Too Many Lighting Changes Being Recorded

Does anybody have any suggestions to cut down on AI picking up too many lighting changes? I probably delete 20 or more per day after reporting under AI. I have the settings set for “motion” only and under AI “person” and “pet” only. But the camera pick up lighting changes that are not even nearby. Camera is BEHIND the house but it’s picking up lighting reflections in the trees…the lights are from cars in FRONT of the house where the road is at least 125 feet away. Way too sensitive to lighting changes…even if a light is turned on in the house and is reflected in the trees behind the house. Have at 50 sensitivity.

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That is an issue with many cameras, including Wyze. In order for AI to work, the cameras detect “motion” which in reality means changes to a number of pixels. The camera records and sends the recording to the Wyze servers which run the AI detection of person or pet. The AI flags the recording appropriately and notifies you. You still get too many recordings of “motion” which you can filter out on the event page, but that’s about it. You can try re-orienting the camera to pickup fewer light changes but not much else.

Thanks for the info.
As I dug deeper I saw others who were having the same problem.
I didn’t realize how common it was.
Thanks again

Ps. Beautiful cat

Thanks. That’s Bob. He was a feral cat we tamed and he became a really good friend. Unfortunately, he escaped from a cat care facility when we had to evacuate our home temporarily during a wildfire. He got out and we never found him.

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That’s terrible. Very sorry. We are a cat loving family and I can’t even imagine going through that

Oh bummer. I hope he makes his way back.

I don’t think we’ll see him again. He’s been gone over a year. We tried looking for him but he was probably so scared he ran from his “prison” into the local farm country. We think he’s okay because he was feral and lived on our rural property with us for 5 years. Quite a good hunter, brought us several gophers to share. Also quite aware of predators.

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Hope so.

Can I pick your brain for a minute since it seems you really know your stuff? Is it worth the effort to report all these lighting change events to Wyze as they suggest at the bottom of the page where you view the particular event? I dutifully do this perhaps 20 times each day, But wonder if they really use it and hopefully will solve (or reduce) this problem. From your original response it seems that a fix is unlikely. Thanks for any input you can provide.

It’s hard to say what happens with the “AI” submissions or the logs for that matter. Both are sort of black holes since there is no response on them. Even the forum is only as good as the customers supporting it since Wyze apparently rarely looks at the posts unless the moderators get involved and contact the Wyze people directly.

Thank you for the additional input…it is appreciated.

I had TWO False Positive notifications within one week (Motion Sensor v2–located on my Great Room fireplace mantle). Both times we were away from home and our security system triggered, at which time Noonlight immediately texted me (TWICE) and then called my cell phone. Thank goodness they contact us before they send the cavalry (LOL), as I told them it more than likely was a false positive each time–soon verified by my observing all of my live cams via the Wyze app.

HERE IS WHAT I BELIEVE CAUSE THESE FALSE POSITIVES: Upon reviewing recorded footage when the false positives occurred, I saw a concentrated stream of light hit the sensor and then a few seconds later the light vanished. Apparently it was sunlight coming in from a front window hitting the sensor and then the sun went under a cloud, thus creating a trigger. I moved the sensor and have not had any other false positives now for a week or so.

BOTTOM LINE: Wyze NEEDS to adjust the sensitivity to light somehow to help prevent light being misinterpreted as motion!! I don’t know how or if they can do it, but if at all possible it IS imperative that they look into it and research this thoroughly so that the AI algorithm can be fine tuned!!

The motion sensors detect changes in temperature not light. However, the situation you described with sunlight could definitely trigger the sensor. I believe the instructions say to avoid that kind of setup just for that reason.

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Color change, or pixel change, isn’t necessarily motion. Why not use a different algorithm? Edge detection and shapes detection don’t depend on color, so much. Basically a B&W image will have same shapes and edges as a color image, for example. I’m no expert. It was just a thought.

There are two types of motion detection in Wyze products: PIR detects changes in temperature. Cameras for the most part detect changes in pixels within the frame. Many pixel changes = motion. AI detection occurs on Wyze servers after the camera detects motion and sends a video stream to them. The AI algorithm then determines what kind of object was detected, person, pet, package, etc.

I hope this is the right place to add this feedback / feature request:

I would think it should be possible to allow users to reduce false alarms on at least some moving heat or light shadows (e.g. trees in sun, bright car headlights, lights turning on and off at night).

For example by having the software recognize spots of bright white that are well defined and in high contrast with the relatively dark surrounding areas. And/or light that covers very wide areas (either continuously or not), and/or flips on rapidly all at once.

Perhaps this feature could just suppress the notification but still record the video event. And/or there could be an optional setting the user could control to enable or disable this event suppression.

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Like this wishlist item?

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Thanks, I’ve now voted for that thread. But the fact that a fundamental request to reduce false alarms (from trees and light) is 3.5 years old and still marked as “maybe later” leads me to conclude that Wyze has no intention or ability to fix this. Or it would be fixed by now.

I can’t imagine what could possibly be more important, so maybe the existing products just can’t do it.

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