Night Vision Too Dark

[SuperTrollMan]

Hi All,

I've recently installed new Google Nest Cameras.

They had been running perfectly, however I noticed night vision on 1 of the camera's had deteriorated significantly.
I toggled the night vision from auto, to on, to off and back to auto.
Its definitely on when its on auto, but its considerably poorer than a week ago (a lot darker).
The camera's are mounted and wired with the genuine Google cable, so they haven't moved or changed any other factors.

When looking at the 2x 'battery' camera's I have, the other one was working perfectly fine.
I noticed the firmware had changed on the one having issues "nq-user 1.67 OPENMASTER 361459"
Whereas the working camera was running 1.65 of the software.

I started chatting to support about this, they had me restart the camera this afternoon, which didn't change the issue unfortunatley.

I then noticed the working camera started showing the same symptoms, upon checking the Home app, it has now been updated to 1.67 aswell.

The same shot 24 hours apart has significantly poorer night vision and the only common denominator I've been able to come up with is the 1.67 firmware having issues.

Is anyone else seeing this?

[dnest]

Can confirm 1.69 on all of mine.  Exposure of daytime images looks better but I also have the “Vaseline on the lens effect”  for all daytime and nighttime.  Absolutely terrible image quality and a marked change from a year ago.   Useless in current form and it feels like a purposeful change—likely as suggested by someone else to save bandwidth and storage.  Unless there is a change back to the previously good image quality, I’ll be seeking alternatives.   Very disappointing,

[dnest]

Also ruined the quality on my previous generation Nest IQ cams and previous gen nest doorbell cam, which used to be fantastic.  Again, very disappointing.  Although it’s a costly proposition, I’ll be seeking alternatives, as they are nearly useless in the current state (1.67 or 1.69).

[EKK]

For f*ck's sake! It's been three months now since these camera's became unusable. Do something about it. I was very happy with Google Nest… but now it’s the opposite! Before the end of the year the're going to be binned. Nobody wants this crap!

Note: internetconnection is not the problem. WiFi is optimized (connection max) and still the same as with fw v1.65.

[RavenManiac]

What firmware version is this? Although my nighttime image is screwed up with v1.69, my daytime image is pretty good.

[EKK]

This is v1.69. Worse then v1.67. Daytime is't that bad. You can’t recognise someone. 

[PbPretzels2]

This morning I received a notification that the yearly Nest Aware subscription is going up by 30 dollars. So Google ruins our cameras and then raises the subscription price. Real nice, guys. Real nice.

[jaylam13]

I have cancelled my subscription until its fixed and if not fixed soon I will be removing the cameras and putting my Neos cameras back in, Neos cameras are £20 each and £2.99 subscription each month.....a lot cheaper and work better than these with this firmware.

[Gogzy79]

I have complained to Google several times over the last few days about blurred images on my 3 cameras since upgrading to 1.69 and they keep telling me that there is no know issues with 1.69. Even after showing them photos of before and after 1.69 upgrade where the blur is blatantly obvious, they still say that there isn’t and issue. I now believe they have reduced the quality on purpose for storage space saving. 
So, they advertise the cameras as HD, have increased the nest aware storage costs and in return, they have reduced the video quality. 
Must be time to bin this crap surely? 

[RavenManiac]

How can they say there isn't a problem when you show them proof? If Google believes that v1.69 has fixed the image quality issue, both day and night, then the ONLY logical conclusion they can make is that your Nest Cam is defective, so they need to replace it. Did they offer you that option?

I'm also wondering if there are some critical things we need to do either before or after the firmware upgrade that they haven't shared with us. Has anyone tried factory resetting their cameras and starting from scratch? 

If they truly believe that these are isolated cases, wouldn't they want the affected Nest Cams back for testing or analysis? None of this makes any sense. And it's clear that they haven't shared what's actually going on with their frontline customer service and technical support people. 

[Gogzy79]

No option to replace. I have the same issue on 3 cameras, all since 1.67 then worse on 1.69. All 3 cameras can’t have become defective at the same time with the same issues surely. They still say that there isn’t an issue with my cameras or 1.69. 

[RavenManiac]

That just blows me away that you submitted proof and they still claim there isn't an issue. You may want to ask for tier 2 support. They may be more helpful.

[NetManinTN]

I did a reset…nothing. Vaseline all over the screen still

[Xofttam14]

Just to add insult to injury but Google have emailed me telling me my 24/7 recording price is going up from £10 to £12 and I must review the change! How about you review your busted firmware

[Benlau88]

This is ridiculous. Increase subscription and no fix on the poor quality at night. Big safety issues. However, Day time quality look better. 

[Jasonoff]

Mine seem to all be just ok on 1.69 both day and night.  Still nowhere near the quality of my older Nest cams.

They did however fix the flickering issues with LED lighting so a minor positive.
https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Cameras-and-Doorbells/Nest-wired-cam-flickering-from-overhead...

[sos999]

I searched for “google nest cam video quality dropped recently” then I found this thread and realised I’m just amongst one of the hundreds users who cared to say something here.  All my Nest Cam and Doorbell are having unusable video quality now.  They all appear to be deeply compressed or applied with a oil painting filter effect.

[Gogzy79]

Well according to Google, there is no known issues. Maybe not enough people complaining to them? 

