Outdoor Camera is not Recording
Updated
The Outdoor Camera will record motion events to your system’s timeline, with select monitoring subscriptions. Please note that Standard Monitoring and Basic App plans will not allow for your cameras record.
If you are subscribed to a monitoring plan that supports timeline recordings and are not seeing recordings appear within the SimpliSafe® Mobile App or Online Account, this article will walk you through a few steps you can take to get things working again.
We recommend scrolling through the article to go through each step, however, you can also use the anchor links below to navigate directly to a section.
Confirming Motion Events are Enabled
The Motion Detection settings for the Outdoor Camera allows you to customize your camera to record motion events that are relevant to you and your system.
To adjust Motion Detection settings:
Open the SimpliSafe® Mobile App on your phone or tablet
Choose My System from the bottom navigation bar
Select Camera Settings
Choose your Outdoor Camera
Select Motion Detection
Ensure that Motion Events are toggled ON
Once you have made your changes, be sure to tap on Save in the upper right corner to save your selections
Repeat these steps with your other Outdoor Cameras, as needed
Motion Notifications are optional, but you’ll receive a push notification whenever motion is detected from this camera.
In the Motion Detection section, you can also customize the sensitivity of your Motion Detection.
High sensitivity detects any motion - which may cause frequent alerts and shorten the battery life!
Medium sensitivity detects general motion - it’s our recommended setting.
Low sensitivity only detects large movements over a wider range
If you need your Outdoor Camera to be more granular, you can also adjust the Motion Type by toggling between People Only and All Motion.
People Only utilizes our proprietary software to only alert you when people are detected by your camera
All Motion alerts you to every motion event - people, animals, vehicles, etc.
Reviewing the Placement of Your Camera
Placement is one of the most important factors for accurate motion detection for the Outdoor Camera. For accurate motion detection, it’s important to keep our mounting instructions in mind when placing your camera.
Ensure that the Outdoor Camera is placed no lower than 6 feet from the ground, but no more than 8 feet high
The Outdoor Camera should be angled down slightly, roughly a 30° degree angle
If the Outdoor Camera is mounted upside down, the motion sensitivity is halved from ~30 feet to just about ~15 feet
You’ll also want to identify factors that could dramatically change in temperature or interference regarding the Outdoor Camera’s heat signature detection. For example, driveways that can get very hot in the summer, or a flag moving in the wind and causing a cool shadow.
If you find that certain things are triggering the camera’s motion detection often, you can adjust the field of view of the camera to avoid them or adjust the Activity Zones to remove these areas from being monitored.
To adjust your Activity Zones:
Open the SimpliSafe® Mobile App on your phone or tablet
Select the Cameras tab from the bottom navigation bar
Tap on the gear icon in the upper right corner for Camera Settings
Choose your Outdoor Camera
Select Motion Detection
Scroll to Activity Zones
Tap the squares you want to exclude. They will be greyed out to indicate that area of the image is not being monitored for activity
Once you have made your changes, be sure to tap on Save in the upper right corner to save your selections
Repeat these steps with your other Outdoor Cameras, as needed
Once you make a change, it’s important to go back and test it to confirm that the settings are effective. Give your camera a couple of minutes to go to sleep, by ensuring there is not any movement during this time. Then, walk in front of the camera and check the app timeline for recordings or notifications of the motion event.
Confirm When the Recording Took Place
Video recordings will automatically be deleted from the timeline after 30 days, however, these can also be manually deleted from the timeline. If a recording was manually deleted, it is not recoverable as it automatically gets removed from the SimpliSafe® servers.
If you are looking for a recording that is older than 30 days, that is also not recoverable.
We recommend downloading clips from your camera to your device if you feel the clip is important to ensure backup and redundancy of any video you may need.
Was the Camera Uninstalled?
If you uninstall a camera from your system, the recordings will automatically be removed from the system’s timeline.
To retrieve these recordings, you can re-install the camera to the system. The system should automatically recognize the recordings even if the camera is not working for other reasons.
Did you Recently Lose Power?
If you lose power at your system’s location you will hear the Base Station announce the power outage. You will also have an event recorded to your timeline to register when the power outage first occurred, and when the power was restored.
The Outdoor Camera requires a Wi-Fi connection to upload recordings. Power outages that impact the Wi-Fi may prevent the camera from storing videos on the SimpliSafe® servers.