Motion detection does not work properly at night

Hi all, I just purchased Wyze Cam V2 couple of days ago. I setup motion detection area which works fine during day time but once it becomes dark, it starts detecting any light source e.g cars driving by on the road etc. and sends false alerts.
Is there any to fix it or that is how it works?
I will appreciate your help…

I have the same issue at night on the front of my house. It isn’t really motion detection, but changes in pixels. When cars drive by and headlights light up parts of the yard, I get an alert. What I’ve been doing is reducing the detection zone down to just where the IR lights work and most* headlights don’t shine. This isn’t ideal. Sunlight and rapidly moving clouds can also trigger alerts. Pixel change probably detects motion great indoors, outdoors has some issues. I wish, we could set a daytime detection zone and another for night, so I could schedule these profiles. That would work great for me.

To answer your question, yes, that is how it works.

Thanks for your reply. How do I figure out IR lights range?

It’s basically to reduce the zone down until you can see something useful.

What I am doing and why: Once the unit is in night mode and all the dusk light is gone, I adjust my detection range down to what I can actually distinguish in the IR light. If some cat or something is out there moving and I can’t really tell what it is, I’ve wasted my alert notification because of the cool-down period. If it moves closer in where I could get a better image, I won’t get a notification for another five minutes. If it moves on, then I could never identify what it is in any case, so I don’t need the alert notification. The cool-down period becomes a real problem when you get a ton of false headlight alerts. I was getting alerts every five minutes and missing any and all movement in-between. So, 96% (assuming 12 seconds of alert video) of my time was lost to the cool-down period. This is why I would like to have profiles, each with its own detection zone, one for daytime and one for night. If I leave my night detection zone active during the day light, I’m giving up something like 80% of what needs to be covered by the camera during the day.

The pixel method is catching things at night that my motion lights do not, so that I like. I’m thinking of getting a second camera for the same zone and via scheduling, making a day zone on one and a night zone on the other.

It is detecting any light flash on the screen, outside the detection zone as well. As a work around I scheduled motion detection during day time only and it works fine. I think I don’t need motion detection at night.

I went out and tested mine last night. Anything outside the detection zone doesn’t trigger an alert or an event recording. Event recording does continue during the cool down period as long as the perceived motion is inside the detection zone. In order to prevent headlights from triggering an alert, I have to reduce my zone down to about 20% of the screen at dark and on rainy days when my driveway reflects that light.

Thanks for your help. What sensitivity level are you using? My Christmas laser lights projector is also causing issues. After Christmas, I will test it properly by setting up 20% detection zone as you have recommended.

During the daylight, I am able to set my sensitivity to 100 on this camera and expand the zone to cover my truck in the driveway. At night, when I have to reduce the zone down to my estimated 20%, I change the sensitivity to 75 and it seems to work. This is why I would like to have profiles, saved on the SD card, that I could schedule. For me, one for day and one for night mode on this camera. The current IR lights only cover about 30% of my view at night, so I don’t think I’m really losing much by doing this. I could also see profiles with different zones, sensitivities, etc. helping people with sunlight and shadow issues too. Especially if the zones are no longer limited to rectangles. As the shadows move west to east, different profiles/zones would cover your needs.

Thanks for your response. I will try your settings and see how it goes…

There is a Roadmap topic for additional Shortcut actions to be considered. I’ve added “Detection zone on/off” and “Adjust sensitivity” to that list. Having those new shortcut actions would accomplish at least part of the request for profiles. You may want to hop over and vote for that topic…

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I suppose that would be a very piecemeal way of doing some of it, but having the camera settings saved off in an SD file would or could eliminate the need for development to create more “actions” for every setting that comes up. I’m not sure how drawing different detection zones would ever be accomplished by an action. But, loading that from a file? Sure. I don’t see re-configuring a camera as a series of actions unless you have a really robust set of actions and you would still be missing different detection zones. Actions, to me, are more like a macro or script of things I do, like turn on time lapse for the next 3 hours, save a short video, etc. Things that aren’t settings. Changing profiles could be added as an action and even better if they could be scheduled to load. Profiles, or different camera settings, could be set for when I’m at work vs home, vacation vs normal in and out week, daytime/sunlight vs night time, etc. I don’t have a long list of cryptically named shortcuts changing various settings, nor do I want them.

I agree, shortcut actions don’t solve the problem of multiple different detection zones.

I’ve created a Roadmap topic for this (linked below) so you can hop over there and vote for it. I’d suggest you also add your thoughts from your above post as a comment on the new Roadmap topic.

I’ll vote for that!

I’m on a busy road and had a problem with headlights triggering alerts. I’ve changed my Night Vision to “Auto” and it seems to work…no color, but hey, it’s night-time!