I just upgraded from v2 to v4 cameras and am having difficulty in getting my notifications straight. All of my cameras are indoors and I have SD cards recording continuously. I am not interested in being notified for sound or motion at all, but I would like to be notified in the event of a smoke/CO alarm.
What’s the magic sequence of settings I need to set in order to just get notified for these alarms? The only notification I have enabled in settings is “Other Sounds”, but this has the effect of notifying me whenever any sound is detected. If I turn off “Other Sounds”, I no longer get alarm notifications.
If I’m interpreting correctly what @seapup told me recently, you should be able to completely disable notifications for all cams, and enable just the two “alarms” for the cams you want to listen for those.
This does not appear to be working for me. I’ve disabled all notifications but left the alarms enabled, but I’m not getting notified that there was an alarm when I test my detectors. I still have event recording turned on and I can see where the cameras are detecting the sound, but it just says “sound detected”.
Would the events indicate “alarm” or would it just say “sound”? Either way, there are no push notifications.
I’ve always wondered but never tested it, and also wasn’t sure what the settings needed to be. I’ve set them up like described here (and in the other thread) but haven’t tested. I wonder if it has to go for a certain amount of time in order to reduce false alarms?
I wondered that myself, but my v2 cameras would all alert when I initiated the test button my smoke detector which causes all of them to alarm for about 10 seconds.
This was my experience, as well, and I was pressing the smoke detector test button for >30 seconds (I have a vague recollection of reading somewhere that the alarms needed to be sounding for at least that amount of time, but I didn’t find it when I went looking again) in a room with a Cam v4 and two Cam Pan v3s.
I’ve read elsewhere on the Forum about multiple cameras even rooms away (and even in garages) alerting on in-home smoke detector sounds, so apparently it does happen, but I’m not sure what combination of settings is needed to make this happen.
That’s what I was thinking, too, which is why I held the button in for more than half a minute (while wearing hearing protection), but I don’t recall a source for that information.
OG with notifications disabled - red light comes on, event logged, but no notification.
OG with motion notifications enabled only (not sound) - red light comes on, event logged, notification sent. So apparently notifications have to be enabled, but maybe can uncheck all the “notify” checkboxes. Haven’t tried that yet, but it would seem to make sense, notifications enabled but all of the options for “notify” disabled. It seems the alarm sound is just a hidden notify option so you need the main notifications for the cam enabled.
On a positive note, the 5 minute cooldown doesn’t appear to apply. The cameras both had logged me moving in front of them just before the test and the smoke event still logged. It took about 10 seconds (two sets of 3 beeps and then 1 or two beeps out of the third set of 3) before the light turned red. My CO detector when you hold the test button only does 2 sets of 4 beeps and that wasn’t enough to trigger it, so it seems it wants a 3rd set or a certain amount of time (somewhere around 10 seconds I’d guess) before it logs the event.
Actually just noticed one of the CO tests I did (where I brought the detector closer to the camera) did log an event (no notification since that is the cam with them disabled). Oddly it didn’t turn the light red that I noticed like the Smoke did, which is why I thought it hadn’t. But when I tried it in its normal place, about halfway between the two cams that have alarm detection enabled, neither picked it up. Possibly it wasn’t long enough, will have to try with a smoke alarm in a similar spot when people aren’t sleeping.
I’m curious if the sound detection sensitivity has any impact. Since I don’t use sound detection, I’ve cranked it up to 100. Will have to try and test if my main smoke detector and CO alarm (both about halfway between the two cams) is detected by either/both now.
Thing that stinks is one of the cams I don’t want notifications always on, but I do want it recording events, and I have it as part of an “I’m away” shortcut that will turn notifications on. So if I turn them on and disable all events (which in theory should get alarm detection working) then I can’t use it with my shortcut.
Suppose if the other one will pick up the alarms at 100 sensitivity, then it is moot, we’ll see. Otherwise I guess I could toggle on the “other motion” notify when I’m away instead of using the shortcut, but that’s sort of a pain.
Going to add a wishlist request that alarm sound notifications should ignore the camera’s notification setting and always send an alert (obviously you have to have global notifications for the app enabled, they can’t override that).
Increasing the sound sensitivity to 100 does seem to have made one cam pick the alarms up better. The other which is through a closed door (but can still hear it) didn’t trigger even at 100 though. But not surprising, the mics on these cams seem to be pretty short range.
I also noticed while testing that there seems to be a separate 5 minute “cooldown” that applies to alarm events. This makes sense as I had previously noted that motion and sound seemed to have their own separate 5 minute cooldowns. Shouldn’t be an issue in this case, no need for constant alerts when an alarm is sounding, you can go look at live view to see if it is going still. Whether it shares the 5 minute cooldown with sound events, not sure, for me it doesn’t matter, but for those who are using sound detection, it might (some other sound logs an event then it won’t log/notify a smoke alarm for several minutes potentially).
For my purposes I guess I’ll abandon my “I’m home” and “I’m away” that controls notifications on the cam that can hear most of my alarms and instead enable motion notifications when I am going to be away for a while. Having alarm notifications is more important than the convenience of a shortcut button. Hopefully the wishlist item to notify no matter what will get some traction some day.
Here are the two things I tried:
1.
-Event recording set to motion only
-Notifications enabled, but uncheck “notify” for all of them under “manage”
-Both alarm types enabled
Notification is sent when alarm sounds, but not for any other event. Events are logged in the timeline and recorded to SD card (including the alarm event and motion events), but no notifications.
-Event recording disabled (both motion and sound)
-Notifications enabled (you cannot go into “manage” now since all events are disabled)
-Both alarms enabled
Notification is sent when alarm sounds and an event is logged/recorded, but no events are logged/recorded for any other sound or motion, nor do they send notifications.
So depending if you want other events logged/recorded (but not notified) one of the above should accomplish what you want. While it may not be exactly the same for all cameras I think it should be pretty consistent.
I would probably set your sensitivity for sound to 100 under detection settings to make sure it picks up as much as it can.
That might depend on what you mean by “global notifications”. In the settings for receiving doorbell button press notifications as a VoIP call, there’s this:
Yeah that’s what I mean, the app must be able to send notifications to the OS or no override is going to change it. Within the app they could potentially have some sort of override even if you disable notifications in the app settings, but turning that on the first time is usually what prompts you to set it up in android so that might be confusing.
