Nest Cam 1.69 Update ruined night vision even more

[SuperAdam]

So Google updated their nest cams AGAIN and further ruined Night vision, day time HDR got a bit better but nowhere near as good as it was with 1.65 software, I about had it with Google, look at these picture and tell me if I'm imagining things, the picture on top is the new 1.69 software and the one on the bottom is the 1.67 software just a few minutes before the update, look how fuzzy and grainy everything is with the update, it's like everything is out of focus, STOP MESSING WITH THE CAMERAS GOOGLE, we paid money for this, it's literally unusable at night now. 

 

[sfotex]

Glad I found this thread. I put up 2 new Nest flood light this weekend to replace an old outdoor Nest cam (less wires, etc) and my first thought was 'Geeze, the night vision on these new ones suck' I might just return it and put the old cam back up... Interestingly on one the NV is ok, on the other its unusable. So I swapped them around thinking if it was an environmental issue I would know, but nope the bad one is still bad in the new location. 

[Bigraz87]

I forgot to mention in my previous post that I was watching my dog in the backyard at night around the first of October when I witnessed my camera go out of focus, then back in and finally go out never to focus again at night.  I wish I would have saved the video but as part of the bogus google tech support recommendations,  I deleted my camera and reinstalled it losing all past videos.  So save all your event recordings before deleting your camera.  Also, as I posted earlier, I replaced the camera with a new one and it had the same problem so don’t waste your time believing it’s your cameras problem.

[jaybot]

I have same issue on all my nest cams. Went out looking for answers and ended up here. Daytime looks great. Night vision is blurry now.

[GoogolDoc]

I won't be recommending any further Google products until this is fixed. I'm tempted to ship the cameras I did buy back to Google, buy a competitor that won't endanger my household with blurry video and constantly misidentifying faces (my wife doesn't look anything like me so why is it saying I'm at the front door). 

I'm beyond disappointed at what Google has become. At least Apple backs its stuff with actual fixes.

[bdhadfield]

As others have said, most of us have cameras not to watch the wildlife, but for security reasons. This evening, the black car in the photo below, with four individuals wearing ski masks, pulled up alongside our daughter's parked car and tried to get her to lower her window. She laid on her horn until they drove off, but we can't get a better still image than this blurry mess. Even objects not in motion aren't clear, but in motion they're a low-quality disaster. 

[miketex90]

It’s been proven time and time again that this newest update has caused this. This needs to be fixed ASAP. Or roll the update back! Giving us the copy and paste responses makes Google look like dummies and not a tech giant. Our cameras have been unusable for over a month at night. Not to mention those of us that have 2-3+ cameras your ‘solutions’ make no sense. There is no way every one of our lenses got dirty at the same time or our camera angles are all terrible ALL OF A SUDDEN. Come on…. We know what we are doing as owners we don’t need some misguided replies that are equivalent to “well did you unplug it and plug it back in?” Do better Google. 

[NateZ]

Night vision is a blurry mess for me. Please sort this out as its a security issue.

[Wadisr]

Having the same issue with blurry night vision! Google please fix!

[les101]

Just adding another picture showing the great focus at night. In the day its fine. And yes my camera has 1.69 on it.

[dvr]

It looks like a solution is on the way. I have been communicating with Google support about this problem for a while and was asked yesterday if I wanted to test whether it had been resolved because technical support would have solved the problem with update 1.71c. When I indicated that my software had not yet been updated, he apologized and told me that he had been a bit premature because the update had not yet been rolled out and he did not yet know when that exactly would happen. To be continued...

[NateZ]

Thankyou for the update. The images remind me of a dodgy AI generated image. I really hope this wasn't an experiment some senior manager concocted to cut costs. 

[Bigraz87]

After trying everything possible, I came up with a non google solution that appears to work for me to get thru this.  Google won’t allow me to up load photos so I can’t show you the improvement after I installed a separate IR Illuminator.  The video is as clear as can be and much brighter than the stand alone camera IR by itself. The cost is between $25-45 for a small illuminator and you will need to plug it in to an outlet.  It doesn’t have to be mounted with the camera, I mounted mine 15ft away shining over my backyard because that’s where my outlet is. Additionally, I leave my house outside front lights on but that defeats the purpose of the IR night vision.  It’s sad we have to resort to coming up with our own work arounds after spending so much on a once awesome product.

[chaybee]

The $35.00 Tapo C120 indoor/outdoor 2K cam with starlight sensor and up to 512gb SD local storage is looking better every day this nonsense continues.  The Tapo C425 Battery MagCam is on sale for $90 bucks at the moment with the above mentioned specs if battery is absolutely necessary.  They supposedly work with Google but from my experience, no other cameras work WELL with Google and are very limited, but at this point. Honestly, Google's own cameras don't even work well with Google so...

[RavenManiac]

Your last sentence says it all. 

[WolfPack1]

I expect zero solutions. Never saw Nest Support ever know the answer to a problem. I spent over 2 hours with them trying to figure out why my protect alarms could not be connected to Wi-Fi & all they did was blame the router.

I figured it out by myself & guess what? It wasn’t the router. My outdoor cameras are basically worthless if the picture stays blurry. I can’t see anything on the video. Over $700 invested in this stuff & this is what we get? Ridiculous.

[Adj]

 We purchased our cameras from Costco and Home Depot.  I have left reviews for the Google Nest Cameras on both their websites warning people not to buy these cameras.  Maybe everyone needs to write reviews on the retailers sites and cancel their Nest Aware Plus Subscriptions and that will get Google to fix this issue.  Power in Numbers!!!!!!!!

