Google nest cam (battery) not triggering

[AStonham]

Hi,

I have been using 3 x battery Nest Cams and 1 x wired nest cam for about 2 yrs. The battery nest cams don't seem to reliably trigger for events such as vehicles moving in/out of view. I recently upgraded my wifi with extended access points and moved one of the nest cam (battery) to our gate approx 20m away from the house. The new network is reliable at this location but the nest cam only triggers about 50% of the time when a vehicle drives past the camera (within 1m of the camera) . Can anyone explain why? I have checked all camera settings via my google home app and they are all correct. 

Regards Andrew

[EmptyNester]

If you search on this forum you will see many people reporting this reliability  issue with triggering on the battery cameras.   It seems like people are reporting when they leave the cameras plugged into AC power they do much better.    Can you try that just as  a test for a day or so?

 Let's see if other people chime in here. 

[AStonham]

Thanks EmptyNester,

I have plugged in one of the Nest Cam (battery) devices and I'll see how it goes over the next few days. So far it looks like there is an improvement. However, I cannot plug them all in as there is no power source available for one. Does it have to be 240V adapter or can it be a power bank with a USB-A output? Is there a reason that the nest cam works properly when plugged in but is very unreliable when on battery only? 

[EmptyNester]

Hello,  So I believe the reason that these battery cameras miss trigger is because when they are running in BATTERY-ONLY they go into a deep sleep.   They do this to conserve battery power.   When they are plugged into a power source they still go to sleep but they stay more awake and are far more likely to trigger with motion detection.    This is true for many different cameras companies as well.  But their very nature the cameras all draw a lot of power.   So battery-only is (in my opinion) not going to create a winning product.

I have not tried it but I'm pretty sure your power bank idea would work.  Once the camera sees the 5-volts coming in on that USB cable it doesn't care where it comes from.   

Hope this  helps.