Schedule motion detection on Outdoor Cameras

@ronw300​ Thank you for the suggestion! This request sounds similar to this thread, so I've merged your original post into it. This new feature has been submitted to our dev team - once we hear any news from them we'll provide an update.

this has been submitted to the dev team for 2 years.  Can we assume it's not really on the radar at this point??

@emily_s​ 

I've been a Simplisafe customer for over a decade and just this week decided to add a couple of outdoor cameras to replace an old system from another manufacturer. I wish I had checked to see if this extremely basic functionality would be included in Simplisafe's cameras, but I guess I was fooled by A: the fact that the Simplisafe indoor cameras can be set to different states depending on the system arm state, and B: who in the world would ever want outdoor camera that can't schedule notifications?

My need here is extremely simple: I want my outdoor cameras to record events 24 hours a day, but only push notifications when I'm awake. I also want the rest of my system to push notifications to me if something happens inside my house at any hour.

Because the Simplisafe app treats all the device notifications as one type, I can't allow some notifications through my phone's do-not-disturb setting. I either get no information about what kind of alarm is going on. or I get woken up every time someone walks past my house at night. Maybe if I lived on a private estate, that would be fine, but I live in a city where my front door is directly on the sidewalk.

Simplisafe tech support suggested that I go into the app every night and every morning and turn notifications on and off for each camera.  Yeah, I'm not going to do that. These cameras are getting returned and I'm looking for another system that can handle this extremely simple and reasonable use case.

Hi @SimpliBZ, 

We do have a Snooze Notifications feature that sounds pretty similar to your idea! With Snooze Notifications enabled, you can temporarily pause motion notifications from your cameras for a set amount of time. Once that time is up, you will receive notifications again. You can learn more about this feature in this Help Center article.

Hi @emily_s,

Thanks for pointing out that feature!  I did not know about that, and gave it try.  It certainly does help to snooze notifications, but, unfortunately,  it still keeps the camera enabled and thus draining the battery, fills up the timeline, and has to be done for each camera after you receive a notification which requires a recent notification from each camera to still be in your notification history.   I wish that I could say that it solves more of the use case that I am describing above.

@SimpliBZ​ I certainly understand where you're coming from! We have also submitted the suggestion to schedule the Outdoor Camera's motion detection to our dev team. This should also address the use case you mentioned. Once we get any news from our dev team, an update will be provided in this thread.

Thanks @emily_s!

@TC994a​ 

This is why I dropped simplisafe and returned to Ring. Spoke to several customer service reps who couldn’t care less about losing another customer. 

@tiptopwineshop​ You're so right. This has been an issue from the beginning. It has been years since Simplisafe has been notified of those issues. Despite there being what should be a relatively easy programming solution for such an important feature, "bupkus" has been done. We are just told this issue has been referred to the Simplisafe team, whatever that means. Clearly there is a disconnect between the customers needs and this company. 

@tiptopwineshop​ The Outdoor Camera was designed to stay on and record when motion is detected. However, our devs are working on a feature that ties the camera's motion detection to its armed state, so when the system is off, cameras won't record. Once the feature is ready to roll out to users, we'll let everyone know in this thread. But if you do return your system, thank you for giving SimpliSafe a try!

@emily_s did the Devs give any timeline? This has been requested for years and seems to have not made any of the development sprints so far. I was purchasing a competitors camera system and likely to cancel the rest of my SimpliSafe subscriptions but if this is in the near future I would hold off. Timeline would help keep a lot of us around I’m sure. 

Hello Emily,

Thank you for this update. Further periodic updates will be greatly appreciated, especially any ETA for the launch of this valuable feature. 

@emily_s​ It would be far more useful (rather than cameras are basically off when system is on) to allow enabling each aspect of these features for each camera (or for all cameras.)  Some of us have cameras we DO want on all the time (eg front door) and other ones we only want on when the alarm is set (eg pool, yard, etc).  Turning motion notification on/off as well as motion detection on/off for each camera individually or for all cameras would seem to not be that difficult, and is pretty standard with other alarm systems.