Outdoor Camera Recording Every 3 Minutes on firmware update 1.18 and 1.20

@Fgrosoli​ Is there any motion in any of these recordings? If nothing is moving in these videos, I would try resetting the camera that is experiencing this to see if that prevents it. You can reset the camera following the steps in this Help Center article.

TEMPORARY WORKAROUND:  Turn on all your outside lights for 10 minutes and the false triggering will stop!

MODERATOR:  Please make this answer stick at the top, or repost so it does.  People need to know how trivial it is to work around this problem.

More specifically, my triggering occurs only at night and only after a legitimate trigger.  Following that legitimate trigger, the camera will erroneously claim motion every three minutes.  This will repeat until either daytime comes around again, or the battery runs out.  Well, make daylight come around early by turning on enough lights outside to make the camera think it's daylight.  I've tried this multiple times and I can guarantee it works in my situation.  Try it in yours.  I've gotten it reduced to simply turning on my single front porch light for 10 minutes.  The false triggers cease, and I turn my porch light back off.  You may need to experiment with which or how much light you need.  I picked 10 minutes to be well more than twice the 3 minute period.  The fix might work for as little as 3 minutes, or it might even work for just a few seconds.  I haven't spent the time to analyze down to this detail.  My camera firmware version is v.1.18.23.5603

For Simplisafe, you should be able to 100% reproduce the problem and workaround, thus leading you closer to a fix.  This will add to your knowledgebase and thus help you identify and fix the obvious firmware bug.  Hopefully this knowledge can help you fix it and keep it fixed, LOL.  

Hey, I have a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and have been doing this stuff for many decades.  Trust me.

Note to others, turning off night vision or motion detection won't stop the repeats and might not stop the original legitimate triggering that leads to the repeating false trigger.  So don't waste your time on it.  Just make it fake daylight for a while, and the repeating stops.  This is also additional reliable info for the Simplisafe programmers.  (BTW, my rate for this job would be $300/hr (twice my regular rate).  I'm sure you can fix it for cheaper, so don't call me, LOL.)

@Higginger​ The only thing that worked for me the last time was removing and reinstalling the battery. I had to do this twice before it would stop. The strange thing is it only does the every 3 minute thing after dark.

@Higginger​ This exact issue in this post was regarding camera recordings at night. Since you see this happen in the day as well, this may be a different issue.

Is your camera facing a high traffic area like a busy street or a sidewalk? If so, it may help to set up Activity Zones to block out these motion-heavy areas.

@emily_s It is in the back yard -- not a high traffic area. 

Turning off night vision seemed to help somewhat, but this is not a solution as the camera's night time view is only as good as the light conditions around it. A firmware update came out today that I am hoping resolved the issue. 

@Higginger​ Understood! If you have a chance, please let me know if the most recent firmware update resolved this issue for you or not. If not, we'll want to investigate this deeper.

@Higginger​ I have the same issue, camera firmware is at 1.20.27.6769 which appears newer than others.  Running upgrade on the base station and keypad.  I have taken the camera down, manually charged the battery outside of the camera, reinstalled the battery multiple times, cleaned the camera face as well.  Once it got dark tonight, the issue started again.  Weird part is this always follows a valid detection, then continues to trigger over and over with nothing moving in view of the camera.

@sethw2019​ When do you notice that your Outdoor Camera records every 3 minutes? The issue this original thread is about only occurred at night, and has since been resolved. If you notice this happening during the day, this may be a different issue.

Is the Outdoor Camera that is experiencing this facing a high traffic area? Is there any motion captured in its recordings? If there is, setting up Activity Zones could help.

@kimber​ Thank you for reporting this. Our engineers have begun investigating this issue and I added your case to their ticket. A member of our engineering team may reach out to you to help them find a solution.

I hope that they do as I'd love to help get this solved. 

No it happened to me as well. Remove the camera from the system and then add it back. Check your keypad for an update as well. Problem solved on my end after I did that. 

No it happened to me as well. Remove the camera from the system and then add it back. Check your keypad for an update as well. Problem solved on my end after I did that

@Jhbrown721​ you're saying that after you installed a Base Station firmware update, your camera no longer exhibited this triggering every 3 minutes issue?

Yes I removed the camera from my system. Then did the process to add the camera again. After that I did the update. Everything working normally now 

@jgardner1987​ I was hoping that it was all fixed as this was a bug issue about a year or so ago and we call it the 3 minute death loop and the only way to fixing was to either pull the battery out and put back in or delete camera and add back but for me sometimes none of that worked and it killed the camera so had to get another one and ended up in total getting 4 replacement cameras when all said and done. Now it seems it's back again and thankfully I haven't had it again but if it's out again then I'm waiting lol. 

@mdandrea1to1​ I agree with Dlpsr - if your Christmas lights are in your camera's field of view and they flash, or they have a cord that blows in the wind, that could trigger the camera's motion sensor and cause it to record every so often. Slightly readjusting the camera's angle to remove any lights from its view could help to see if that caused these recordings, or if it's something we need to look into further.

@carvermon​ unfortunately for some reason they can not get it all right with the outdoor cameras. It is always a bug or something and they did fix the while death loop but now it's back apparently. My favorite cameras so far or the video doorbell and the new indoor live agent cameras as they are absolutely wonderful but they must have other engineers doing the outdoor cameras or something because after tons and tons of updates they still have issues. Now luckily I'm doing great on all mine but of course I just opened my mouth lol.

Everybody should keep a record of all these false motion alerts. This has been ongoing for years with no resolution in sight. Next step might be a class action suit.

@youngdh​ The initial issue was resolved way back in November 2022 with a firmware update, but we see that it just recently resurfaced again. Our engineers are looking into new cases to find a solution, and I've added yours to their ticket to look into further. A member of our engineering team may reach out to you as they continue to investigate. 

This issue has not been resolved.  My camera is on v1.24.13.  If I put it on any other motion detection setting than low, it will do the exact thing described in this thread…after dark, it will trigger on some legitimate motion, and then continue to record nearly 3-minute clips all night long until sunup.  It’s infuriating that this has come up again after being “fixed” for a while. And I don’t have hours to sit on the phone with customer service trying to explain the problem to them.  It’s a problem that I have to keep my camera’s motion setting on “low” all the time - I miss legit motion events sometimes.  Will this ever be resolved???