Familiar Face Detection

[Turnbacktime]

Still exploring the possibilities, or lack of them, with my new Floodlight Camera and the Home App. The camera is covering an area where  family members are seen quite frequently. I don’t need, or even want, notifications every time a family member is seen. But would want them for any unfamiliar face that is seen there.

Familar face seems to work quite well in recognising us. But all it seems to do is change the notification to include  our names. Is there a way to only get notifications for unfamiliar face? I can’t find one. Or is that still one if the wish list items? 

[Brad]

Hi there, 

I apologize for my late response and thank you for all of your patience while waiting for a reply. I definitely understand how frustrating your situation must be, and I wanted to make sure that your concern was acknowledged. Do you still need help with this issue? I know that there's been a delay in response since you posted.

Best Regards, 

Brad.

[Turnbacktime]

Brad

yes I would still appreciate help with this issue. If you have familiar face detection it seems crazy that you can’t mute notifications from a face that you have told the system is “OK”. If I am away from the house I don’t need a notification to tell me my wife has gone down the side of the house to the garage. But I do need a notification to tell me a stranger has wandered down there.

[Brad]

@Turnbacktime

I see what you are saying, and I know that I have experienced the same issue with my own personal cams. However, because this is a learning device, you just have to wait for the cam to learn what y'all look like more and more and you will get less notifications. You can also adjust your settings, or set up Activity Zones that should help reduce these alerts in specific areas if you think that will lessen the alerts. 

Best regards,

Brad.

[Turnbacktime]

Brad

I can see why the system could improve its recognition of familiar faces over time if there is some form of AI involved. It certainly seems pretty hit and miss at the moment. I would say it identifies my wife or myself less than 50% of the time. There are more notifications of “person” than both of us put together. It is particular bad if the person is in about the edge 15-20% of the angle of view.

But that wasn’t my issue. My comment was that I can’t find a way to turn off notifications for people that it does recognise. For example if I am away from the house I don’t want notifications every time my wife goes through the field of view. But I do want notifications if someone it doesn’t recognise is there. Those are the only ones I really want. It would appear, to me at least, to be a fairly basic feature. But I can’t find it.

[Brad]

@Turnbacktime

If this is the case, then I would suggest you Factory Reset the device and start over again. That way it can try and do a better job of picking up people.

Best regards,

Brad.

[nestuser12]

Brad, I am sorry but this is utterly incompetent. Why aren't you addressing his actual request for a feature which so many people are looking for. 

The only thing we want is to be able to only receive notifications for unfamiliar faces and make this an option in the settings - nothing more, but that a dealbreaker.

[Turnbacktime]

Thanks for this. There is no doubt the Google Home App, at least on iOS, is incredibly immature and lacking even basic functions. Combine that with the fact you need to run both Google Home and Nest apps if you have an earlier camera and I can honestly say I can’t remember being so disappointed with software from a major supplier.

it does make you question Google’s commitment to this segment?

[Grades]

This article says you can turn off alerts from familiar faces. Isn't this what you say is missing or am I the one missing something?

Familiar face detection - Google Nest Help

[Turnbacktime · Accepted solution]

No the article says you can turn familiar face detection on/off and nothing about notifications. If you have familiar face detection on then, if you have notifications on, you get notifications for everyone it detects. If it recognises the person it will state the name. Otherwise it says person detected.

Turn familiar face detection off and it just states “person” on each notification. 
It isn’t possible to mute notifications for familiar faces and leave them on for people that aren’t recognised.

[Brad]

Hey there,

I just wanted to jump in real fast and thank you for your feedback. Please feel free to submit your feedback to us. I've put instructions for feedback below.

• Open the Google Home app

• At the top right, tap your account.
• Tap Feedback 

• tap the type of device you'd like to submit feedback for.
• To display available emails, in the "From:" section, tap the arrow on the right. Select your email address.
• In the feedback summary, write a brief description of your issue.
• Be sure to check the box for Screenshot and System logs.
• To submit feedback, at the top right corner, tap Send 

If you need anything else, please let me know.

Best regards,

Brad.

[aatienza]

Hey folks,

Just checking in to make sure that you've seen our responses. Please let me know if you have other questions or concerns as I will be locking this in 24 hours if I won't hear back from you again. Feel free to start a new thread and we'll be happy to help.

Thanks,

Archie

[Turnbacktime]

Why lock the thread. Just to stop more people confirming that the Google Home app is woefully lacking in functionality?

I have followed the advice and submitted my feedback on various issues as suggested by Brad. You don’t hear anything back, it disappears into a vacuum.

Google should be utterly embarrassed by the Home app, at least as far as the cameras go. It really is a joke and makes me regret buying a floodlight cam.

1) No proper integration of earlier model cameras. So you have to keep old and new apps going to get notifications from old cams, configure older cams or make clips from older cams.

2) No multiple user access management. Everyone has same privileges.

3) No ability to to mute notifications if a familiar face detected.

The list goes on. It is a truly appalling example of product management. If it had been a product if mine when I was in software product management I would probably have been sacked. It can only make customers think that Google isn’t really committed to it.

[aatienza]

Hey Turnbacktime,

We hear you. Our team is working hard to deliver the best experience for our users — we'll take this as feedback.

We apologize if this thread was closed sooner than you would have liked. As Community specialists, we occasionally do a bit of housekeeping to keep the conversations in our community fresh and relevant. This includes locking threads after a period of inactivity.

We invite you to search the Community to see if a discussion is open and ongoing about your topic. If not, feel free to start a new thread.

Thanks,

Archie

[niwasaki]

Archie, it sounds an ineffective idea to close an existing thread and start a new thread for the same topic if the issue in the topic isn't resolved yet. It shouldn't be called housekeeping.

What should we do is to collect comments about a same topic in not multiple threads but a single thread. Then engineers/PMs can find related comments more easily.

[Brad]

@niwasaki

As Community Specialists, we occasionally do a bit of housekeeping to keep the conversations in our community fresh and relevant. This includes locking threads after a period of inactivity. I understand what you are saying, but we still have the processes that we must follow, regardless if the issue isn't resolved or not.

Best Regards,
Brad

[Brad]

Hi there,

Just checking in to see if you still need assistance with this issue.  We'll leave this topic open for another 24 hours in case there are any follow up questions or comments.

Best regards,
Brad

[niwasaki]

+1 for turning off notifications for familiar faces. I'm really disappointed about the lack of the functionality...