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

@Lsp999​ I have the problem only on my outdoor cameras that are powered. Since unplugging them and running on battery power, the problem has mostly stopped.

@Lsp999​ I can tell you that it's actually a different underlying issue, just with similar symptoms - both putting the Motion Detection on overdrive. But it is a firmware issue, and we're seeing good results in the latest version of 1.20. We'll update this thread when we know for sure that it's fixed!

@wajones2​ that's already a pending Product Request, and is currently In Development. We'll let you know when it's ready on this thread!

Hi Davey,

Thanks for that and I am encouraged that it is a separate issue. I have to give credit where it is due the cameras were getting much better until this most recent issue. Looking forward to the fix!

@JoeRollerfan and @wellthereitis minor version changes denote smaller updates, e.g. corrections and bug fixes. To answer your question, both 1.20.37 and 1.20.46 address the issue in this thread in different ways.

@nilo​ same here, I'm not seeing much improvement with v1.20.46 -- I'm still getting a lot of recordings with no motion.

@davinoc1013 What verison of firmware are you on? I had that issue a year ago but was addessed with a firmware update. Tree movement on the front camera would trigger a notification but has since stopped. Also, are you using the zone feature? My front camera would pick up people on the sidewalk, and had those zones excluded.  At this point a heavy rain or snow will occasionally set off an event but are very, very rare.

All else, I would call support to troubelshoot.

Hi @davinoc1013, 

As Captain11 mentioned, this issue should have been resolved with the camera's 1.10 firmware. What are your current motion settings? If sensitivity is set to High, it may help to put it down to Medium or Low.

Also, have you already tried resetting your Outdoor Camera? You can do this by pressing and holding the pairing button on the back of the camera for 30 seconds. Once you release the button, you will be prompted to set it up again in the SimpliSafe app. If a reset doesn't help resolve this, please let me know.

Txs I have to check firmware version

Txs Emily I will reset tomorrow & let u know how it went

Yea that is what a lot of us call the death loop where it does that every 30 seconds or so and I had a total of 3 cameras that did that and no bringing it back so they had to replace but now they had a update that resolved it and it was awhile ago so I would definitely delete it from the system and reset the camera and add back and it should get the latest update. 

@chuckgrasser​ Is the Outdoor Camera's battery completely dead? The Solar Panel is not able to completely recharge the Outdoor Camera's battery from zero, but rather "top up" the amount of power typically used to keep it charged. 

If the camera's battery is dead, I would recommend taking the battery out of the camera and charging it inside using the included power cord. This should take up to 6 hours. But if the Solar Panel is no longer topping up the camera's battery to keep it charged continuously, that could be due to an issue with the device itself. In that case, I would recommend contacting our Support team for further assistance.

The solar panel did eventually charge the battery from about 4% to 91% over the course of 4 days with the all of the notifications and lights turned off.  I have another battery on order but didn't want to drag out a ladder to recharge the battery only to repeat the process if it didn't work.  

I am concerned that the camera may go into its continuous notification mode and drain the battery again.  I don't seem to have an explanation for why the cameras start acting up and then mysteriously stop.

Thank you for the information about charging the battery.  I will keep that in mind if it occurs again.

I'd like to understatand what is going on with the cameras.  My outdoor camera battery did eventually charge to 100% using the solar panel even after discharging to less than 5%.  I ordered a new battery but the old one seems to be functioning.  (Glad to have to stay off the ladder).

Why can't someone tell me why the camera went into the nasty continuous loop of giving me "Motion Detected" messages for an entire night until the battery went dead in the first place.  I just want to know what I need to do to prevent these problems in the future.

@nilo​ thank you for reporting. I'll forward your info to our dev team.

Do you know if the issue has been going continuously on for you since last year, or was there a couple of months when it didn't happen? I ask, because it's possible that a new issue with similar symptoms might have surfaced when your camera updated to 1.24.

Davey - Appreciate your reply.  I do not think it cropped up anew with v1.24.  I had the issue for a long while previously, and I think it was resolved with v1.10 back around Dec 2022 or Jan 2023, roughly that timeframe.  Mine was fine all winter and I think most of the past summer.  It came on again at v1.18 (I think…I’m sorry that I didn’t keep careful track).  It’s worse than ever now.  But, if I set to low sensitivity, it doesn’t do it at all.  But pretty much guaranteed to do it at any other sensitivity setting.  This is much more predictable than it was during the first iteration (prior to v1.10).  Hope this helps.

@davey_d​ my outdoor camera has been doing the continuous 3-minute recording at night thing again more frequently.  It’s doing it as I write this.  Presently on v1.37.1.200.  Any update?

