is garbage. The designer needs to be fired, Yep, I’m irritated to the max

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I have just installed a spotlight camera battery

On my pre-existing devices the people only mode works fine with no problems

On the spotlight camera at night it still provides motion notifications when cats walk through the line of sight for the camera.

I do have customisable motion detection enabled, but the path the cats walk down is the key route we need to monitor for security and so tweaking the active zone for the motion detector won’t work here

Solutions?

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Hi neighbors! As mentioned in our help center article about People Only Mode, occasionally when in People Only Mode, light reflection, as from an outside window, can activate motion detection. If you’re getting a lot of unwanted notifications look for reflective surfaces that may be shining light onto your device. Alternatively, you can turn off the People Only Mode setting.

The recently updated motion detection feature that gives you the ability to create customizable motion zones has the Motion Verification feature include into it. So you now have Motion Verification with Customizable Motion zones. These features were combined to give you a more precise motion detection experience on your battery devices. Using these features or combining them with current options can help to improve motion alert accuracy. :slight_smile:

People only mode works super on batterry devices: If there is person motion, than I get notification Person detected and event is recorded, if there is any other motion then I get no notification but there is record with title Motion detected… That is just fine and is should work… But on wired devices, it doesnt work like that: Sometimes it doesnt “see” person, sometimes I get Motion detected if my litle dog walks in my yard, there is no message Person detected when person walk in my yard, in that case message is same Motion detected… And I get notification for persons and in any other situation when any motion occured… And on the Ring page they said it will only notificate for person and record in that case, and no in any other motion what is nonsense… Ring, please, can it work on wired devices like it works on battery devices???

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@Marley_Ring wrote:

Hi neighbors! As mentioned in our help center article about People Only Mode, occasionally when in People Only Mode, light reflection, as from an outside window, can activate motion detection. If you’re getting a lot of unwanted notifications look for reflective surfaces that may be shining light onto your device. Alternatively, you can turn off the People Only Mode setting.

The recently updated motion detection feature that gives you the ability to create customizable motion zones has the Motion Verification feature include into it. So you now have Motion Verification with Customizable Motion zones. These features were combined to give you a more precise motion detection experience on your battery devices. Using these features or combining them with current options can help to improve motion alert accuracy. :slight_smile:

Sorry but I don’t accept this answer. Surely the whole point of People Only mode is to stop this kind of thing happening. When the processing isn’t above a certain confidence level to acknoledge a human presence, then it shouldn’t alert at all. The thing that bothers me is that the alert doesnt even say “Person Detected”. So it KNOWS that there isn’t a person there, so why is it alerting? This feels less like “Person Only” and more like “Person Detection (beta)”.

I find it bonkers that when turning on People Only mode, my random leaf blowing, or cat walking past false positives are worse than when it is turned off.

My biggest issue with Ring, is that features do not do what they describe. Prime example being People Only mode actually filtering IN false alerts, or not actually filtering OUT non person detected alerts. Motion being captures OUTSIDE of motion zones, and snooze schedules actually scheduling when motion should be OFF not ON.

Also, why is it that the cheaper, battery devices get better features than the more expensive wired ones? Why can’t we create “more precise motion zones” for our wired devices? It’s not a battery saving issue, it’s an accuracy issue.

Not that it matters, but I just threw my Doorbell 2 on eBay and bought a Nest instead. Way better. Sorry Ring, you’re going to lost the market very quickly once people start getting wise and opting for the cheaper, prettier Nest instead.

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So, instead of improving it on your side for the customer satisfaction. Your recommendation is that we adjust the surrounding so that the people that rolled out the people only detection does not need to work so hard or at all?!?!?
I’m to cover all the reflective surface that’s “confusing” my doorbell from doing its job.
You realize how ridiculous this sound?
The worst part for my wired doorbell is that it missed a lot of ppl that walk in front of it with no obstruction on a sunny midday and no reflective surface “blinding” the machine.
What’s your the next recommendation from the help center? That every person that walk in front of the doorbell be in a colorful clown suit? Or maybe a led sign with an arrow pointing stating this is a person?
We are suppose to be safe and secure with this. Yet, there is a great chance that a perpetrator might break in and I’m not alerted and now video to show the authorities.

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‘People only’ mode is still not working for me with stick up cams in wired mode. I’ve had to keep it in battery mode despite having the cable to plug it in. How has this not been fixed yet? It’s been an issue for months! I’ve reset it numerous times, and switched back and forth from wired and battery. The bug is only present in wired mode.
In wired mode I get notified of everything (cat, dog, bird, spider, person), but never ‘person detected’. It only works in battery mode.

