64 Messages
A majority of motion event videos aren't saved completely, Please SimpliSafe get yourself together!
Dear SimpliSafe,
As someone who has been using your system for 7+ years now, all I can say is please get yourself together! From the indoor camera microphones picking up interference from its own electronics, to the pin pad on the Smart Lock coating becoming smooth and exposing your systems disarm pin numbers to motion event videos not getting saved fully. What is going on?! You'd think with the price increase in our plans plus as big of a company as you are now that you could even afford your own commercials, but you can't fix issues with your devices and service? If things don't start improving soon I will just have to start looking for another service as SimpliSafe isn't the only player in town in the no-contract game anymore.
Let me give some information here. So I've been struggling with our doorbell camera, some videos it records completely, but a good majority of them will record 15-30 seconds at most and then I get the error that "SimpliSafe did not receive all the video data". Hmm, ok maybe it's the Wi-Fi signal being too weak and the video resolution is too high. Add a Wi-Fi repeater and set the video resolution to 720p (because who wants to set it to useless 480p?) and run a connection check and it comes back everything should work just fine. Oh, and we're on 1 gig fiber internet so internet speed is no where near an issue here.
Give it a few days and the same issue is still happening, wth? So this time I take the Wi-Fi extender and set it up as an access point instead hooking it up to one of our ethernet ports so that I know for sure it will have maximum speed and the Wi-Fi signal from the router to the extender can be eliminated as a cause. Get everything setup, do another connection check and all green, alright! I get excited thinking for sure this will solve the issue. Does it? Nope. SimpliSafe still is dropping the majority of the motion events after 15-30 seconds.
So if someone trips the motion activation on one of our cameras we pretty much have a 1 in 4 chance of getting the complete video saved by SimpliSafe. Let's not mention that when you redo the Wi-Fi settings on the doorbell you have to unmount the doorbell and press the reset button each and every time which gets to be a hassle when you're working on an issue that might or might not be caused by your internet.
So SimpliSafe when can we expect these issues to get resolved? As someone who praised you and recommended you to so many people and now I'm growing tired of the mounting number of issues, no response from SimpliSafe or that it's getting "looked into" for years on end and I'm close to just moving on to a more reliable company if things don't start turning around very soon. My families safety and security depend on this system so if it means jumping ship for a competitor because SimpliSafe refuses to fix their problems, then so be it.
davey_d
Community Admin
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5.7K Messages
2 years ago
Hi @kicktd ,
Thanks for reaching out about this - and for laying out the thorough troubleshooting you've already been through. Since you're already getting a good result from the Connection Check Tool, I'm thinking we might want to think about this issue beyond just WiFi reception.
Like maybe this could be an app or playback issue. Are you seeing the same dropoff when you try to access your recordings from the webapp on a desktop browser? And what about if you download the recordings to your device?
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kicktd
64 Messages
2 years ago
@davey_d So today which is a wonderfully bright and clear day in my part of the US, the USPS delivered a package to our porch and the funny thing is, he rang the doorbell and I got the doorbell notification at the exact same time as the motion event notification. See screenshots at bottom of the post from the very first frame of where it decided to detect, as well as my settings.
Now remember this is with it connected to a wi-fi extender that is acting as an access point connected to our network via an ethernet jack which is giving off its own dedicated 2.4ghz wi-fi network within 10 feet of the video doorbell itself so signal and speed isn't an issue and it can clearly access the internet.
So I reviewed the video (thankfully it actually saved this time) and was surprised to see that despite having the camera set to the highest sensitivity which states detects any motion and setting it to all motion which says it will pick up animals, vehicles, people etc. it didn't pick up anything at all until the person delivering the mail was at 15 feet from my door. Yes, I got the tape measure out and measured the exact spot it started recording him at. It didn't pick up the mail vehicle pulling up which is clearly in the middle of the cameras view and only picked the mail person up at 15 feet.
