Camera Flashes Light Causing Motion Detection

[ecArlo]

Within a two hour period I've had 25 events/motion triggers because the Arlo Camera for some reason captures a flash of light.  This is not by someone or a car passing by - It seems it might be a software or hardware issue.  Has anyone run in this or know a solution?

Your help will be greatly appreciated.

Note:

Link below includes a clip of what trigerrs the motion detection over and over again - Notice first second of clip includes a flash of light.

https://arlo.netgear.com/hmsweb/users/library/share/link/4221DDF31275C91A

Best regards,

Sam

[ecArlo]

Another eight events within a 20 minute period because of flashing - Image below.

.

Pros: Love the ease of install with no power or network cables.

Cons: False Motion Detection happens so often difficult to know if there is a legitimate trigger because so much data to go thru.  This will most likely kill the battery quickly and unecessarily take up more of my cloud storage than needed.

Lowered Motion Sensitivity from 90% to 80% still not sure what is casuing the flash.

Sam

[TomMac]

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ecArlo wrote:- Notice first second of clip includes a flash of light.

https://arlo.netgear.com/hmsweb/users/library/share/link/4221DDF31275C91A

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What you say is a flash of light in the start of video is the iris auto correcting for the brightness of the view... I can't say what triggered the event but the sun is a big source of IR and it's possible the movement of the sun ( or a bird for that matter ) set off the event to record.

[JPC]

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ecArlo wrote:

Within a two hour period I've had 25 events/motion triggers because the Arlo Camera for some reason captures a flash of light.  This is not by someone or a car passing by - It seems it might be a software or hardware issue.  Has anyone run in this or know a solution?

Your help will be greatly appreciated.

Note:

Link below includes a clip of what trigerrs the motion detection over and over again - Notice first second of clip includes a flash of light.

https://arlo.netgear.com/hmsweb/users/library/share/link/4221DDF31275C91A

Best regards,

Sam

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Possible causes why it triggers might be Wind blowing those plants or Birds like mine.. Check this out

https://arlo.netgear.com/hmsweb/users/library/share/link/C890691531F646C5

[jguerdat]

Betcha a beer its a spider crawling on the camera. I've caught a number of those events.

[ecArlo]

Thank you for your reply TomMac and claryfing Iris is auto correcting for brightness. 

Initial link included footage approx at 12pm and link below is approx 5pm so it happens throughout the day:

https://arlo.netgear.com/hmsweb/users/library/share/link/AF82D2FA4F610CA7

Trigger:
This is happening so often that I can stand out of motion area and when I check Library sure enough a trigger occured but nothing was in view and it infact appears to be the flash of the Iris correcting which is causing the trigger itself. 

> Have you seen the flash itself cause a trigger before?

> Is there a workaround or setting I can try to avoid this?

I've lowered the sensitvity setting to 70%.

Concerns:

* It appears batteries will die out much faster if this keeps occuring.

* A lot of extra triggers are created taking up more storage than needed.

Attached an image of camera location which is tucked under eaves so it is not in direct sunlight/rain etc.

[ecArlo]

Thank you for including link JPC but I've ruled out plants/birds.  It's okay when these occur but I've lowered sensitivity and even when there is no wind/birds I'm seeing a trigger in Library and the only trigger appears to be flash of light.

[ecArlo]

I've checked/cleaned camera jguerdat and as I'm watching out of motion area a trigger occurs with nothing on camera but thanks for your post.

[TomMac]

have you tried switching cameras?  .... to do an easy check if the camera is a problem or the location

[ecArlo]

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TomMac wrote:

have you tried switching cameras?  .... to do an easy check if the camera is a problem or the location

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No I bought the $200 kit which comes with one camera.  At this point I'm very hesitant to invest more in to this system as it seems unstable.

Updated Settings:

After adjusting sensitivity down to 70% false motion no longer appears to be an issue (maybe flash is not causing trigger).  As suggested earlier maybe plant movement caused a lot of these triggers however; even though my two kids, dog and I walked all along camera motion area yesterday that whole event never showed up in Library so now pushed sensitvity up to 80%.

If I don't find a way to get this stable in next couple days I figure will be best I return it.

[ecArlo · Accepted solution]

Update:

Closing this thread as it appears lowering sensitvity to 75% has avoided faulty triggers from 15+ triggers within an hour to approx 5/day.  I still see flash of light at first second of trigger as Iris apparently is auto correcting.

[sherzberg13]

I find that I have to turn the sensitivity down to keep the flash from happening so often. However, it does not pick up the motion I want at night time because the sensitivity is too low.

[sherzberg13]

Have you tried adjusting the light darkness and lightness

[dedes]

Hello,

I am also seeing this occur. I have the same amount of 25+ non-motion daily recordings triggered by this initial flash of the iris or whatever it may be. I also have the cameras mounted under easements, away from reflective surfaces, light, etc.