[Adj]

Clearly they don't read the community boards to see all the issues 1.67 and 1.69 have caused nest owners/subscribers.  Maybe when people start cancelling their Nest Aware plus subscriptions they will listen.  If the threat is to buy another brand of cameras, that doesn't hurt Google Nest because they've already gotten our money.  I am sure most people aren't eligible for refunds for their Nest Camera purchases.  FWIW, I have reached out to Google and received three months of free nest aware plus, they don't make it easy to get that but I pushed it and showed my chat communication to prove they offered it when all this started.  

[EKK]

Well, they won't get the money for two extra camera's...

[Super_paulie]

Add me to the list. My doorbell at night looks like a camera from about 1997, it's absolutely terrible and borderline pointless even using it.

[Jasonoff]

Everyone here needs to start a customer support case with Google to report.  They don't use any data from the community forum.

[Micha_123]

They don't give about it,

Nest hub2 , cast from mobile (not youtube) dont work anymore, 

Cameras, they knows about thet bug in 1.67 then 4 month's later with the 1.69 the video at night is still crappy. It is little bit better then 1.67 but the best was 1.65. There was it really klear @nignt. 1.67 was Holly crap, and now 1.69 is crap.

So to have the good quality like the in 1.65 firmware Simply wait another 4 or 5 months.

Sorry it's crazy what Google is doing. 

I leave the doorbell, but the nest aware i had stopped months ago. It's just an doorbell. But as o had seen the good quality on the doorbell (with the 1t.65 firmware) then the plan was to replace my ONVIF cameras and recorder with the google nest ones, without the recorder, that's why i had the subscription on the doorbell, but I'm really Lucky that i dont buyed the nest cam's,  now my old ONVIF cameras with the recorder are doing better then the doorbell.

[surveydog]

WTF. Fix or make this crap free.

[g00gleisgarbage]

Noticed my nest cameras had been complete garbage and have been trying for a couple weeks to clear up the picture quality, terrible connectivity, recordings only last for a couple seconds and the camera seems to crash, video not getting recorded at all for hours especially at night, and the list goes on.  I have carefully cleaned the cameras, reset them multiple times, restarted my wifi system and internet modem multiple times and no change.  They used to work well but for months have been trash and getting worse.  FW 1.67 seems to have started the problems and 1.69 has made it worse.  Time to start shopping for new cameras and cancelling the subscription for a service that doesn't work.

[dnest]

Researching best replacement, as well.

[Joepie13]

Firmware 1.65 was good. Everything after that just horrible. It is a disgrace.

[dnest]

Totally agree.  Ready to move on after >5 years of being a formerly happy customer in the Nest/Google ecosystem.  Researching replacement systems currently,

[DP12]

Just noticed software updated to 1.69 and guess what? ... Yip its worse than 1.67 ... unreal !! 

[ocmodder]

Just realised my first post may get a little lost in the weeds as I replied to a reply quite a ways down the chain after seeing before and after pictures that perfectly encapsulated the issue I am having with my Nest Cameras.

Reposting the main point of my original post here to illustrate that 1.69 is no better than 1.67 and the problem is still present:

Initially my problem was that Night Vision was too dark and missing people coming into the street trying house and car doors so was useless for identifying the individuals.  My solution was to leave my Philips Hue outdoor light on all night at the front and turn off Night Vision, that helped capture unsavoury types that were coming into the street.  This seems to coincide with posts on here about issues with 1.67. See picture below from 17th August 2023

It has since progressed to being blurry and washed out during the daytime which in turn has multiplied at night whether Night Vision is on or off so I either get a ton of false motion detected events but people go completely undetected walking past the camera unless they are right in front of it (less than 1m away). See picture below from 30th September 2023

I have added an additional still showing just how poor Nightvision is now on these cameras.  This was from 29th September 2023 and there were people entering and leaving the street in the early hours of the morning (2-3am) the camera recorded no events and did not detect anything.

My cameras are showing that they have nq-user 1.69 OPENMASTER 376297 firmware, so looks like the problem many have had here has continued from 1.67 into 1.69.  I am now getting to a point where I am considering retiring all of the Google Nest Cameras and Doorbell I have to switch to another system as at the moment the Cameras are completely worthless as soon as the sun sets.

17th August 2023

17th August 2023

30th September 2023

30th September 2023

29th September 2023 (Nightvision On, Outside Light Off)

29th September 2023

[Biz5674368]

Five cameras, all gone to $r@p at night.  Daytime is fine (good enough) again, night is worse than ever. Prior to the summer of 2023, night was fine. Just a blurry mess now. 

[yuklenchuk]

I have always been a fan of Google. I thought that only the best of the best work there. However, lately I have been more and more disappointed in the way Google does business. I understand that this is just cost optimization, they want to spend less money on video data storage servers from surveillance cameras. But because of this, the end consumer suffers, who eventually simply refuses to use Google cameras in favor of another manufacturer. And in the end, you guys from Google will simply lose all your income from this product, and this will lead to the closure of another Google service. (A huge number of useful services have already been closed, most likely due to the same incompetent approach to their development). Google, do not disappoint us (while still your fans) with such actions and such an attitude to our feedback about the work of your products.

[JonD_ie]

Here's a good example of the issue. I mean, what use is this image to anyone?

It was not raining. It was not foggy. Camera lens is clean. There is good lighting from the street and a seperate security light. Google camera captures a blurred 8-bit image of a figure. Wow.

[kortniemichele]

I'm glad I'm not the only one having this problem! I have 2 first gen cams and 1 new one. Can you guess which one is the new one!? 😡