Night Vision - Suddenly Too Dark

[snoberg]

Just installed my nest cam battery outside my garage door. Initially night vision worked great, but shortly after plugging in to the outdoor cable, the infrared night vision quality has gotten extremely dark, and is unusable in it's current state. Not sure if when plugged in it began an update since it was no longer on battery. I know there have been lots of complaints about dark infrared already.

Nothing about my setup has changed in terms of lighting or reflections or camera position.

BeforeAfter

[MplsCustomer]

@snoberg 

If your "Night vision" option is set to "Off" rather than "Auto" (the default), you'll get a dark view like that, because that turns off the infrared night vision.

If you add the optional power cable to your camera AFTER it was installed and running, the camera will be running in battery mode rather than plugged-in mode. To get it to run in plugged-in mode, you will need to remove it from the Google Home app, do a factory reset, and reinstall it, specifying during the install that it is plugged in. (That's the only way you can change it from battery mode to plugged-in mode.)

[snoberg]

Night vision is not off, the darker view is with night vision set to both auto and on. Previously, the night vision looked great, as you see in the first picture. 

Additionally, the camera is not running in battery mode, nor is there a setting during setup to indicate that you are using a cable. As soon as the cable is plugged in you no longer see the battery indicator, and the additional features of having a permanent cable (24/7 recording, etc.) are enabled. It requires no additional setup. I only mentioned it because once it is plugged in like that, my assumption is that is more readily looks for and installs firmware updates, which is the underlying cause of the dark IR issue, which many others have reported. 

[MplsCustomer]

@snoberg 

I don't think there are any firmware updates caused by the camera being plugged in that triggered the dark IR issue; our battery camera has been plugged in for 2-1/2 years and we haven't seen this issue.

I don't recall a battery vs. plugged in choice when we installed 2-1/2 years ago, but I've seen several posts in this forum from customers who added the optional power cable AFTER their initial install and discovered that they had to remove, factory reset, and reinstall their camera while it was plugged in to get it to work as plugged in and not keep running off of and draining the battery. (Google Nest has NO documentation on this at all.)

You could try the nuisance of removing, factory resetting, and reinstalling.

Or you could try contacting Support (https://support.google.com/googlenest) to see if your camera is defective, but they'll probably ask you to do a factory reset.

[snoberg]

I’ve already done a factory reset, there is no option to indicate battery vs wire. Regardless this is a side track from the underlying issue.

[MplsCustomer]

@snoberg 

Maybe if the camera is plugged in during the install process, it automatically gets configured as being plugged in.

I was hoping that a factory reset might resolve your dark IR problem. Do your camera's red IR lights turn on when it's dark? Our camera's red IR lights are always on at night.

[zoeuvre]

Hi snoberg, 

Yikes! If you're experiencing issues with the night vision quality on your Nest Cam Battery after plugging it in using the outdoor cable. Is there any presence of devices such as motion sensors, Nest Protect, or other infrared sources? Also, follow these: 

1. If the image is too dark, move the camera to an area with more appropriate lighting, or to change the lighting in the area if the camera can’t be moved. You can also restart the camera as a temporary fix, but unless there's more light in the room, the issue may return.
2. A camera in a room with a bright night light may oscillate between Day and Night Vision because there's too much ambient light in the area. Move the night light, reposition the camera so that the night light isn't directly in the camera’s field of view, or add light to the scene.
3. A camera with one or more infrared (IR) sources in its field of view may oscillate between Day and Night Vision modes. Move the camera away from these devices.

Let us know how it goes.

Best,

Zoe

[RavenManiac]

This is typical Google BS. What likely happened is you installed the Nest Battery Cam with the factory installed firmware and shortly after it connected to the internet, it updated to the latest firmware, which is crap. Unfortunately, I’m in the same boat and have been since last fall.

Google has privately acknowledged the problem, but refuses to fix it, either because they lack the staff due to its massive layoffs, are incompetent, or just don’t care.

Most reputable companies would have at least rolled back the firmware until they figured out what happened. The bottom line is this is very dangerous for those of us who rely on our Nest cameras for home security.

Check out this thread for more info: https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Cameras-and-Doorbells/Nest-Cam-1-69-Update-ruined-night-visio...

[sicsacol]

HI snoberg,

Sorry to hear that the previous troubleshooting steps didn't resolve the issue.

To help us understand better and get more information about the issue, please fill out this form and let me know once you're done. A specialist team will then reach out to you via email to assist further.

Sincerely,

Jonathan