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Nest Outdoor Cameras Very Poor at Detecting Activity

hecubus114
Community Member

I recently setup 2 Nest outdoor cameras (battery powered), and have found their "detection" of activity to be next to useless. I have one at each corner of the front of my house, watching all the way out to the opposite side of the street. What I end up getting are 1-2 second recordings of the tail ends of cars, just as they leave the frame. The cameras also record when someone leaves out driveway in a car (albeit only once they are in the car and pulled halfway out of the driveway), but rarely when the car returns and parks in the same place. I will see people walk across the front of our house on the sidewalk (groups with strollers sometimes) and neither camera acts as if there was any activity. 

Is there something that will fix this, or are this cameras just an incredible waste of money? Both are set to detect all motion, are not using any zones, and have their motion sensitivity on high (which I only switch to last night to see if it would improve anything).

Ideas? If this is just standard operation, they will definitely be getting returned. I've had more reliable $20 cameras off Amazon that use free apps...

4 REPLIES 4

MplsCustomer
Bronze
Bronze

@hecubus114 

We've had a Google Nest Camera (Battery), plugged in with the optional power cable for a year. If we turn off the circuit that powers the camera--so that the camera is running on battery power and therefore in "Idle" mode--it is very poor at detecting motion or people. I can walk in front of the camera and it does not detect me. But when the power is on to the camera and the camera is therefore in "Live" mode, it picks up events the way our older Google Nest wired cameras do. Other posts in this forum also seem to indicate that when the camera is on battery power and in "Idle" mode, it takes awhile to wake up and detect and record events, and the recording tends to truncate events when they are detected.

Hi folks,

 

I'm dropping by to ensure that everything is covered here. I hope that sheds some light on the issue. If you have other questions and concerns, feel free to let me know.

 

I appreciate the help here, MplsCustomer.

 

Thanks,

JT

janthadeus
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi hecubus114,

 

Checking back in should you still have further questions here. Let us know by replying to this thread.

 

Regards,

JT

janthadeus
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey there,

 

I just wanted to jump in here to make sure that you saw my response. Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns as I will be locking this in 24 hours.

 

Best,

JT