topic Re: cant setup activity zone on nest doorbell camera (wired gen 2) in google home, camera wont open in Cameras and Doorbells

Unable to create or modify activity zone

Ligu — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 18:22:45 GMT

As of today I am unable to create or modify activity zones - I removed and reinstalled camera and google home app - it did not solve the issue

Google Gen 2 Outdoor Camera Zones NOT Working Correctly

mrmagloo — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 13:58:37 GMT

I have the Costco 3 pack cameras, and I am running into a Zone Notification issue with the camera facing the street. I have the Front camera over the garage door facing the street. Naturally without an additional zone, you will get notifications for everything selected - Vehicles, People, Animals, Motion, etc. LSo to prevent getting a notification for every car that drives down the street, I created a Zone 1 that cuts off at approx 5 feet from the street. Let's Call that default Zone 0 which in the app they then call Out side of Zone.

I removed cars and motion from Zone 0 (Outside of zone), but I still get every car going down the street.

I then created an even tighter Zone 2 which cuts off at perhaps 20 foot from the street, and removed motion from Zone 1. Well, I still get Zone 0 alerts which I only have selected people and animals.

What is the point of setting zones if the app will alert outside of the set zones anyway? This is a total waste of battery and the phone's battery. Please fix!

Re: Google Gen 2 Outdoor Camera Zones NOT Working Correctly

MplsCustomer — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 14:49:16 GMT

@mrmagloo

Our zones on our battery camera work just fine, with the exception that if an event (say a person) occurs in two zones, only one of which has notifications turned, on, the notification is labeled as occurring in the first zone in which the event occurred. For example, if a person walks through Zone 1 first and then Zone 2, the event is labeled has having occurred in Zone 1 even if notifications are turned off in Zone 1.

Perhaps you could do a screen capture of your zones along with an explanation of what does not seem to be working. Maybe customers in this forum will have some suggestions. (I'm not following your verbal description: "I created a Zone 1 that cuts off at approx 5 feet from the street. Let's Call that default Zone 0..."

Or you could contact Support using the link and instructions in this post:

https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Cameras-and-Doorbells/Using-Google-Nest-s-quot-Contact-Us-quot-page-to-contact-Support/td-p/455391

Re: Google Gen 2 Outdoor Camera Zones NOT Working Correctly

mrmagloo — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 16:03:26 GMT

Thanks for the reply. Perhaps these screenshots will make it clearer for you, and the Support Team.

As you can see, I have the original default Zone 0, (which when you add additional zones turns into "Out of Zone") set for People and Animals only. With NO notifications.

Zone 1 which ends approx 5-10 feet from the street set to People, Vehicles and Animals.

Zone 2 which ends approx 20 feet from the street set to People, Vehicles, Animals, and Motion.

With this configuration, I get on average 30 or more Alerts of Vehicles or Motion (which are vehicles driving by). Obviously, I only have Alerts for Vehicles, People and Animals for Zone 1, and Vehicles, People, Animals and Motion in Zone 2, so if I am EVER getting alerts for Cars Driving down the street, there is a problem with the Zones - Would you agree?

Please see the next screen shot of a few minutes ago of exactly this. If it's Motion, which is only enabled in Zone 2, which is 20 feet away from the event, there is indeed a real problem. There is absolutely no shadow or anything occuring in the Blue Zone 2 region. I hope this helps to document this clearer.

Re: Google Gen 2 Outdoor Camera Zones NOT Working Correctly

MplsCustomer — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 16:20:22 GMT

@mrmagloo

The "Motion" event in your example could have been triggered by wind moving the trees in the center and right background, causing movement in the trees' shadows, which are in Zone 2. I think even the sun going behind a cloud could trigger a "Motion" event with the shadow from your house.

If it were me, I would be tempted to go with just one Zone with notifications turned on, with boundaries something like this, to avoid having "Motion" notifications triggered by trees' shadows. And it would still cover the yard closer to the house, which you probably really care about. And you might still get false notifications for changes to the shadow from your house.

We had to play with our Front Yard zones to avoid getting excess notifications.

Re: Google Gen 2 Outdoor Camera Zones NOT Working Correctly

mrmagloo — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 21:46:39 GMT

Mpls,

I know you are trying to help, but you are missing a few crucial pieces. Firstly, I have Motion Turned OFF in Zone 1 - so there should be NO Zone 1 Motions alerts, right? Next, there is virtually no wind today, but to your point on shadows, I think you need to understand that the house is facing West. That means there is NO possible Zone boundary that would work by your logic. The House totally shades out to the street in the morning, and the trees totally shade to the house towards evening. So, there is NEVER a time where the Trees and Shadows are not encroaching during a typical day. As such, it would be impossible to recreate Zone boundaries multiple times a day to avoid tree shadows. Besides, the camera should be able to suppress these kinds of motions unless the winds are unusually high.

More importantly, the example I provided was just a quick clip I grabbed quickly as I was working. To better prove my point, I should have done a screen shot with a flurry of Vehicle alerts, which I now have done. I think you will agree that I should NEVER get a Vehicle Alert from any vehicle in the street, as Zone 1 and especially Zone 2 is clearly well short of the street. And Outside of Zone is turned OFF for Vehicles. Would you agree? If you finally do, then lets refocus your inquiry to the folks at Google.

Lastly, I've got 2 years of experience with Arlo 4K's, which I mistakenly gave to my kids which are absolutely light years better. I thought it would be a good idea to standardize on Google, and its been a rough road. It's time for Google to start deciding if they truly want to be in this space or not, as they are falling behind quickly. This isn't the only glaring issues with the Google Cameras BTW.