[JonD_ie]

That is absolutely the correct thing to do - I have done the same.

Note that I recently had an incident outside my property at night which required me to review camera footage. Thankfully, the camera at the front is now an alternative to the Google camera. I was able to easily find and export the required footage - and the quality was excellent. All done in a web browser (no app required!). Such a pleasant time saving experience.

I suggest all users do research and look at alternatives. Nobody needs to be tied into a single eco system, especially one that has poor performing hardware.

[RedMenace]

I just upgraded from a gen 1 nest doorbell to a gen 2 and nighttime images are hugely blurry in comparison on the gen 2. This is not a clean lens issue for me at all. Very disappointed.

[WKEVINDAVIS]

Mine is the exact same way, it happened at exactly 8:00:00pm on Sept. 18 2023. I saved the video and you can see when the night vison went from being sharp to blurry, I thought there was something wrong with my floodlight cameras, I did not know there was an update. Did the update happen on Sept. 18th??

[Iano23]

We have 3 x Nest wired cameras, 2 Nest doorbells (wired), 2 x Nest Hubs for fixed camera viewing in our living room and my office, and a couple of Nest mini speakers as doorbells around the house.

On top of the issues we've recently had with the cameras, I also study at uni and we were told to use a free Google Cloud Platform account that I've also had issues with.

I've been that frustrated with the customer service, non-tested production roll outs, no reliable communication, difficult to find help and general lies that, when my phone died on me a few weeks ago I did, briefly, consider replacing it with a Pixel, but I just couldn't.

The Google brand is a shadow of what it once was, so much so that I tell anyone who will listen to avoid their products.

If you need cloud go Azure, for a phone go Apple so you can avoid the Play Store, don't buy any camera / IoT devices of Google, heck, don't even get a Gmail account.

Come the turn of the year I'll be swapping out anything to do with Google and won't be back.

They used to be an industry leader in the tech world, but they are spreading themselves too thin, too fast and outsourcing too much.

It's a shame, and I know that no one from Google will read this, or even give a **bleep** if they do, but you can - and must - do better.

Until then I'll hope my car or house doesn't get robbed between 16.00-07.30hrs as the image is that useless it's pointless even recording during that time.

[Ebaker10]

Has anyone got anywhere with support about the night time picture quality? Is it time to remove the system and return it?

[Ehern89]

I'm surprised they haven't rolled an update already. I'm pretty tired of having to use night vision when it's not needed. Either way, if its on, it's still blurry. 

[JonD_ie]

Yes. Everyone has this. Google pushed out an update that degraded the night time image quality to a blurry mess.

Look at the other discussions on this forum about it. Google are having a hard time acknowledging the problem, so I would not hold my breath waiting for a fix.

I have disposed of all my Google cameras and purchased replacement cameras from another company. I could not be happier. Will never invest in Google hardware again.

[deezid]

The culprit is firmware 1.69. Before that it was actually quite good at night.

[spaatz]

I just commented on the following article advertising the wonders of the Nest Floodlight camera here on Android Authority to indicate the ongoing problems with the night vision.  I encourage you all to make your voice heard on this and similar review sites to get the point across to Google that this is completely unacceptable.  https://www.androidauthority.com/my-google-nest-cam-with-floodlight-provides-security-as-well-as-ent...

[pebceb]

I just posted my comment.

Everyone else should too!

[Thatmastertech]

Think I found the fix for this known issue after update of current google home app that causes blurry picture especially at night.   Open google home app. Go to the camera settings by clicking the 3 dots on top right click video. Turn night vision to always on, then off. Wait about 10 seconds then put it to back to auto default. Should fix issue.

[GoogolDoc]

It did not.

[Thatmastertech]

Yes it definitely is app issue with update but after I did some playing around with video settings it fixed my blurred night vision.

[GoogolDoc]

Do you have lights on outside? I assure you there's nothing magical about one person's camera versus anyone else's.

[Super_paulie]

thanks but no, as expected.

[SuperAdam]

That's not going to work,this is a software issue, same as with 1.67 version, we all did every trick in the book,this ain't it.

[pebceb]

Tried it. No change. 

[Gmh17]

Unfortunately that didn't work for  me. Also what's weird is one of my cameras is set to off for night vision because my front lights are bright enough but at night that is blurry as well even with night vision off. During the day it's clear as can be. 

My other camera set to night vision you can barely even tell what you are looking at. I have a wyze camera as well and it is picture perfect, clear as can be and more than a hundred dollars cheaper. 

[Thatmastertech]

yes it’s known issue with update of app. After I played with video settings within camera my cameras cleared up a little. Also it’s probably better if you enable your night vision to auto even if you have lights.

[PbPretzels2]

If it's a known issue with the Google Home app itself then why did everyone's cameras turn to crap the second we were pushed the 1.69 camera software update and no subsequent updates to the Google Home app have changed a thing?

[GoogolDoc]

I'm sorry, I don't think you've discovered anything anyone hasn't already tried 400 times my friend. Placebo at best.

[larrymcj]

This is beyond pathetic. Come on, Google, we have a lot of money invested in these cameras and they're currently useless. 

[kameraman]

I have the same experience now. My cameras look awful during day or night. 

[Kaicoe]

Is anyone else frustrated that the cameras went from pretty good a few months ago shooting night vision, then they roll an "update" to fix bugs and now can't see anything clearly at night?