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I've never been more disappointed in a product than the Nest Cam. Nest's lack of panning and zooming, and a subscription service PER camera? False alarms so frequent that i ignore them now, which defeats the purpose? I don't know if it was marketed as a security device or i just assumed it would be, but its far from a good security device in my case.

I used to have 3 Foscam's (now rebranded to Amcrest) recording to a local central server, backing up to an offsite location, and tried with some success to get imageMagick to weed out any duplicate false alarms. Thought the NestCam would be make things more friction-less, but its worse. (I lost the old setup but am probably going back to the new ones soon).

OP: to get around your notification rule, you can try IFTTT. I've had various levels of success: it always seems to work fine for a week, and then something changes (android update? ifttt update? nest app update?) and it breaks until i notice it again.

Thanks for the IFTTT recommendation, I'll have a look. This is my first camera. My first instinct was to go with something like a Foscam/Amcrest on a more "DIY" route but the thought of having something plug-and-play was nice too, especially with Nest playing up their "we use A.I. and algorithms to make this all work perfectly" angle, which I feel misled by.

> They also have a weird rule where you can only get 1 notification within a 30 minute window. So if I take my garbage outside and the camera sees me, it will send an alert. If an axe murderer comes onto the property 20 minutes after that, the camera won't alert me.

So a burglar can shine a laser pointer into the lens from a far distance and disable the camera from recording them? Wow.

My parents have a Ring with motion alerts and it's constantly getting set off by reflections, moths, birds, etc. This is a device that also has a supposed "Smart Alert algorithm", but it seems little better than basic statistical detection.

It sounds like it doesn't disable the recording, but disables the alert. Which can still be abused, but isn't as bad as what you describe.

A strong enough laser might even be able to destroy the image sensor. I remember reading about concert cameras being ruined by the lasers that were part of the show.

Sure, but I don't think that's what they were talking about. A BB gun or a paintball gun or a can of spraypaint on a stick can also disable a camera.

Oh yeah, I know. I was just theorizing about another way to defeat the camera.

On the subject of the ring doorbell, we have one, and the most annoying part is that after 30 seconds of recording, it stops until another motion event triggers it. I have several recordings of people knocking at my door, but the recording cuts off before they leave.

> I'm honestly really disappointed in it because 99% of the alerts I get from this camera are false alarms. The most frequent offender is light from passing vehicles.

Yup. Have this exact same problem. Non-stop alerts saying "Nest thinks it spotted a person" then it shows me a clip of a car driving by (I've defined zone/regions to exclude the roadway view but that feature does not work either).

The app also forgets I'm subscribed every single month (even though I'm on auto-renew) and I have to uninstall, wipe cache, reinstall app to get things working again. Without the "active" subscription, the app doesn't provide any notifications.

While I absolutely love the camera/history, the app experience is utter shit. I've tried contacting support and (surprise surprise, Google) it's useless and non-existent.

> I've defined zone/regions to exclude the roadway view but that feature does not work either

Yes! I experience this as well. It alerts me for things happening outside of my 1 defined zone, and frequently doesn't alert me when someone walks inside my defined zone.

I got a set of Reolink Argus cameras during their kickstarter project, and have been pleasantly surprised at how well their 'intelligent' alerts work. One of their cameras is mounted where we have some screen blinds flapping in the wind and also where our cats tend to traverse a lot, and in the 6 months or so that we've had these cameras, never a false alarm trigger for those, and it picks up people moving through the area really well.

Only downside so far is that one of the cameras seems to go through batteries faster than the others (who all are close to the 3 month promised battery life). Also, their cameras seem to be fussy as to which SMTP providers they work with in order to send email alerts, but once sorted out, works great.

Mobitix cameras have a high level of customisability in regards to motion detection. High end but worth it.