Someone was on our front porch

[Lukas2020]

On 10/22/22, my husband and I were out of town. We were camping with no access to cell service or wifi. We were going through our missed Nest notifications and saw in one of our cameras, an unknown person was looking around our house. Eventually, this person went to our front porch, where we have a Nest camera pointed directly at the door, and we have a motion light. We saved the footage of this person on another one of our cameras, but couldn’t see details of their face, or any distinguishable parts of their clothing. We could have gotten their face on our front door camera, but it didn’t record this event. This person was definitely an adult, and they went on our porch, turned on our motion light, picked something up, and walked off of our porch all without triggering the camera to record. Meanwhile, our driveway camera recorded this person walking onto our porch and then walking away. I don’t understand why our front door camera didn’t record such obvious movement, when in the hours before and after this occurred, it was recording vehicles on the road and bugs flying. We are hoping the police will be able to do something with the footage we gave them during our police report, it’s just infuriating that we pay for Nest Aware and it apparently doesn’t record everything. 

[Lukas2020]

for reference, this is what our front porch looks like. The person stole something off of one of those chairs. Definitely within the zones we set. 

[MplsCustomer]

@Lukas2020 

If your front door camera is a Google Nest Camera (Battery) running on battery power, that may explain why it didn't detect and record the event. We've had a Google Nest Camera (Battery) for 13 months now, plugged in with the optional power cable, and it does a good job of detecting events, and if it doesn't, the footage is still there because it records everything with our Nest Aware Plus subscription. But if we unplug it, it does not detect an event if we walk directly in front of our camera, and on battery power it only records detected events.

Our Google Nest Outdoor Cameras (wired) also do a good job of detecting events, and also record everything (even if it isn't detected as an event) with our Nest Aware Plus subscription.

[Lukas2020]

This camera is wired (i don’t think it has the option for battery), so it’s constantly running. It picked up motion before and after this incident, and we didn’t get a notification it was offline. It’s bizarre, it picks up people walking on the street all the way across our yard, there’s no reason why it wouldn’t have recorded this movement. 

[MplsCustomer]

@Lukas2020 

Sometimes our wired cameras do not flag an event, but we can find the footage of the event the camera failed to detect if we know what time frame to check.

[EmersonB]

Hello folks,
 

@Lukas2020 thanks for posting here in the community and I'm sorry to hear about what happened. To confirm, were there any internet or power outages in your area during that time? Did your Nest camera go offline when the issue happened?
 

Give these steps a try:

• Remove and re-add your activity zones.
• Try changing the position of your Nest camera or change something in the camera’s view to improve motion detection results.
• If you have the Nest Aware Plus, you'll have up to 60 days of event video history and up to 10 days of 24/7 continuous video recording.

Keep me posted.
 

I appreciate the help, @MplsCustomer.
 

Best,

Emerson

[EmersonB]

Hi everyone,

Were you able to do the steps above?. I'd be glad to hear from you — I'd like to make sure everything is working.

Regards,
Emerson

[EmersonB]

Hello there,

Just one quick final check in here since activity has slowed down. We'll be locking the thread in the next 24 hours, but if you still need help, I would be happy to keep it open. If there's more we can do, just let me know.

Thanks,
Emerson