I will try and turn the settings down to 80% for now but this is concerning if there is not a fix. I don't want to have to keep deleting empty video files. And the motion detection is very odd with these cameras. The range of sensitivity is not very flexible whatsoever. The only usable range of motion detection is between 70 and 100%. Your motion detection will practically not even function if you go any lower than 65%. I hope there is some kind of firmware fix for this but it seems like these little cameras cannot be updated in any way, or can they (remotely?). I am surprised even Netgear has not responded to this issue yet. I want a fix because I don't want to keep getting motion alerts from the hardware itself. I've disabled notifications from the app it got so annoying.

[JamesC]

dedes,

Welcome to the community!  It appears the original poster in this thread, under similar conditions, was able to resolve the issue by lowering the sensitivity setting to 75%.  If you are still getting the same results at 80% consider taking it down a bit further. You could also try a different location for the camera to see if you capture the same results. The cameras do have the ability to update firmware and will do so on their own when new firmware is released. Be sure to let us know!

Thank you!

JamesC

[sherzberg13]

Play with the brightness as well as the sensitivity. The brightness is what stopped all my flashing

[LewisIsbell]

Hi, 

My camera is doing the same thing at about the same frequency. My motion sensitivity is already set for 53%, and I sometimes miss 1/2 of the motion and 90% of the object by the time the camera turns on. I will look into the brightness setting, but have not seen it so far.

Great little camera and not too many issues really. I would love more adjustability on the window of activity selection. It seems to want to remain at some predefined Lenght to Width Ratio which is not fitting into the actual scene that I'm trying to capture.

Thank you for any further suggestions

Lewis

[Paul_FCCL]

I have same problem.......motion sensitivity is set to 55% and I also feel it is too low to pick up most activity.

This is a serious flaw with the camera and something should be done about it. There have been many users reporting this problem for a while now, I'm surprised and concerned at the same time that it hasn't been resolved.

It was previously reported as a resolved issue, by suggesting a lower sensitive setting (75%???) would fix this. Not so.

Any feedback please.....

Thank you.

Paul FCCL

[Paul_FCCL]

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ecArlo wrote:

Update:

Closing this thread as it appears lowering sensitvity to 75% has avoided faulty triggers from 15+ triggers within an hour to approx 5/day.  I still see flash of light at first second of trigger as Iris apparently is auto correcting.

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Not so.......it may have made some difference in that particular case, obviously many more of us reporting same problem. My sensitivity was reduced to 55% and I'm still getting too many false triggers, more so on a bright, sunny day!

Paul FCCL

[Paul_FCCL]

It looks like this problem is no longer an issue........after the recent software update (1.6.XXXX?) there doesn't seem to be as much of that. Could this be fixed now?

Happy to see it gone, good work!!!

Paul FCCL

[pd-]

I just purchased the two camera kit, and I'm having this issue on one of them. That particular camera also reports low batteries, but I've installed fresh batteries twice in two days. Dropping the motion detection seemed to slow the frequency, but as others have commented this pretty much renders the camera useless because it doesn't respond quickly enough. I will try dropping the brightness level and report.

[Vinc]

Hi all,

on sunny days I'm getting 5+ false alram due flashes. I'm on firmware 1.7.xxx for base station and 1.2.xxx for the camera itself.

These false alarms are really annoying and misleading. Any suggestion how to solve the case ? Is Netgear working on it ?

Thanks 

[jguerdat]

The cameras and software can't possibly handle all possibilities. The user needs to position the cameras to help minimize external influences. It can be height, angle, direction the camera is pointed, reflections from anything that reflects IR, the position of the sun, the sensitivity setting, etc. etc.  You may have a unique situation where this is difficult or maybe some trial and error position tests.

[Paul_FCCL]

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Vinc wrote:

Hi all,

on sunny days I'm getting 5+ false alram due flashes. I'm on firmware 1.7.xxx for base station and 1.2.xxx for the camera itself.

These false alarms are really annoying and misleading. Any suggestion how to solve the case ? Is Netgear working on it ?

Thanks 

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I share your pain.....have same problem, have had it since day one. Found a workaround, not very practical, but it works. Setup a new mode called "extremely bright days" and added a new rule with basic settings to include very low (60%) sensitivity level for the camera affected.

I have to manually start that mode whenever necessary in order to keep false triggers to a minimum. There aren't any other options if camera location and angle are not flexible.

Some times we have to compromise..... without any other available solutions.

Regards,

Paul

[Vinc]

Thank you for the suggested workaround. However, I'm of the opinion that all these false alarms (today I had 12 !) are making the system partially useless.

I really hope that NETGEAR is working on a software fix for the issue. It can't be that for reducing false alarms, cameras have to be set to lower sensibility and by doing so, potentially having REAL events not notified !