Surely this isn't expect behavior, is it? I would think during the daylight and even at night it would use the actual view to detect movement outside of the PIR alone, but is it only using the PIR to detect movement? If so why? That seems like a really bad choice and means missing a lot. Also if it's relying on PIR alone, that is bad in the fact that if someone truly wanted to sneak by and not trigger the camera, moving slow enough would do it, especially given the performance I've seen out of the doorbell camera thus far.
Do I have a defective unit? Is this by design? Some answers here would be really helpful because it would be nice to have alerts that someone is coming down my driveway or walking in my yard towards my house before they actually get to my door. It would also be great if the darn "All motion" worked as it should and actually detected any motion, including vehicles. My wife can park her van in the driveway with all motion enabled and high sensitivity in plain view of the camera well within 15 feet of the camera and it doesn't go off until she's walking almost to the front door.
What should I do here? This is the 2nd doorbell camera, the first one we got was defective straight out of the box and we had to return and get another one from Best Buy which is this unit but I feel the detection should be way better than this shouldn't it? I've had cheap sub $50 cameras in the past that did better at picking up motion from further away than this does at both day and night.
A response from someone from SimpliSafe would be nice as well on if this is normal and intended or not, I feel like I'm yelling into the wind at the moment.
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davey_d
Community Admin
•
5.7K Messages
2 years ago
Hi @kicktd ,
To answer your second question, your theory is correct. The way that our cameras work is that the infrared sensor is always triggered first. Then, if you have People Only enabled (of course, for the Outdoor Camera and the Video Doorbell), the camera is activated to scan for people-shaped objects moving around in the scene. This way, the camera doesn't have to be constantly engaged, and using up unnecessary power.
And yes, that also means that the effect range of the motion sensor is limited to the infrared.
But that's a separate issue from what you initially asked about, with that incomplete recording error. Since you've ruled out a possible issue with playblack on your device, then we're back to troubleshooting the network. It sounds like the data does start going through, and it's being cut off. I'm working with engineering right now to figure out next steps.
In the meantime, what was the performance like for that Video Doorbell without the extender? I'm thinking it's possible for that relay to be a bottleneck.
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socalschlegels
7 Messages
1 year ago
it's always a network issue. my front camera is pretty much useless. you have to be right in front of it to trigger.
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Jbrydson
1 Message
1 year ago
I have this exact same problem. I contacted customer support and they ran through my system. I was also getting multiple video clips from the same camera trying to record at the same time. They blamed my internet speed despite it testing good. I upgraded my internet, and still have the problem. They would only refund items that I bought directly from them. I bought the initial system from Costco, but several more cameras from Amazon. So I'm stuck with it. No updates, resets, customer service calls, resolution changes, etc have helped. The worst part of the whole thing is that if there's a motion notification, I can't preview it until it's done uploading. Allot of good that does me.
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mike_880898
28 Messages
1 year ago
There has been great improvement since my outdoor cams got updated to 1.16 and 1.17 firmware. Have you noticed the same?
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johnadams3247
1 Message
4 months ago
We have issues as well, our doorbell camera goes off Every night around the same time, lately it has been doing it later than usual. But it always registers "no video recorded" EVERY NIGHT, it is beyond frustrating. We've restarted the router, got a WiFi extender, made sure it was on 2.4 gig and not 5G. Gone up in price again but getting les s and less for it. About to switch uess something positively drastic changes, it's BS.
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dlpsr
1.3K Messages
4 months ago
My two doorbells have their moments, just waking them playing around last night took three, 20 to 30 second tries. Then afterwards 3 or 4 seconds live view. Laughable for security. Bad uploads, non uploads, hit or miss.
Mesh, 2 access points, -36 dbm and all blue bars.
An inside guy at SS insinuated there were or they might be, upgrading or mfging new ones with better antennas. Unconfirmed but he works there, so....
Mine vary with their connection checker on upload speed from 2.86 to almost 10mbs depending when checked. The outdoor cams pushing 20.
25mbs available.
Plain and simple, weak doorbell wifi antennae. They are junk for the cost, should be recalled if they really have better antennas in some and replaced at SS cost.
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