Re: Google Gen 2 Outdoor Camera Zones NOT Working Correctly

MplsCustomer — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 01:36:24 GMT

@mrmagloo

Sorry for not catching the important fact that "Motion" is turned off for Zone 1.

In your latest example, I can't explain the flurry of "Vehicle" notifications. We don't have them turned on for our one plugged-in battery camera, because it's in the front of our house and we don't have a driveway in front, and don't need notifications for passing cars. But it does well with "People" notifications.

We don't use "Motion" notifications because we'd get so many false notifications, including ones triggered by shadows that come and go as clouds pass in front of the sun.

Beyond that, I don't know what to suggest. I suppose it's possible something is awry with your camera that a factory reset might rectify, but I really don't know.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Re: Google Gen 2 Outdoor Camera Zones NOT Working Correctly

EdmondB — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 20:52:15 GMT

Hello mrmagloo,

I’m sorry for the trouble this has caused you. Let me help you out. Just to check: Have you tried removing the zones and creating a new one? Did you try to restart or factory reset your Nest Camera? If not, here is a link on how to restart or factory reset your Nest camera or doorbell.

Thanks for the help, @MplsCustomer.

I look forward to your response.

Best,

Edmond

Re: Google Gen 2 Outdoor Camera Zones NOT Working Correctly

mrmagloo — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 13:28:51 GMT

I have followed all of the typical blame the user self-help items. Restarts, Resets, Removing and Replacing Zones, etc. I'm not sure if this could be related to the well known and acknowledged poor focus problem, making alert types harder to identify, but I have entered a work order. I'm pretty much done chasing my tail. I've been putting up with this issue since day one, and was originally told it would be resolved with future updates. Well 6 months later, the performance of these cameras have gotten only worse. 1.67 and especially 1.69 are disasters and we are still waiting on ETA's. All the Resets in the world isn't going to fix shoddy software.

Re: Unable to create or modify activity zone

MplsCustomer — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 20:21:59 GMT

@Ligu

There must be a problem on Google Nest's servers right now.

If we go to Settings | Events | Seen events for our battery camera in the Google Home app, instead of a screen with our Activity Zones we get a black screen saying "Couldn't turn on" and "Open camera" even though we are accessing our camera's live feed. Clicking "Add a Zone" yields the same results. Clicking "Open Camera" just returns to the Live Feed screen. Activity Zones are inaccessible.

Re: Unable to create or modify activity zone

Ligu — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 23:38:27 GMT

Yes indeed this are the symptoms plus since a couple of weeks it became a pain to review events without having a crash of the google home app. I have sent many crash reports via the feedback. Do you also have crashes when reviewing past events ?

Re: Unable to create or modify activity zone

MplsCustomer — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 00:12:01 GMT

@Ligu

The Google Home app often crashes, or hangs halfway through viewing a clip, or displays a false "Camera unavailable" message halfway through viewing a clip. For the last two, we can drag the tracking icon a bit to get the clip to resume. I've also sent crash reports. This has been happening the last couple of weeks.

Re: Unable to create or modify activity zone

Ligu — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 09:27:31 GMT

I tried this morning to create an activity zone and … problem is solved !

Re: Unable to create or modify activity zone

MplsCustomer — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 13:36:38 GMT

It's not working for us. We cannot administer Seen Events or Activity Zones. We still get a black screen saying "Couldn't turn on" and "Open camera" even though the camera is on and viewable.

Re: Unable to create or modify activity zone

MplsCustomer — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 13:52:18 GMT

After trying it on 2 different devices and sending feedback about the failure, it just started working again.

“Can’t turn on camera” activity zone error message

Lia1985 — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 16:19:50 GMT

Nest doorbell - cannot add activity zones. Previous posts’ suggestions did not solve the error despite removing and re-adding the doorbell to google home.

any suggestions? Super tired on the excessive notifications.

thanks!

Re: “Can’t turn on camera” activity zone error message

MplsCustomer — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 19:24:37 GMT

@Lia1985

I suspect there's a problem on Google Nest's servers. As we reported on the other thread (https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Cameras-and-Doorbells/Unable-to-create-or-modify-activity-zone/m-p/535339), we had the same problem yesterday, getting a black screen saying "Couldn't turn on" and "Open camera" even though we were accessing our camera's live feed. We also couldn't access Seen Events. Clicking on "Open camera" just returned us to the Live Feed view.

This morning I had the same problem, trying several times on our 2 iPads and one of our iPhones, reporting Feedback on each device. After several tries, it just started working again, and is working for us right now.

Camera not turning on when editing zones

dax970 — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 23:11:09 GMT

This started happening in the last 3 days.
I have 9 cameras at 3 different properties in 3 different cities. When I go to edit the Zone for recording and notifications, I get this message, “couldn’t turn on” “open camera”. I open the camera and it’s working just fine. I’ve seen in this blog, to remove the camera from the app and reinstall it, but I can not. I have to be on the local WiFi to that and they are in other states. Besides, how does it happen to nine cameras? I have deleted the app and reinstalled it with no success. is there a software issue or any advise?

Re: “Can’t turn on camera” activity zone error message

MplsCustomer — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 01:29:37 GMT

It's broken again, and there's a new thread reporting the same problem:

https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Cameras-and-Doorbells/Camera-not-turning-on-when-editing-zones/td-p/535696

Re: Unable to create or modify activity zone

MplsCustomer — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 01:31:46 GMT

It's broken again, and there's a new thread reporting the same problem:

https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Cameras-and-Doorbells/Camera-not-turning-on-when-editing-zones/td-p/535696