Sun glare activation tips needed

[Drake3287]

I've asked this once before but was hoping for maybe some more tips or suggestions. Two of my front yard camera's face towards the afternoon sun and look down on the cement walkway and driveway. Now that it's summer I've found that the sun causes my camera's to have dozens of false activations every afternoon because of the sun. This of course runs my battery down in no time.

I really can't move the camera's without defeating the purpose of having them. I tried lowering the sun setting on each camera but that of course causes the camera video's to look to dark. Has anyone else found a way around fixing this issue? I thought about maybe buying the hooded camera skins but I'm not sure if that would help in my case. I've read they do little except protect the camera from rain.

With many of us having these camera's covering our driveways, this must be a problem for a lot of other people. I'm just sort of surprised that more aren't complaining about this issue like me.

[steve_t]

I run a schedule where there is slightly reduced sensitivity for the sun affected cameras during the daylight hours. I still get probably one activation a day but that's fine with me

The "sun setting" I think you're referring to is the brightness of the display of the camera. I wouldn't turn that right down

Some people who were getting false triggers with cars and trucks passing by have had some luck using black electrical tape to mask the very top of the motion sensor area. YMMV if you experiment with this

[jguerdat]

For the record, I use black tape on a couple of original wireless cameras' PIR sensors to mask unwanted detections but haven't figured out how to do so with the Pros.  Looking at the lower area of the camera face, there's a small rectangle in the middle that appears to be the sensors (there's two in the Pro) but a quick experiment with one camera failed.  Some more extensive experimentation would be needed.

[Drake3287]

Steve, can you give me some more info on how to schedule the camera's for less sensitivity during certin times? Can this be done for both camera's? After 8 months of having these camera's I thought I had them all figured out. Of course if I had the long awaited solar panels I wound'nt be so worried about the batteries running down so quick.

[steve_t]

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Drake3287 wrote:

Steve, can you give me some more info on how to schedule the camera's for less sensitivity during certin times? Can this be done for both camera's? After 8 months of having these camera's I thought I had them all figured out. Of course if I had the long awaited solar panels I wound'nt be so worried about the batteries running down so quick.

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Yep. I have two custom recording modes called "Daytime" and "Night time" because I'm so original 😛

I then set the schedule to record every day from midnight to 7am as night time and 7am-6pm as day time, and 6pm to midnight as day time again. This is the same every day and I adjust the times as needed with respect to sunrise and sunset.

My night time mode has all cameras with higher motion sensitivity than the day time mode. I also have two cameras covering my front driveway, one looking down it towards the road and one on the fence looking at the garage doors. Both record on motion but also trigger the other camera to record as well. I use different durations for the secondary camera so I know which camera was the one that detected the motion.

My set up works really well and hardly gives false alerts but records what I need it to record. With this, the batteries also last way longer.

For sensitivity adjustment, I always suggest people turn it up to 100 and then drop it by 1 each time there's a false alert/recording within say half an hour of a previous one. Doing this allows you to find the sweet spot for motion sensitivity with regards to the position the camera is in

[Drake3287]

Thanks, I'm now trying to figure out this scheduling feature and how to have multiple times with different settings. Seems complicated but I'll give it a shot. 

[jguerdat]

You need to set up multiple modes with appropriate rules first and the schedule them. Of course, you can schedule windy times but having a windy mode allows you to choose that mode instead of the schedule for those times.

[steve_t]

I do also have a "Windy" mode! It's just another mode with lower motion sensitivity for the cameras that look at trees and bushes and yes I manually select it when required.