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Google Indoor Camera Night Vision Too Dark

LK18
Community Member

We just set up the Google Nest Indoor 2nd Gen camera as a baby camera. As you can see in the image below, the night vision is all but worthless due to focusing solely on the walls to left and right. Any idea how to fix this aside from moving the camera? We have a Nest IQ Indoor (2018) and it’s night vision is superb - never had an issue like this before.

Edit: this is apparently affecting a lot of us Nest users. If you are also having this issue, please add your voice below so we can get more notice by Google.

B1EF19CA-906A-41E1-9D9F-B25EBF924FBB.png

1 Recommended Answer

Brad
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey there,


Sorry to hear your Night Vision video quality is poor, I’m happy to help! Most Night Vision specific issues are caused by your camera’s infrared light that reflects off a surface near your camera.  If a bright white shape along the edge appears while everything else is too dark, there might be a surface that’s too close. That could be why if you had a previous baby monitor, or another camera emitting its own IR light, you may be experiencing this. 

To fix this, angle your camera, so the surface stays out of view. If that doesn’t do the trick, take a look at this Help Center article about Night Vision video quality. There are more steps you should try to improve your video quality.

 

Best regards,
Brad

View Recommended Answer in original post

157 REPLIES 157

Yep, its **bleep**ty... and yeah we both and mabey more people having to much google products. so we can,t say we doing google the door out and ring or something else new in house.. its to much and to expensive for fast switching of products.. and yeah its sad, because first t was google to google nest, and now from google nest to google again...  and their support are .....
but yeah finger crossed, i wait few weeks, i hope they fix this. i have more then 1 year Guarantee on the products.. i think i give them max 1/2 motnhs for fix this whole issue. otherwise then yeah all google goes out my house and new stuff in... but i hope not. 

 

btw, im checking every day on the google play store for an update for the google home app... but still no updates. 

Brad
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey there,


Sorry to hear your Night Vision video quality is poor, I’m happy to help! Most Night Vision specific issues are caused by your camera’s infrared light that reflects off a surface near your camera.  If a bright white shape along the edge appears while everything else is too dark, there might be a surface that’s too close. That could be why if you had a previous baby monitor, or another camera emitting its own IR light, you may be experiencing this. 

To fix this, angle your camera, so the surface stays out of view. If that doesn’t do the trick, take a look at this Help Center article about Night Vision video quality. There are more steps you should try to improve your video quality.

 

Best regards,
Brad

DJSuprimeW
Community Member

thank u for a repley in this thread. 🙂 but its weird. because it was working perfectly before an google home update. 🙂 so i think thats again not the real issue here. we tryd everything.. but still no luck 🙂  myself(me) tried everything other angle, with walls without walls with light without light,  its a mess now since the last update. Google needs to look inti the software/update of the home app 🙂  p.s im still busy rightnow with everything like reset, power on/power of, unplugged and plugged in again. night vision on/of/automatic etc still no luckk

 

@Brad 

The customers here are ALL reporting that their Google Nest cameras have suddenly started recording dark, almost useless footage at night. There seem to be just three possibilities:

1) ALL of these customers have changed their settings to cause this dark footage.

2) ALL of these customers' cameras have suddenly started to fail, resulting in dark nighttime footage.

3) Something is going on in the Google Nest app, the Google Home app, or on the Google Nest servers to cause this dark footage at night for some customers.

Since the first two seem to be remarkable coincidences, could Google Nest please investigate whether there is some bug in their systems that is causing this problem for some customers?

thnx for your reply!

Just looking again into that white walls etc. but it looks like the night vision is now in the foreground white and in the background dark. but it was first foregrond dark and in the background more like grey/white(good nightvision screen) i upload in a few min few new screens. here. its like dark/green/white/blurry mess... so i think point 2(home app update bricks night vision or something or 3 is more realistic point 🙂 

lol brad has set this thread to solved!??? WHUUTTT???.... Really is this the google service support of 2022 ???......... you kidding me right?....

KarrieAnne
Community Member

Just no. This would not account for the fact that it's worked perfectly up until this point in that spot, at that angle and now SUDDENLY is too dark.....try again Brad please. 

yeah they trying the standard things lol... but its not a standard thing!! thats why i telling over and over the same to them... google needs diving deeper into this software/server/app issue  🙂

Cdbw
Community Member

This really isn’t a solution at all. The issue is not that there is an object too close to the camera since the position of the camera hasn’t changed at all. The issue started without the camera being moved or bumped. Even trying to reposition the camera, the issue is still not resolved.

