Add a "no sensing area" feature

[Videoman1]

Arlo staff ... since this camera system is powered by batteries I believe that the software should include a feature where you can create a box within the image that the camera is watching... This box would be a no sensing area box so that if movement is detected within this boxed area it will not trigger the cameras to record ... The advantage of having such a feature would be that the cameras would not waste battery power on movement with no importance... for example if a camera is monitoring a scene outside where everything is still except for a flag that is blowing in the wind you could put this no sensing area box around the blowing flag to keep the camera from turning on ... this in turn would save battery life and keep the system from recording unnecessary videos. ... Thanks Bob

[jguerdat]

The passive IR detector doesn't work that way. It's all or nothing. The Q cameras have a pixel-based detection which have this ability. To best use the PIR detection, position the camera so it limits the view to the actual area of interest. That's your box.

[Schorschi]

And besides, a moving flag would only cause a motion event if it were to reflect light from an infrared light source, such as the sun. Likewise, with moving brush. It won't trigger a motion event, unless it reflects IR light from an IR source.

[Videoman1]

The situation that created this request is that one of my Arlo cameras is facing a tree at night... When the wind is calm the camera does not trigger and it does not record or waste battery power... When the wind is blowing the camera does trigger (repeatedly) and records the scene and uses power... When I observe the video in the morning the only motion that I can see is a branch that is being moved around by strong winds... and the only infrared source that I can see is the infrared light produced by the cameras LEDs and maybe some moon light ...so we'll assume it's the moonlight reflecring off the leaves on the branch that the camera is detecting ... if I was able to capture the area of the branch with a no sensing box feature I could cut the motion out of the image and keep the cameras from recording and wasting battery ... the feature could also be used during daylight recording by removing any false movement items from the image ... the feature would allow the cameras to monitor scenes that it otherwise couldn't due to false movement items in the scene ... this would be a relatively easy feature to add via a software update ... I realize that I can point the camera in a different direction or decrease the image area with the software feature in the settings but by doing that I am also not monitoring the scene that I really want to watch ... this no sensing box feature would provide more monitoring flexibility and also reduce wasted battery power ... my original camera batteries are approaching 5 months.

[jguerdat]

A few things::

- The IR LEDs on the camera only activate when there is motion (unless you have a Q camera and have night vision enabled since it constantly streams).

- Moonlight could possibly be the IR source since it's simply reflected sunlight but I'd think it would be very weak.  I haven't seen nighttime moonlight activation where I have issues with afternoon triggering from the sun bouncing off leaves, etc.  Last night I was getting recordings due to lightning flashes, however.

- On the wireless cameras, the sensor can't be defined in software - it either detects or not.  Using the Pan and Zoom feature has no effect on motion detection.  The Q camera uses a pixel-based detection scheme, not passive IR, so boxes can be defined.

- Use the Search feature above here to search for "pvc" or "pvc pipe" and click on the one that starts with "Success".  There's a simple shield that can be fashioned that may be of use to you.