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.

This seems to be a recurring issue with camera.  I was a regular contributer to this thread that started in December of last year.   I own 5 cameras total.  Two of them are the older version that require constant power.  Two of them are the new indoor version that is rechargeable and one is the outdoor camera powered with a solar charge.  Here is the timeline:

I never had any problems with the older two cameras they have been working for years.

In the middle of 2023 I installed the 3 newer cameras and they worked fine until around December 20, 2023.  At that time, the outdoor camera kept giving me “Motion Detected” messages every couple of seconds and the three new cameras would not connect anymore.

Around the end of December, I noticed that an update was applied and the problem went away.  I did not install any update, it appeared that this was pushed by SimpliSafe on December 29, 2023.  However all was working well.  All 5 cameras worked fine for three months.

Yesterday, March 29, 2024 the same issue that occurred in December occurred again.  Last night I started to get the motion detected messages again even though there was no motion outside.  This morning when I checked the cameras; the two old cameras connected fine but the 3 new cameras would not connect.  These symptoms were exactly the same as the problem that started on Dec 20th.  

Today, March 30, 2024, I saw that there was a pending update so I applied it.  After the update was applied the problem still persisted.  The old cameras worked and the new cameras still Do Not!  I hope they can push a fix like they did on December 29th last year.

Hi @chuckgrasser ,

Just to to be clear, camera updates are always done automatically. Base Station updates are the ones that require input from you, and usually they don't impact the cameras.

Could you check the firmware version on those cameras currently having trouble? You can find that info in the app under: My System > Camera Settings > [your camera], at the bottom of the page.

@JoeRollerfan​ thanks for reporting. By "no-motion videos", do you mean that your camera seems to be recording without any signs of actual motion? So similar to the original issue we note in this thread, but somehow at an even longer interval.

You're right, this might be something entirely new, and I'll report it to our dev team.

@davey_d​ yes, I used "no-motion videos" to indicate false-positive recordings where no actual motion is visible.

@davey_d​ The software version for the outdoor camera is v1.22.19.9841.  This seems to be the same version that someone else reported the problem with. 

The software for the two other new model indoor cameras are both 1.22.16.9680. 

Currently the outdoor camera says it is offline with only a 4% charge on the battery.  It is raining and supposed to continue through tomorrow so I won't know if the battery will not charge now that it is depleted.  I won't be able to manually charge it until it stops raining.  I probably don't need to point out how frustrating this is.

@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.

@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).