Today we are going to do a quick test video on the motion alert notification on the following brands of WiFi cameras… We have the Blink, Reolink Argus, Ring Spotlight Cam, Nest Hello and The Yi 1080p camera.
I know, these are different types of cameras..from plugged in like the Nest Hello and the Yi Home..and battery powered like the Ring spotlight Cam, Argus and the Blink… but we are only going to test one thing… if there is a delay in notifying us when motion is detected.
I think everybody agrees that we need to get notified as soon as possible if there is some activity going on with the cameras. Real time notification can be the difference between a crime commited and crime prevented.
So, these camera’s motion detection are turned off right now because they are all facing me but what I’ll do is to turn them around facing the other wall and then turn on their motion detection. I’ll then trigger the motion and we will time how long before the camera alerts us. Now, I set this up in our dining room area because this is the closest area to my main router, my phone is also connected to the same WiFi so every camera should have excellent signal.
Now, let’s start with the Blink camera…I’ll turn it around facing the wall and I’ll arm it from the app… I’m also going to show you guys my setting and we can see here that I set the clip length to be 15 seconds…this is how long the camera will record when it detects motion… but I turned on “end clip early” if motion stops…Now, I know about Blink is that it will not notify you until it finishes recording…so, the delay in the notification depends on the time you set the camera to record and also on the motion that the camera detected.
So, I’m going to arm it and let’s check it out..
Now, I’ll set my timer..
around 8-9 seconds..now, it is not 15 seconds because it was just a quick motion one time…
Now, let’s try it again, this time, I’m going to move my hands in front of the camera for several seconds…
So, around 16 seconds…that means the camera recorded the full 15 seconds..and then that’s the only time it sends out an alert…
Let’s now try the Reolink Argus…I’ll turn it around and I’ll turn on the motion detection from the app.
Almost instantly here…around 1-2 seconds…
Again… so around 2 seconds…not too shabby..
Let’s proceed with the Ring Spotlight Cam – Battery version…now, I could have tested with my other Ring cameras..because this is the one that I don’t like but this is the only Ring camera that can easily be removed from its mount and moved around..anyways, let’s try it out. So, I have to turn on and set the motion zones…
Almost instantly also…around 1-2 seconds…
That is instant notification there.. less than a second…
Now, let’s try the Nest Hello…this is the reason why I’m making this video and I’ll tell you why in a little bit. But, I plugged this in a compatible 24 volts AC transformer.
Just making sure I set up all the notifications to alert me when people and all other motion are detected and what I’ll do is to turn the camera to detect my face aside from motion for good measure.
Around 13 seconds…but if you rewind the footage..you will see a change in the lighted ring whenever I placed the camera in front of my face and if you start counting from there..it is around 10 seconds.
Let’s try it again.. and observe when the lighted ring changes and starts pulsating. 16 seconds this time…but same thing if you count from the time you see the circle ring changes..it will be 10 seconds… We will go back with the Nest later…we will now check out the Yi home camera…
Let’s turn it around and turn on motion detection.
Around 10 seconds…
and we will do it again…
this time around 9 seconds… there is a definitely a delay with the Yi cameras too…not as long as the Nest though…
Ok.. now back to the Nest..there is around a 10 second delay in the notification but what gets me is that there is also a delay for the camera to identify if there is motion or not and the lighted ring gives it away..I have to put the camera close to my face just to get it to send an alert.
It is also hard to test and retest the camera because of the “cool off period” and as per Nest in Facebook they stated that there is a 10 minute cool off period for person alerts and 30 minutes for normal motion alerts… so, is this what advanced algorithms is all about Nest? supressing the alerts..this setting is not user adjustable. My question is what if there is a second or third person that was in the camera’s frame within the 10 minute cool off period…we are not going to get an alert from that? That is no bueno for me…
It is now been a month that the Hello doorbell has been released and I haven’t seen any updates yet. I know a lot of people have complained about the delay and the cool off period issue but this has always been the settings on the other Nest cameras…so I’m really hoping that they are going to change this… the only thing that is helping Nest is that it records 24/7 so they can always say…it is not an issue because everything is recorded anyways…well…that might be true but the point is if the users can get instant alerts then there is a possibility for us to stop or prevent crime instead of just reviewing the footage later on with the police.
In the description down below, I’ll give you scenarios of why instant alert notifications and short cool off perioods are important in a security camera…Let me hear your thoughts on this also and comment down below…
All the cameras shown in this video has been reviewed by me individually and I’ll link those videos also in description down below. So out of these cameras, Blink has a delay but the settings are adjustable. The Yi also has a delay but it has a way shorter cool down period…It is only the Nest which is around 200 to 250 dollars worth of a security camera that has a delay in notification and a cool off period that is just not acceptable.