Randomly Missed Events

[MikeR91]

I've got two Nest Cam Batteries, and I would say event detection works about 75% of the time.  I can't figure out the pattern for the other 25%.  

Specific examples:

• When I walked out of the garage with the garbage this morning, it detected it.  A car just backed out of my garage and left, and it didn't detect that.  
• When the mailman came to my door yesterday evening, it detected him.  When UPS came to pick up a package an hour later, it missed him.  Just to be clear, there was a 5' long, 3' tall box in full view of the camera, and someone walked up to my front door, spent about 60 seconds there scanning the label, and then walked off with the box, and the camera did not detect anything.  

I have sensitivity on high.  Over the driveway, I have all four types of video events enabled.  Over the front door, vehicle is turned off, and the other three types are on.  Anyone have any ideas?  

[Brad]

Hi there, MikeR91.

Sorry for my late response. Thank you for all of your patience while waiting for a reply. I just wanted to make sure that your issue is addressed. I am terribly sorry to hear that you have had such a hard time with this! I would love to look into this issue further and help find a solution for you. First off, I have some questions I’d like to ask you.

• Do you still need help with this issue?

• What troubleshooting steps have you done thus far? 

• Have you tried to restart your device if you haven’t already?

• If the restart didn’t work, have you tried to do a Factory Reset? This would be a last resort option, but would clear out issues and the device would essentially be ‘brand new’

Please let me know if you need further assistance. 

Best Regards,

Brad.

[MikeR91]

Yes, the issue has not been resolved in the past 17 minutes.

I have played with every setting I can find in the app to try to resolve this.

The devices have been restarted, but not factory reset.

[dbb]

Are the cameras powered or running on batteries?

[MikeR91]

They are running on batteries.  I went with these cameras because I don't have a reasonable way to get power to where I wanted them, unfortunately.  

[dbb]

I am having a similar problem and I suspect the camera is not waking up.  I am going to try powering the unit and see if it more consistently detects events. 

[MikeR91]

Please keep me posted on results if you do. 

[dbb]

I will.  I also noted there is a setting for wake-up sensitivity.  I just changed it from medium to high. 

[MikeR91]

I've got mine set to high, and while it still misses things it shouldn't, it's hard to say whether or not it made any difference, since I can't find any pattern for when it will miss something.  I've also tried forcing it to night mode to see if I got a bit more sensitivity, and similarly, still misses things it shouldn't, regardless of time of day.

[dbb]

Mike I just compared the sensitivity of the camera when powered vs battery.  It is MUCH more sensitive when powered directly.  I have the camera mounted on the eve of my house and when running on battery it would miss cars driving by.  When powered directly it will detect everything including small animals. (as expected). 

[MikeR91]

Thanks for following up.  I hope that's not the only path forward to reliable detection, but at least it is an option.