What's up with the motion sensor?

Sensors
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I put a motion detector on my front porch a few months ago. It has been working great. It fires off two cameras and two bulbs. Today we get a mild north wind at about 15 to 20 mph, and I’m getting all kinds of notifications. I thought the motion sensor was supposed to only pick up heat, not moving trees or bushes. Thanks for any suggestions . . .

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I can tell you that my PIR cameras do the same thing , partly sunny and windy , also if the wind is actually moving the sensor a little bit it will set off motion

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You’re correct that it picks up heat. Wind carries heat with it too. The Wyze motion detectors aren’t really intended for outdoor use.

When you’re using any IR motion detectors outdoors, it’s not really possible to completely eliminate false positives. There are too many random environmental changes that happen with the weather, wildlife, bugs, etc. Plants give off heat too. It’s still the best method for motion detection with something battery-powered, because it uses very little power. But in an outdoor environment, it just isn’t really possible to make it perfect.

Unfortunately, Wyze doesn’t have any method for adjusting the sensitivity, so all you can really do is adjust where you’re pointing it. (But even if you could adjust the sensitivity, you’d never completely eliminate false positives in an outdoor environment, unless the sensitivity is so low that you’re missing real events)

Your best bet is if you can point the sensor at something inanimate that isn’t likely to have much moving in front of it except for whatever you want to capture. So, for example, if you want to detect motion at your front door, you’d have fewer false positives if you can mount the sensor AWAY from the house, pointing at the house, instead of having it ON the house, pointing AWAY from the house. That’s because if the house is taking up most of its field of view, the brick or siding or whatever is less likely to have sudden temperature changes. And there’s less open-air between, to affect temperature change.

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Thank you all for the suggestions, I will move it around and see which position best suit my needs, now that I understand a little better how it works.

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