 

this is a very disappointing and dissatisfying response.

DJSuprimeW
Community Member

yes true story!

I saw brad has set this thread to solved!! really??..... Nothing is Solved!!! what a service from google lol

d0e118b3-4dd4-4a1b-9fff-415967b432b4.jfif

Djross22
Community Member

It's not solved. 

 

We are all having issues with existing product with things screwed into walls where they don't move.

 

It needs more investigation, closing this thread is a disservice to your customers.

 

I think the best recourse might be to hit up any social media they have, unfortunately.

True!! idont know anymore what i can do in this thread if google itself, set this thread to solved!??... asking my money back from al my 16 google products?... what a ***** situation lol

TheBrent
Community Member

This is NOT a solution.  The problem persists and started after a google update  with no changes and no movement of any cameras.  What part of that don’t you understand?

LK18
Community Member

I unmarked this as the solution, as it does not solve the issue. As several people here have said, the night vision issue just began on cameras that haven’t moved at all. It has to be a software issue, not foreground glare.

Brad
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey everyone,


We really appreciate your patience on this, and wanted to drop back in with additional steps to try:
 

  • Turn Night Vision off, and let us know if the center of the scene still appears super dark while surfaces around the edge appear washed out. If it only happens with night vision on, it's worth adjusting your camera to eliminate something in the scene that may be causing the overexposure. Most Night Vision specific issues are caused by your camera’s infrared light that reflects off a surface near your camera, like a shelf, window, window screen, or wall.
  • Confirm whether the quality improves in a saved clip versus the live feed.
  • If you haven't done so already, please do a full restart of the camera instead of the on-off toggle.

Please try the troubleshooting steps mentioned here and let us know so that we can continue to narrow down the issue.

 

Best regards,

Brad

Vitti
Community Member

According to my support ticket, there is a software engineer working "round the clock" on this. I doubt the round the clock part, but if a software engineer is working on it, it isn't related to the environment. It is a software update issue. Or all these cameras just crapped out at the same time. 


@Brad wrote:
  • Most Night Vision specific issues are caused by your camera’s infrared light that reflects off a surface near your camera, like a shelf, window, window screen, or wall.
  • Confirm whether the quality improves in a saved clip versus the live feed.
  • If you haven't done so already, please do a full restart of the camera instead of the on-off toggle.

 


No Brad, I'll spell it out for you again: we did not move our cameras before or since the issue started happening.  Overexposure was never a problem in all our personal setups.  I've actually taken great care when I initially set them up to avoid this.  It worked well for many months without issue, until the latest firmware update popped up.  I don't want to change my camera view: it's been set up to capture a particular angle and field of view for good reasons; and again: it worked without issue before.  Make it work again.

Secondly, the quality issue is the same in saved clips, it's not an issue of the live feed only.  I have verified that for many saved clips myself.  Which, by the way, is not all that easy to check since the reduced video camera quality results in significantly less clips (events) being detected and saved!

Finally, I've done power cycles as well as full restarts of all 3 or my cameras.  This did not change nor resolve anything.

This whole thread is quite disappointing and suggests a multi billion dollar US corporation cares nothing for the hard work of its consumers that helped make it. I own 2K worth of Nest products and Nest at least seemed to care. This same issue happened to one of my Outdoor IQs and the other is fine. I've called in 3 times and the overseas staff makes me go through the same troubleshooting I've already done only to get nowhere. Maybe a class action lawsuit will get Google to be responsible to it's customers on products that aren't inexpensive for many of us?

 

Torres86
Community Member

Brad,

Seriously? There isn't an option to turn off the night vision. If there were, we would'nt be complaining about the night vision. Come on, solve this problem!

CowboyHenk
Community Member

This is not the solution brad….this problem appeared after a firmware update….everything was fine before a week ago or something and now the camera is unusable as a nightvision camera or baby monitor. Please roll back the useless firmware update!!!!

Why is it so hard for them to understand that this wasn’t a problem before?! It’s not just a coincidence that it started happening to all of us at the same time. 

Oh, they do understand.  They just want to cover up the issue.  It's a very conscious corporate practice.

I don't believe that's entirely true as there isn't a surface too close to my camera and it's causing it to happen.....

