Why Is "Light" Considered Motion?

Can I prevent my Wyze Cam from considering changes in lighting to be motion?

I have a Wyze Cam in my attached garage. I have a clear pet door in the door into the house. If I turn on the kitchen light, the pet door “lights up” and the Wyze Cam considers it to be motion.

I do not want to change the detection zone to exclude the pet door, but that wouldn’t solve the overall issue anyway. When the light from the garage door opener goes off (4 minutes after the door is closed) the camera considers that to be motion also.

Because of these types of situations, I get lots of false positives.

Other than reducing the sensitivity (haven’t tried that yet) is there a way have the camera not react to a lighting change in the absence of any actual motion?

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Most likely not.
I believe Motion Detection on these and other cameras is determined by the changes in pixels the camera sensor sees.

I get videos when cars drive by at night and the wall of my home gets lit up.

It’s possible once Wyze gets all the bugs worked out with People Detection it will at least lower the number of unnecessary notifications.
You wouldn’t get notifications of your dog though and would have to turn the Person Detection filter OFF to view non Person videos.

Reducing the sensitivity might be the only way, but I doubt it would help with large changes in pixels like the garage light going ON and OFF or the Pet Door suddenly being lit up.

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I think it has to do with the way the software considers motion. I think the software looks at the difference in pixels in an image and considers that motion. I too will have light set off an alert. Not sure if it’s something they can change.

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In addition to changing detection zones, there are two other ways to get around pixel changes = motion problems:

  • Use the Motion Sensor add-on, part of the sense pack:
    • This looks for heat signatures (people, cars, pets) to trigger a recording. It should work well inside so long as it isn’t pointed toward a sunny location. A sunny location can cause heat changes that fool the sensor.
  • Upgrade to the latest firmware and app version and use the person motion tagging: Free Person Detection From Wyze
    • This assumes that what you’re trying to get alerts about is a person (not an animal or something else)
    • Note: You’ll see plenty of comments that mention this, but person detection has kind of a “fatal” flaw right now in that if the unit detects motion, the 5 minute cool-down period will kick in, even if it turns out that the motion wasn’t a person. Expect this to be addressed in a future update.
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Thanks for the responses. I’ll look into the sense pack. It’s not people I’m looking for, so that solution won’t help.

It’s turns out that the problem is worse than I thought. First, I get the false positive when the inside light is turned on and “lights up” the clear pet door. Then, walking past the pet door triggers the camera again (and again and again). It’s not actually seeing my legs (I checked carefully). It’s seeing the change of brightness in the clear door as I walk by.

For now, the easiest solution is to set the detection zone just to “right” of the pet door. Anything coming or going through the door will still be detected.

I’ll look into other solutions soon. Thanks again.