Outdoor Cam recording every 3 minutes

The same thing happened to me. I took the battery out and put it back in to force a "reboot" of the camera. This seems to have corrected the issue for the most part. I still get occasional phantom notifications and sometimes it does not alert at all when someone walks right by it.  

My back door outdoor camera started doing this yesterday. It's battery was 43% a couple of weeks ago when the percentage part worked. ( Bring it back please)  now it just shows 1/4 mark. Every 7 minutes it would trigger. I put in a fresh battery and it all stopped. Maybe that is a sign of low battery.

I have two outdoor cameras and, from the start, intended to have them run either on AC or the solar panel.  A camera mounted on the house right under the gutter in Chicagoland is not a formula for success with the wind chill today at a balmy -2! Both of my cameras have the SS AC adapters, very well built and designed, and work as expected.  Unless your cameras are easy to get to and you have nice weather year round, I do suggest the AC adapter or solar panel options.

It happened to me. I took the battery out and put it back in to force a "reboot" of the camera. Started at 3:00 am, getting notification every 3 minutes. I had solar panels connected, so the batteries were fully charged. After rebooting seems to be OK.

@tls​ What was the weather doing at the time? I had this a few times during heavy rains

@captain11​ Clear night, no rain, no wind, temperature about 24 degrees F, camera connected to solar panel. It wouldn't stop recording. I disable motion detect, but it still kept recording.  

That's a little odd. The Outdoor Camera is designed to keep recording for as long as there's motion in the scene - so it might have been triggered by something that looks like a human to the AI. Like maybe a flag waving in the wind. But it should have stopped when you disabled the Motion Sensing in the app.

So you mention that you've already taken out the battery to shut it down. Have you put the battery back in since then? A power cycle might bring it back to normal.

Yes, I have the battery back in. It appears to be working normally. Nothing blowing in the wind.

Hm, okay. Keep us updated if it starts to act up again.

@tls​ Happened to me. I couldn't stop it from recording every three minutes. I have to remove the battery. That fixed the issue. 

@bradmillerpe​ I suggest you call support and see if they can find a cause, or at least replace it.  I have two of the units and work great. While both are now on AC, my first one had the battery for several weeks and it lasted through that fine.  I should note it was down to 60% so I would take the "3-6 months' with a grain of salt, although there have been at least 2 firmware updates that may have improved performance.

@captain11​   I can only speak for myself, but I have seen no updates for the SimpliSafe outdoor camera.  In early April 2022 there was a system update, but I’ve not seen a camera update. 

@Woowee_oowee  I have two outdoor cameras, both using the AC adapter so I don't worry about climbing ladders to swap batteries. Highly recommend you use the AC adapter or the solar panel. That aside, note that rainfall, sleet or snow can make your camera start recording. Depends on lighting conditions, tree limbs in the wind moving etc. Mine rarely now record in error but it took some "tweaking" to get them there. First, use the provide "zone" settings to exclude any area you wan the camara to ignore for motion. For me, if its beyond the sidewalk next to the street, don't care, so they are excluded. Next, the sensitivity setting. Mine are both set on medium, not high. If still an issue call support. Good luck.

@Woowee_oowee the Captain has some excellent advice. I would also add that the Outdoor Camera does use a built-in Motion Sensor that works like the one we have for the main system; that is, it works by detecting sources of heat that are moving around in the scene. So if you're getting ghost triggers, it might be worth thinking about heat-generating objects nearby. Maybe outdoor lamps or vents?

Unfortunately I am seeing the exact same issue, recording every other minutes, no video whatsoever! I’ve adjusted motion to almost nothing, switch the night vision and even took it down face in a corner with nothing going on.

@folivertx​ I'm not sure you're seeing the exact same issue, since it sounds like the original poster is definitely still getting recordings. Though it is especially concerning that you're still getting triggers even when the camera is facing a wall, so there couldn't possibly be any actual triggers.

I would suggest resetting your camera, in case it's a software issue. You can do that by pressing and holding the button in the back for 16 seconds. When you release, the camera can be set up again like new from the SimpliSafe app.

@davey_d @How many times will we need to reset the camera! to only have it working for couple hours then break again⚽️ The behavior is the same many blank recording to then eventually the No video, adjusted the motion to almost none created zone to almost 1 little center area just for testing purpose still the same, and I can for sure tell you still all started after the latest version 1.7 xxx. 

i have a screen recording of them all if they would be of any help to confirm similarity here 

@halestroy​ so you've already tried simply power cycling the camera by taking out the battery, and reinserting. How about a hard reset? You can do that by either pressing the button in the back for 16 seconds, or removing the camera from your Base Station and re-adding (both ways force the camera back into Setup Mode).

That is, of course, assuming that there really is nothing triggering the motion sensor.

@halestroy​   I agree.  This SimpliSafe outdoor camera seems to be garbage.  

@peterjlee87​ thanks for reporting. Have you already power cycled the camera by taking out the battery and reinserting?

@peterjlee87​   Agreed. I’m tired of deleting dozens of 3 minute clips every morning. About 20 per hour.  For me, this is only a nighttime issue. 

@jaimelogeman​ Let's try to determine what is different with our cameras. I have two and they work fine.

Here goes: Google WIFI, AT&T Internet, 80 down, 20 up. Using connection check strong signals and speed okay. Now  this could be big: Both are on AC power.  Are yours on battery?

@captain11​   What a lame question. Mine is corded, but I get this same problem constantly.   As SS’s outdoor camera is designed to operate either on battery or plugged in, I’m sorry to say, but your idea is totally moot.  SS needs to fix this.  It’s probably a software issue. I’ve mentioned in many comments that I only have this issue at night. That right there should help SS zero in on the problem.  But SS doesn’t care, the same that they don’t care about their door lock not responding issues. SS is letting their reputation spiral down and the company deserves all negative comments and ratings. Sorry, but that’s the real world. 

@sugakuga regardless of how your Outdoor Cam is powered, it will still need to connect through WiFi. So the Captain is right on the first bit - looking for possible issues with bandwidth and connectivity. The Connection Check tool in the SimpliSafe app will help determine if the camera is getting a good signal where it's located.

Though you're right, there should be no difference in the camera when powered by AC, versus on battery alone. However, it's still worth investigating all the factors - so we can dig up possible leads.

In a different comment, you asked about updates to the cameras. There have been two so far this year. Unlike system updates, camera updates are all silent and automatic, so you may not notice that they've been applied. You can check the current version of your cameras in the Settings page of the SimpliSafe app. More updates are of course on the way.

I have already reported this issue to our dev team, but we'll send it up again to let them know it's still happening.

@sugakuga​ Okay, your opinion, but there can still be differences on how it performs when the power sources are different.