Gefremidis
Community Member

I also bought the Google Nest doorbell 2nd Gen and the video is blurry. Needs an update to correct. ASAP before I return this. 

Sorry Brad, but that's not the issue a lot of us have.  Without moving my cameras, several (night vision) views became significantly darker a few weeks ago, likely right after a firmware update.  The quality of the video footage also is noticeably worse before/after night vision kicks in, i.e. when light conditions are already a bit more dim (but not dark enough for night vision to kick in).  In these environments, with artificial lighting (e.g. normal indoor LED light bulbs), the colours are very murky and the video appears overly compressed (i.e. typical mpeg blurring, but in extreme amounts).  This was also not the case more than a few weeks ago.  Looks like another firmware update stuff-up.

Stephy322
Community Member

soo what’s the issues here because I was on the phone for over two hour with tech support, and they had no resolution! My camera have been working fine for the past year until now all of sudden night vision doesn’t work after last update?! It’s been 2 months like this now! 

danbx1
Community Member

I'm also having the same issue with my nest cams. 3 indoors cams, and 1 outdoor now have very dark night vision.

Regards,

Daniel 

Torres86
Community Member

Your support does NOT address the fact that we can NOT turn off the camera's night vision. It is very dark with the Night Vision set at default. The only choices we get is "Always On" or "Auto (defualt)". I do NOT understand why there isn't an "OFF"  choice!!!

@Torres86 

All of our Google Nest cameras and doorbells--old and new--have an "Off" choice on the "Night Vision" option.  (I just double-checked ours; an old and a new are shown below.) . But with "Night Vision" off, video at night is very dark.

IMG_04CB8F15B019-1.jpegIMG_632C83130A75-1.jpeg

This is true if you use NEST app. However, the new Google 2nd generation does NOT allow you to add that camera to NEST app. They force you to use "Google Home" which does NOT have the option to turn off Night Vision. All my Google 1st generation cameras are great and have beautiful night vision. It's this new camera I just purchased that does not work. 

@Torres86 

As I said in my earlier post, ALL of our camera--including our two 2nd gen cameras (one indoor camera and one battery camera) that work ONLY in the Google Home app,--have an "Off" option for "Night vision". See the second screen shot, from the Google Home app, in my earlier post.

Does your camera NOT have this option?

Torres86
Community Member

Brad,

NONE of your suggestions work!! We need to have the ability to turn "OFF" the night vision. 

That's strange became I can turn night vision off. The options I see are, Always on, Auto or Off. 

CodeMonkey1981
Community Member

Ours (also used as a nursery cam) just started doing the same thing a few days ago.

Software version: spencer-user 1.63 OPENMASTER 317989 release-keys stable-channel stable-channel

Thanks for sharing! Hoping Google will get this resolved soon!

Kparkinson03
Community Member

This is happening to me too - I moved the camera and suddenly I can’t see anything even though I moved it back to a place that used to work just fine

DJSuprimeW
Community Member

here some new another pictures from one indoor camera. black curtains are suddenly white??.... and too dark in the background!? with a green tint. this is not a wrong angle or a white wall!! and i did a Dust Checkup!

b0e17699-1aa2-480a-82e8-7d169d5574d9.jfif1cdbfb49-cd1a-46d1-b1ea-8c5671dfbd61.jfifd9e43836-1bfd-49c2-b5d4-e2609371a58a.jfifcf5ad228-2639-4ce4-b501-1b453608ce9d.jfif

gmanist1000
Community Member

I have the same issue on all 3 of my Nest Indoor cameras. Version 1.63 openmaster

Brad
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi there,

 

Sorry for the misunderstanding. In this case, I marked the update to pin it to the top of the comments for visibility, but I understand how the terminology can be misleading. We’re always looking to improve how we surface answers here in the community and appreciate the feedback.

 

Best regards,

Brad

dantheuxman
Community Member

Hi Brad,

I'm not seeing the solution here. I see a comment about it possibly being the placement of the camera, but my camera is not next to a white wall and this isn't just a night vision issue. During normal daylight hours it flickers and white balance is completely off and colors are off. Can you change the terminology from "solution" to "possible suggestion"? Because what you wrote is not a solution and the fact we all experienced this around the same time seems pretty telling to me that it is possibly an update issue. Like several other people in this thread, I have many google/nest products that I'm considering giving away to switch to another provider. I truly hope this doesn't become a "Buyer beware" solution.