Best practice when camera faces a pretty busy street

[RJC4]

I am interested in the Arlo to put around  the outside of my home.  There has been a spike in property crime in my neighborhood.  I would like to keep an eye on my whole house but especially the front.  But my front yard is on a pretty busy street-- folks walking on the sidewalk and cars going by.  Is that going to mess with the camera's operation given the constant motion?

[jguerdat]

It certainly could but there are ways to avoid or at least minimize the issue. Positioning and downward angle is important as well as minimizing the view the camera sees - don't go for the whole scene but only the area of importance. If necessary, some folks have resorted to masking the motion sensor with a small piece of PVC pipe or even tape to prevent unwanted detection.

[RJC4]

Thanks. Couple follow ups:

- so if I mask the detector, how does it turn on at all?  Or do you only partially mask it?

- so is there no good way to fully monitor a busier area like a sidewalk or street?  I suppose I could purchase the more expensive storage plan that would allow for 24x7 filming, right?

[jguerdat]

1) you only mask out what's not important so there would likely be just a small sliver of tape at, say, the top to prevent cars from triggering a recording.

2) if there's that much activity, the battery-operated wireless cameras would be a poor choice since you'd be wearing out the batteries quickly. These also have no 24/7 plan - I think you're referring to the Q cameras' CVR option. That isn't a 24/7 recording per se but a way to go back in time and watch the whole stream since the Qs are powered and always streaming. You can't readily download the stream like the usual recordings. Instead, you would have to use a screen capture package to record while you're viewing the CVR playback.

Note that the Q cameras are indoors only bug can be used to detect motion through glass, unlike the wireless cameras. This is because the Q camera uses a pixel-based detection scheme while the wireless cameras use a passive IR detector, like a motion detection exterior light. You can also set up zones of detection so there's no need to mask the sensor since there is no detection sensor.

[Schorschi]

As pointed out already, the Arlo wireless cameras are ill-suited to be oriented towards a busy street as this will run the batteries down in no time.

Workarounds are as follows (in order of decreasing effectiveness):

• Mount cameras away from your house and orient them towards the house, i.e. no busy street in the frame, no unnecessary recording.
• Use a two-(or more) camera setup to cover the front of house: place one camera such that it is oriented towards the street, but don't create any rules to record video clips by motion events from it. Use a second camera as a trigger camera by orienting it laterally in front of your house (i.e. parallel to the street) and have it trigger recording on it and the first camera.
• Point cameras down when orienting towards the street, so that the upper edge of the frame is at the edge of the sidewalk. Play around with combinations of:
• mounting camera upside down,
• adding a small visor to the top of the camera to reduce trigger area.

Though, it is questionable whether orienting a camera towards a street is effective. To me, points of ingress into the house should be covered. What happens in the front-yard is of little interest, unless you have a shrubbery-thief in your neighborhood that you want to catch in the act.