Missing event video

[BrianRM]

We have 2 cameras covering our front yard. One at our door and one over the garage. There view coverage overlaps a little bit. We had a package delivered to our home 2 days ago which was stolen in the middle of the night. The door bell camera shows no events being recorded during the span of 2 days during this incident. The other camera over the garage however caught the individual holding an umbrella and flashing some sort of light towards the porch. Is some new technology that uses infrared to disable Nest doorbell cameras?

[MplsCustomer]

@BrianRM 

We have 1st gen Google Nest cameras and doorbells, and a 2nd gen battery camera (plugged in) and 2nd gen indoor camera. In our experience, they are not as good at detecting events at night.

In addition, the battery doorbell (and the battery camera, when not plugged in) are operating on battery power and need to "wake up" in order to detect and record an event. If we unplug our battery camera (so that it is running on battery power) and walk directly in front of the camera, it does not wake up to detect or record that event.  (When plugged in, our battery camera functions as well as our older 1st gen cameras and doorbells.)

I can't speak to whether it's possible to use infrared light to disable a Google Nest doorbell camera.

[EmersonB]

Hi everyone,

@BrianRM, thanks for reaching out here in the Community. To know more about this issue, I’d like to confirm, do you have an activity zone setup? Nest Cameras determine when something moves based on how much an image changes over a short period of time. So, it may not send an alert if the following is true:

• The activity is out of your Nest Camera’s field of view.
• An object is blocking the camera’s view.
• The Nest Camera is very far away from the activity.
• The lighting in the scene is dim or washed out.

You might have to move your Nest Camera, change its angle, or change something in the scene so that you don’t miss important activity.

To learn more, you may visit our public article about “Troubleshoot Nest camera alerts”.

I appreciate the help, MplsCustomer.

Regards,

Emerson

[BrianRM]

We don't have an activity zone set up, but based on the footage from the other camera the thief walked right up to the door bell camera took the package and left and no events were recorded. We've not had any problems with the doorbell camera up until this incident.

[EmersonB]

Hello BrianRM,

I appreciate the update. Try resetting your Nest Doorbell to the factory default. You may check the reset steps from our public article about "Restart or factory reset Nest camera or doorbell" and monitor its behavior and let us know how it goes.

Best,

Emerson

[SagarD]

What kind of non sense troubleshooting advice is this? This happened to me too where a package was stolen from the front porch but the activity wasn’t recorded, I reported this to Google who tried to upsell me Nest Aware subscription even though the event of theft was within the 3 hour window. Google Doorbell support is a nightmare to deal with, They did not escalate the issue even after repeatedly asking them 5 times.