@chuckgrasser​ 

Absolutely, at least with the cameras I have. I'm not sure if they are old or new, I purchased just under a year ago.

My recent issues started about a week ago. I troubleshooted as best I could, deleting and readding - also restarting the router and if there was any joy, it only lasted a moment.

I've got nearly 80 devices on my network and though it's supposed to handle more I've been given the impression it was near or even over capacity and since I have (all along) been seeing other devices drop regularly I replaced it day before yesterday with a router that is supposed to handle 200 devices. Most of my non SimpliSafe issues went away after some tweaking, but I was still experiencing dropouts on many of my devices. Actually, about like I had been with the old router.

Yesterday I sought the help of Simplisafe support and early in the session I was told that I needed to call the ISP and tell them I didn't have enough bandwidth to support video. I didn't buy that because of the same reasons you cite in your post.

We ended the session with an understanding that there is an issue with the doorbell camera and a fix hopefully coming in days. My other cams were streaming at the time but since then had many dropouts. 

As of this morning was my network was as it had been for most of the last year with the exception of Simplisafe which was basically worthless.

The router support folks sent me a beta firmware that was supposed to help the 2.4ghz devices. Thankfully the firmware loaded without issue and least so far the network is actually more stable than it has been. All but one of my cameras, including the doorbell with the known issue, are now reporting good signal strength and bandwidth except for one of the outdoor cameras and it won't pass the test. It either reports "error" or that the camera isn't connected to a network (though the router reports it connected with a strong signal).

Sorry for all the background but it was important to note the journey that brings me here. I suspect there was a firmware update on SS that weakened the Wi-Fi reception of these devices. Looking at the messages log I've had 3 SS firmware updates this month - 5/6, 5/10 and 5/11. I'm thinking my new router is compensating. I'm going to give deleting and readding one more try for this outdoor camera and then likely I'll call SS again next week as long as the network stays as spectacularly stable as it appears to be right now.

Thanks for the background and the hopefully positive outcome.  I can say that the SimpliSafe diagnosics indicate that my signal strength is very good at the cameras, but my standalone meter confirms that.  The drop outs at the base station have very little to do with the network traffic because it will sometimes get the messages at 1AM when there is no one else using devices on the network.  There seems to be absolutely no correlation between the network activity and the SimpliSafe drop out messages.  I don't care so much about the drop out messages because the so-called drop out only lasts for a minute or less.  I'm mainly concerned if (and I emphasize if because I'm guessing) it causes the cameras to stop functioning properly.  I hope you didn't spend unnecessarily to upgrade your router.

I am still seeing some dropout on the base station as well. A ping request is wild with ms in the thousands and then in the single/double digits every other reply. 

Pinging 192.168.68.90 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.68.90: bytes=32 time=1352ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.68.90: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.68.90: bytes=32 time=2876ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.68.90: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=255
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.68.90: bytes=32 time=3377ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.68.90: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=255
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.68.90: bytes=32 time=3382ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.68.90: bytes=32 time=95ms TTL=255
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.68.90: bytes=32 time=3401ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.68.90: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=255

Thanks for the thought on the router purchase - at least for now, other devices are noticeably more stable.  I should look into a standalone meter to measure signals - I think that could help a lot.

@larrhurd​ You may be right.  I have some hope for two reasons.  1) The old model cameras, the ones that are permanently plugged into a USB block, have been functioning flawlessly for about 4 years.  I have the same network so they are definitely resilient enough to provide reliable information.  2) The new model cameras, indoor rechargeable and outdoor rechargeable, HAD been operating very reliably for about 8 months before they became flaky around the end of last year.  That indicates that they CAN be reliable, but some update that they pushed caused all of the current problems.  I somehow believe that if they could roll back all of the changes that they made to pre December 2023, things may go back to normal.

I have to believe that all of the updates are in response to either bug fixes or security vulnerability patches.  It bothers me a bit because if I go to the web page and click on the envelope, it shows constant updates.  For instance, there was an update 2 days ago on Friday, another on Thursday and on Wednesday there were SEVEN!  I can scroll for several pages of update data which indicates a much larger frequency that should be needed for a stable product.  That appears to be a desperate attempt to patch something that broke the system and the patches compound the problem.  If I was trying to solve this problem, I'd plan to roll everything back to pre-December 2023 level and do a deep analysis of what they did and the results so that whatever they tried to do, they could take a different approach to avoid all of the headaches that they caused. (Yes, I am a retired software/systems engineer and project manager).