Lights turning off activate camera

OK, this may be a dumb question but here goes. I have been using a Wyzecam 2 in my garage for a few months. I have a motion sensor that turns on the garage lights when it detects motion. Up until recently, the lights have only stayed on for about 30 seconds. The wyzecam would activate when the door was opened and I have always assumed that it was the motion of the door that was activating the camera. However, recently I changed the timing of the garage light such that it stays on for 15 minutes (instead of 30 seconds) after detecting motion. Now, the garage lights come on and the camera activates when the door is opened as before, but what is new is that in 15 minutes, when the lights go out, the camera will activate again, even though nothing is moving in the garage.

So, it appears that the camera sensing lights going on and off as ‘motion’ and activates. Is this normal? Is there a way to not have the camera activate simply for lights going out? I have set the sensitivity to the lowest setting. My assumption as to why this didn’t happen before is the lights going off in 30 seconds occurred before the camera had a chance to ‘reset’ and prepare for the next activation.

Regards,

John

Your assumption is correct.

The ‘motion detection’ feature is a bit of a misnomer. The cam really detects ‘change of pixels’. When the garage light goes out after 15 minutes, the sensing algorithm sees a bunch of pixels changing (getting dark) and triggers a recording. Not much you can do about it.

@kyphos,

Thanks for the quick response, even if disappointing.

Regards,

John

I would try either having the light turn off in under five minutes, or, maybe try turning motion sensing off, and SOUND sensing on. The noise of the door opening should trigger recording.

I have the Cam Pan that detected lightning and I assumed it was because of the pixel change.

@phakemail,

The reason I changed the turn-off time-out was so that the lights would not go off when I working in the garage, so that is not an option.

However, your idea about using Sound as the trigger is a good one. I will give that a try.

Thanks.

Based on the response that the trigger is based on pixel changes, the lightning makes sense. I have shades over my garage windows so it was not affecting me.

My dusk to dawn porch lights trigger an alert Everyday when they come on and when they go off .

My big yard light on the pole barn Comes on pretty early and is farther away so it doesn’t Trigger the Cam

I have my camera set to be activated by a person. Yet it is activated by outdoor lights either going on or off or by the wind changing the shadow on the wall. Any way to fix this?

Activation is motion…notification is Person. These are two different things. Motion trigger sends the video to the Wyze servers which examine the videos to detect a Person and send notifications.

My cameras also get activated by outdoor lights going on and off. Also at dawn and dusk when the ambient light passes a threshold. The cams may flip in and out of night mode several times (click, click, click) before they settle down into the new mode, and each transition triggers the motion detect.

For years now, I’ve fiddled with the detection sensitivity and the detection zone trying to minimize the number of false alerts, but to no avail. It’s the nature of the technology, and price point.