I was on the phone for an hour with Ring support today and they don’t believe me about any of the issues I’ve been having with the app. They just tell me it’s working fine. I’m not stupid.

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There’s a pattern here. It sounds like battery devices work fine with only people mode while wired devices don’t. Doesn’t take a genius to see this, it just takes someone who actually wants to solve this issue and read through the comments…cough cough Ring team hello? How much more proof do you need to just believe your customers here!?

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How do you turn it off

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I’m having same issue since I did update January 13, 2021

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Sorry but it doesn’t make sense that a reflection would appear to the doorbell as a person. Does that seem logical to you? More like an oversight or error by the developer team. We routinely get alerts at night when a car passes and the headlights reflect off the siding. Please update your People only setting so a reflection doesn’t trigger an alert.
Here’s a sample video:

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Following up here. Spent an hour with a Ring support agent who was troubleshooting with me. Deemed it as a faulty unit. Ring sent a brand new one, I took the time to reinstall it, sent the old unit back to Ring. Surprise, surprise,…It still doesn’t work!!! Software issue! Ring team needs to help. (Ring Doorbell Elite)

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Thank you for the continued feedback, neighbors! As each home is different, each environment will benefit from a configuration of motion settings tailored to your liking. Every motion related feature available might not necessarily be the best fit for every environment, which is why there is an option for many of our motion features to be altered in the Ring app.

The Person notifications option can help reduce the number of notifications you receive, and is certainly a useful feature. This could also depend on the environment in which some factors, such as reflecting light for example, might still be detected with this mode enabled. Feel free to disable people only mode and explore other motion setting combinations, to see which will work best for you.

As we always value our neighbors feedback, we have shared these experiences with our teams here. If you have tried the above steps and suggestion mentioned prior in this thread, and are experiencing motion related concerns, our support team will be happy to troubleshoot more in-depth with you. Please give our support team a call at one of the numbers available here. If you are outside of the US, please go here to see how to contact support.

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This is NOT A SOLUTION! RING TEAM, we are trying to help you help your customers! WIRED DOORBELL DEVICES ARE UNABLE TO PROPERLY USE PEOPLE ONLY MODE! Battery powered doorbells are fine! PLEASE have some integrity and help your customers and stop PASTING GENERIC THOUGHTLESS REPLIES! I’ve been patient for months and tried working with your team. Your tech team keeps trying to send me a new unit because they are unable to solve the problem! Please reach out to your engineering team.

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This is not a solution whatsoever and I would kindly appreciate you not selecting your own solutions on my posts… I will click the box if I feel ring has appropriately solved my issue

Please advise your team an acceptable solution would be to simply implement a “submit this video for feedback” button in video playback so we can send directly from the app specifically to the team that is best trained to resolve people only alerts being triggered by cats and birds, giving us a box to specify why the clip needs review

And you still have yet to address why the battery devices have a feature that wired devices do not, especially considering said feature certainly requires more processing power so it makes no sense for the battery device to have an exclusive feature that all wired devices could perform better

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I’m in the same boat right now. I have a wired Ring Video Doorbell 2, and a Wired Floodlight Camera. The Floodlight Camera is giving me constant “person detected” alerts every single time my sprinklers are running in the front yard. None of the videos ever have a person in them. Just the sprinklers going back and forth. It’s a great way to wake up at 6AM, let me tell you. It’s driving me crazy. I’ve got alerts for PEOPLE on, for all other motion OFF, and about every 5 minutes, Ring decides that the sprinkler is a person… my cell phone is going off, my wife’s cell phone is going off, and the Ring Chime and all Alexa devices in the house are going off. EVERY FIVE MINUTES while the sprinklers are on. Sometimes every minute.

This seems to have only started the past several months, as we did not have this trouble last summer at all.

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I’m having similar trouble. Just installed 3 new Ring Floodlight Cam Wireless Pros . Once setup they work great. I have them set for people only and occasionally close proximity spiders and spider webs trigger alarms in the middle of the night. Ring needs to improve the AI deep learning and teach it spiders and webs don’t look like people. Still The Floodlight Cam Wireless pro is a great product. Dumped my Google IQ Outdoor CAM due to clow performance. Ring is much faster.

Though it apparently won’t do any good, based on reading through all of the above comments. I’ll just go ahead and state: All my hardwired Ring Spotlight cams and Ring Doorbell Pro 2 still send me alerts when a squirrel or cat wanders through my People Only motion zones. Worthless “feature”.

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I am near the end of my trial for 2 wired spotlight cams and am getting a lot of spider web alerts. I considered using the People Only Mode but after reading all these reviews I am seriously considering not using ring at all. Very disappointing to hear how dissatisfied so many people are. What is being done to correct these very basic camera needs?

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