[Feature Request] Set EufyCam to Ignore Pets

Ever since I installed my EufyCam in my backyard, I now get 30+ recordings each day of my dog stomping about in the backyard. I’m concerned about how much this will impact on the batterlife and SD storage of my EufyCam, but it also makes seeing clips of interest a lot harder since any clip that might be of interest is now buried in 30-40 clips of my puppy stomping around in the backyard.

It would be great if we could tell our EufyCam to only record if it detects a human or large movement, and to ignore small pets/wildlife.

I’ve tried turning down the sensitivity, but this seems to also reduce the distance that motion will trigger the camera. Which means people walking through doors on the other side of my yard are no longer being recorded (not recording when someone enters the house kinda defies the point of having a security camera).

15-20 years ago I lived in a house with a motion sensor security system that was able to ignore the movements made by cats, so it seems weird that many years later my EufyCam isn’t able to do this.

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If I remember correctly it does ignore pets… I saw it in the Kickstarter campaign.

In this video around 1:45

I rewatched the KS video because I thought the same thing as you. If you watch again, it’s easy to misinterpret what they say as that it ignores pets, but they don’t specifically say that it ignores pets. They say they have steps to only record what we want recorded, by the camera ignore movement without a heat signature (it doesn’t. Leaves, and I’ve seen one person report in this forum that rain, will trigger the motion sensor).

There is no setting in the camera to ignore pets.

We can set notifications to only alert us if a human is detected, but that’s it. Which results in low notifications, but LOTS of recordings.

Yep, that was me. It’s recorded moths on a few occasions, too. Again, neither of those should be happening as both are below the stated (per the KS campaign) 100* F threshold below which the cameras supposedly ignore motion.

In your experience, have they been accurate?

I don’t see why this is something they could change in the future.

This is true and correct.

Should the system ignore such a “pet” as well? :joy:

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Agreed, it would be great. I believe their suggestion is to tweak the motion sensitivity a little bit down but…

I have a (relatively) old Yale in-house alarm system and the PIR sensors are ‘Pet Friendly’, and they work as expected. When my cats run past nothing happens, when I go past they go off (if the alarm is set). We also have one which is not pet friendly and the cats are able to set that off.

So, it must be possible to do it somehow… Although I don’t know if these cameras use traditional PIR.

Not true in my case. The Gazebo curtains in my back yard were mis-identified by the system as human (where is heat sensing??) and I will get notifications anyway. So whenever we have a windy day, I either turn my camera off or lower the sensitivy so LOW that i will not get bombarded with these false notifications.

eufycam uses PIR but unlike wired camera, it works different in such a way that it wouldn’t drain the battery. There may be different sensitivity levels to these PIR’s :thinking:

Yes, it’s true :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
As i am only talking about the effect, that we can set that we only get notifications, when a human is (correctly) detected! (And all other events being still recorded but not triggering a notification then). I am not talking about false-positives :stuck_out_tongue:

okay @yamyam I’m lost here.

pets will not like that “nobody likes to be ignored” :slight_smile:

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Dont have such a camera.
I installed a simple lamp in the backyard with a motion detector in the darkness.
Neighbour’s cats, Lizzy and Carlo like that feature very much. :joy:
May be it helps to detect mice.
Cats should be able to see in the dark.
But of course they like this “support”.

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Another way of using technology, for the benefit of pets :joy:

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I think he’s referring to the notification settings of Humans Only and Facial Alerts as a way to only get notified of people, even though other things will trigger recordings. Which is fine, so far as it goes, but I gather you’re getting notified (not just recording) when the camera sees non-humans?

(The notification setting is working for me, even when it records rain/moths/other sub-100 degree things, but that seems like a palliative measure since it’s not supposed to record those things in the first place.)

yeah, I understand that, but it’s not clear what he was trying to say.[quote=“Crownfox, post:16, topic:67215”]
you’re getting notified (not just recording) when the camera sees non-humans?
[/quote]

Yes![quote=“Crownfox, post:16, topic:67215”]
it’s not supposed to record those things in the first place
[/quote]
You are adjusting Notification settings. It will record if it detects motion within your set limits (sensitivity) and send notifications based on your choice (All, Human only, Facial)

My point is, it’s my opinion that the notification settings feature only exists because the system isn’t ignoring (per the Kickstarter) anything below 100 degrees Fahrenheit. If it did, your gazebo curtains and my rain/moths wouldn’t trigger a recording in the first place, so no need to fiddle with motion detection sensitivity and notification settings.

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