My cam v3 is mounted in my garage. It seems to get triggered more than I would expect when nothing much is happening. I have “Event Recording” set to Record Motion Events (All Motion Events) but “Record Sound Events” is OFF. Should I change it to only trigger on sound events instead? There is a garage door opener light that goes on and off, which I expect is triggering the motion, but sometimes the light is off and I still get lots of motion triggers. My Detection Settings are set to Motion = 25 and Sound = 20. Can I change that? What about selecting a Detection Zone that excludes the light? Just trying to find a good balance and stop getting notified on my iPhone or Apple Watch so many times a day. Thanks in advance.
Do you have the green box enabled in the options? That will tell you what is triggering it. If you are using the IR lights, my guess would be bugs or even dust sometimes.
Detection zone can definitely help, sometimes light may still trigger it, you have to toy with it and see (they have some intelligence to ignore certain light changes but it isn’t perfect).
Detection sensitivity settings I’ve found don’t seem to make much difference, at least not on my cams. I don’t use sound detection as there are just too many sounds around here that would trigger it, but it might work in your case. But you wouldn’t want a quiet intruder to not trigger it either.
That won’t work most likely because the light will change the entire camera viewpoint and pick up a change on every pixel.
In my garage, I have sound enabled and I can see a notification that the garage door makes a sound. Notification indicates sound triggered the event. I also have my cam set for event recording and use IR lights in the garage with no apparent issue.
One time, my garage door opened mysteriously on its own. I caught it on the recording. I now use the lock to disable night remote access. That was the first time in 20 years that happened. Luckily no one entered the garage.
It’s called Flipper Zero. Fun little gadget 
My cams are pretty good with light changes, I do recall one of the firmwares for the OG said something about improving ignoring lights or something. My outdoor lights come on at dusk and one cam is right near them, pretty drastic change on the image but no event triggers. But some headlights if they move across the detection zone (where I am there are lots of turning cars) will sometimes do it, but usually when they hit the stone wall along my walkway and suddenly the reflection becomes very bright, not just the lighting up of the area. I guess like anything you just gotta try things and see.
Could be. I locked Flipper Zero out now, at least in the overnight.
My cams get triggered when the clouds move in front of the sun. I tried adjusting sensitivity but it makes no difference. I got used to it.
I would think with IR lights on, the whole screen would flare white when the light turned on. I have seen that for a cam looking out the kitchen window and I switch on the lights.
I have an OG in my dark front hall with IR on, and it washes white briefly when I turn on the light, however no event fires until I walk into the detection zone which is partway down the steps. However sometimes the sun from a window next to hit hits it just right with a flare of sorts (it isn’t in IR mode at that point obviously) and that will trigger it. Probably varies with cam model too.
I would think you’d actually want to know if your garage light turns on though…
True. Same here.
There is no way an intruder would not make noise. The only way into the attached garage is to open the garage door, and that would probably make a lot of noise. I may try turning off motion and setting sound just to see how that works, I may also give the detection zone a try before that. Thanks for the suggestions.
1 Like
What if you forget and leave the door open?
Good point. I tried setting it to trigger on “sound” only and got no events, even when my wife got in her car and left for work this morning.
If you are worried about intruders to your garage. Get contact sensors for the doors, in addition to the camera. Then you can setup an event to start recording if a door opens. And have all your other rules.
Additionally, get motion sensors and then set your camera’s to only record Smart Detections (people, cars, animals, packages). That way, if the motion sensor picks up something, you can tell the camera to record and avoid the motion sensing from the camera.
I think Smart Detection requires a subscription. I already have a smart myQ garage door opener that lets me know with the garage door is opened/closed or left open. I got the camera as a backup to check that the door is really open or closed. I was having issues where I was getting notified that the door was left open when I left for work. Using the camera I should verify visually 
It’s very difficult to use Motion Detection events on cameras that are outside. Changes in lighting (Sun or headlights), leaves, and dust, trigger the camera often. Smart Detection is the only thing I found to be able to filter out the fodder.
I have a garage cam and people driving by my house at night would trigger it. Or the clouds changing the lighting of the garage would trigger it.
I realize people don’t like subscriptions but, being able to trigger on Smart Events is worth every penny in my book.
Besides that, it’s $4 a month for a camera or $10 for unlimited cameras. That is no different than buying Starbucks, Netflix, Anything on Amazon, Carwash, etc. etc… our world is full of subscriptions. It’s not that much money to get the most bang for your buck.
1 Like
Can get it down lower by buying yearly subscriptions too (I’ve seen sales and promos as well). In my situation, I’ve managed to get things set up to minimal false alerts using detection zones, placement, and sensitivity, without any subscription. But I also don’t have alerts on every cam, and the ones that do have very limited zones. All I want to know is if you walk up the steps to one of my doors, or come into my house. I’m out and about doing stuff all day, and I have a multi-family where others are also, so attempting to alert any time someone walks in the back yard or even near the garage is a non-starter even with AI detections.
I suppose with all the catalytic converter thefts, I should have the one aimed at my cars set to AI detection and alerts from like dusk to dawn. Right now I can’t because the IR lights attract too many bugs. It is something I’ve considered, but honestly my driveway is long-ish and I would hear right away if someone was under there doing anything, I can hear even just footsteps in the driveway. I’ve also yet to hear of one being stolen out of a driveway, just the street.
1 Like
They are currently $20 a year for 1 camera. or $100 a year for Unlimited Cameras. There are deals a couple times a year that help off-set this but overall, not too much money.
What I would suggest is that you setup Automation rules for Outdoor vs. Indoor cameras. For example, I have my outdoor cameras setup to NOT notify during the day. They are still logging events and recording, but I don’t need to know when my wife goes out to fill the bird feeder. But, after 9 pm, I do want to know if there is someone in my backyard. So I turn on notifications after a certain hour and I also make lights blink inside the house when a person is detected. BONUS FEATURE, I also have Alexa audibly say that someone is in the backyard if detected.
This is the only way I know of to control being over notified. But still track everything that happens if needed.
And not to get too fancy, but I use GeoFencing too so that when I leave my house in the middle of the day, notifications are turned ON for those same Outdoor cameras because I want to know if there is a person there during the day because I’m not there. And vice-versa, when I come home during the day, the geo-fencing rule turns off notifications so it won’t spam me when I come home.
The automations of Wyze products is “the bees knees”, as the kids say these days.
I tried the geofencing but it drained my phone battery way too fast. Now if I’m going to be gone for a day or more I’ll just tap the “I’m away” and “I’m home” as needed. Can even put them right on my phone’s main screen via Android widget.
Being that there are valid people on my property when I’m not here, my circumstances are a bit different than others too. So my “I’m away” enables alerts for the cams pointing at my private entrances 24x7, but outdoor alerts (driveway, back yard, etc) only later at night. For me the automations along with tweaking of zones and placement work fine. May not be perfect, but I don’t think AI would help much in my case. Maybe that one cam in my driveway that needs IR LEDs at night, it would let me turn on alerts overnight and ignore the bugs, but I could also do that with an external IR light, or hopefully someday they’ll add the “when motion is detected, turn on the IR lights” rule which would also solve it. Though I’m guessing that isn’t a big priority since it probably competes with their paid AI.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.