Detection zone doesn't seem effective

I have set up a detection zone to exclude a tree near one of my cams, but any leaf that moves on the tree still triggers event recordings. In some of the videos a box outlining the motion appears in the area outside the detection zone. Am I missing something about how it’s supposed to work?

Having a video to look at along with a screenshot of the DZ would help. Post those if you are able.

Several background info questions:

  • What firmware version and app version are you running?
  • Are you running CamPlus or CamPlus Lite?
  • Are these Cloud Event Recordings or SD Playback Event Recordings?

The green motion tracking box should not be activating on motion that is fully within the Excluded (shaded) DZ. It will activate on any motion that is within the Included (not shaded) DZ and that may trigger a motion event (see last paragraph)

If the object is on the border of the DZ, with even a slight part of it within the Included DZ, it should activate the Motion Tagging and Motion Detection for Event Recording.

However, the green motion tracking box is a function running on the cam. The motion events and AI tagging in the Events tab are functions running in the cloud. While they do run concurrently and show in the videos, the green motion tracking box cannot be used to accurately identify what caused a Motion Event. The green motion tracking box is just a tool to help visualize motion superimposed on the video. It does not mark what activated a motion event.

Thanks for the info.

  • Firmware 4.36.9.139 app version 2.35(88

  • I’m in my CamPlus trial period

  • I have an sd card on continuous recording but the videos I’m referring to are the Event Recordings. This was actually a separate question I had: where are the event recordings stored?

I guess it’s possible a small corner of a leaf gets into the DZ, but I tried to be careful with it. If the green box doesn’t indicate what triggered to the event, I’m not sure how helpful it is. Seems like knowing what triggered the event would be more useful. I can watch the video see what is moving without the box.

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So it looks like your V3 and Android app are up to date with the latest versions.

Event Videos on the Events Tab are stored in the cloud on the Wyze Servers in your account for 14 days.

SD video on your card is accessed via the “Playback” feature.

Rather than looking at the video to see what is moving to determine what initiated an event, inspect it for changes in lighting as well as objects moving.

Wyze cams (except the WCO) are motion activated through the video itself. The cam looks for changes in lighting between adjacent pixels from the cam image and reads that as motion. Sunlight outdoors in trees often casts moving sunbeams and shadows, especially when it is windy. Those will trigger motion events.

The cam sensitivity setting will change how much light change between pixels is needed before a motion event activates. The lower the sensitivity, the higher the light variance required or number of changed pixels (object size) needs to be [aka big motion]. The higher the sensitivity, the smaller the variance needs to be or the smaller the pixel area changing (object size) to activate an event [aka very slight motion].

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Thanks again.

Is this the case with or without Cam Plus service?

I’m trying to balance that now. Unfortunately I’m trying to catch motion out about 50’ from the cam location so I’m at a sensitivity of about 70 and in the dark it’s not quite triggering. Meanwhile the tree in between is blowing me up with false positives.

Without any subscriptions you get event thumbnails in the cloud, with cam plus lite you get 12s event videos in the cloud, and with cam plus you get unlimited length event videos in the cloud.

Sd card recording is always free

Great, thanks!

That is a difficult perspective. I have a few cams jacked up to high shooting a considerable depth of field. Just some thoughts since I am not familliar with your particular setup:

The cams are just a bit more finekey at night. They have great color night vision, but with reduced light comes increased chance of AI errors. If you use the IR Night Vision, bugs and spiders will absolutely blow it up! The IR emitters on the face of the cam will attract them and then spotlight them in the cam lens. Motion every time.

I had to reposition my cams several times to get the least restrictive view.

I have CP on all my cams and use IR NV. I still get false positive AI at night from bugs and spider webs, and some incredibly bright sunbeams. I turn off all notifications for Motion Only and just get notified of the AI. I also filter out all the motion only events on the Events tab.

Hope this helps! Good Luck! :crossed_fingers:

Thanks, those are good tips. I had thought about monkeying with the notifications and filtering as you suggest. I may still do that, once I’m a little more confident I won’t miss important events and after a little more experimenting with other settings first.

I did turn off the NV because of the swarms of bugs and it did reduce a lot of the false positives. It is interesting, I didn’t think the IR light would be visible to bugs.

Yep don’t work

After several days of testing now, I’m not comfortable filtering out the notifications and motion only events because I’ve had event that should have triggered person or vehicle tags but were only “motion”. Unless I’m not understanding something, this makes me question the value of Cam Plus subscription if it’s not tagging in a meaningful way.

Also, the detection zone really doesn’t seem to be working. One of cams now has about 3/4 of the view blacked out and I’m getting movement events every 30 seconds or so that are clearly triggered by things that should be excluded from detection.

There have been times when my cams were missing AI events. I found that the position if my cams was mostly to blame as I was not giving the cam a good profile shot and had them mounted at a steep downward angle. I also have my cams overlapping fields of view. Dialing in each cam is an art form.

It never misses a person notification but when a car drives by I don’t want it to say a person. Because it’s not a person it’s a car … This has also happened for a spider crawling by the lens or even a lighting change now come on how am I supposed to trust the camera as my alarm system that will never happen.

It is good to hear that the Person AI is tagging with such accuracy!

I have complained about this in the past. It has gotten better. Most of the time, the car is not what is being tagged, only what started the motion recording. The green motion tracking box may be tracking it, but that is only because it is the biggest\only thing moving. The green box is NOT telling you the object that was tagged.

When a motion event is triggered by that moving car, the AI bot on the server is not just looking at the car to identify it, it is looking at every object in the detection zone - moving or stationary. If there is something else in the frame that might look like a person, the entire video gets tagged as Person.

This used to happen with my cams facing the street A LOT! I have Vehicle Smart AI tags off. Then I figured out that my mailbox, that has a bush in front of it, at a distance looks like a small person with the mailbox as the head. As soon as I excluded the mailbox from the Active DZ, my false Person Notifications plummeted!

It also takes time to dial in a good DZ and exclude objects that are confusing the AI.

I don’t trust them as an alarm system, only as security cams. I have the HMS for the alarm system.

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