Outdoor camera

Greetings Cyb10389.  I setup 3 outdoor cams when these were released, and returned them all after weeks of testing and help from a SS engineer.  Detailed feedback on my experience was posted here in the community.  Bottom line, the cams  are brilliant, but the current software driving the cams is not. They attempt to record everything that moves, 24 hrs a day, triggering too slowly to see anything useful and draining the battery.  I also had trouble with the spotlight turning on randomly, and not turning off after a recording event. There’s no way to schedule the time they’re active, and turning them on and off takes too many steps to reach in the menus. So the battery dies. Not useful at all.  

However, my indoor cams and SimpliSafe sensors have performed flawlessly for a couple years now.  I’m sticking with SimpliSafe, and recommend to friends and family.  Just not the outdoor cams.  I’m hopeful these software flaws will be fixed, I will buy them again if these issues are addressed.

I’ve been a SimpliSafe customer for years and was really looking forward to the outdoor camera when I finally bought two this year. I have been comparing it side by side to a Ring cam on my system for a couple months now and I’m ready to send the SS back. This camera should not have been shipped to customers, IMO. I’m not an engineer but the camera responds way too slowly, it doesn’t connect half the time despite it being 10 feet from a router, and it’s UI is inadequate. Does it even have an adequate processor for video streaming? And the video quality in daytime is way over-exposed compared to my Ring. It actually offers better video quality at night than during the day. I have zero issue pulling up my Ring (which is 2x farther from my router) every time and getting fairly true colors and decent clarity. I’m bummed.

The outdoor camera definitely wakes up too slowly.  Most of my recordings are of people at the top or bottom edge of frame disappearing from view in the first couple of frames, and that's people walking directly towards or away from the camera, not crossing left to right.

The toggle to night vision is also seriously flawed.  Half my videos at night are pitch black because the camera stays in color mode even though it's dark out.

A simple fix would be to set a timer on the camera that turns a camera to night vision only during certain times of the day.  The only way to do that now is to log onto the web UI (the app doesn't allow you) and set night vision to always on or always off, but you have to do that yourself, twice a day, for each camera.... which is of course a really inconvenient work-around.

This whole delayed capture thing has to be figured out.... It's not acceptable to tout an outdoor camera that catches things after the fact. In what world is that remotely helpful to anyone? This needs to be corrected immediately. The best way for a business to take quick action is when it hurts their bottom line so anyone who has experienced this should leave a one star review on Simplisafe's google result and anywhere else to get the attention. I have seen too many times on here they invalidate and dismiss the feedback of customers on here. Time to let them hear it loud and clear. 

I am stunned that this is still an issue, I just purchased a new system and noticed how long it takes these outdoor cameras to wake. It completely defeats their purpose. I am seriously considering the usage of their indoor cameras as outdoor cameras until they fix this issue, or taking my business elsewhere. It should be so simple, if the camera is powered via solar panel or AC, the camera should not go into deep sleep. Period!

I have a hardwired outdoor camera and have zero issues with it.  I recently installed a 2nd, this one battery only.  The battery dies after 12-18 hours although the app will show battery % at 100 up until I get a notification that the camera is shutting down due to critical battery.  I have the sensitivity set for the lowest setting, people only, zones, night vision off, etc.  Hardware issue? Software issue? Both?
The best part was the support offered by the chat agent that I spoke with yesterday.  The gentleman explained that it was a ME issue.  Apparently, SimpliSafe requires a charging block of 7.5w or better to properly charge the battery. I confirmed with the agent that I was using a 12w charging block (used 2 different blocks) and the battery itself is telling me that it is fully charged (full lights) after 5 or so hours of charging.  I was informed several times by the agent that 12 was less than 7.5.  A lack of basic training/education?  A lack of active listening?  A focus on explaining away product issues instead of actually troubleshooting and resolving customer concerns?
Time to start shopping for a customer focused alarm company.