You have to love the Amcrest HDPro and Amcrest HDSeries home security cameras. Great pieces of hardware. These cameras can do almost anything asked of it. The trick is knowing how to get it to do something. Today we discuss how to eliminate false motion alerts on an Amcrest HDPro or HDSeries camera. Both camera models use the same web interface so when we refer to the HDPro in this article, it also applies to the HDSeries.
First, if looking to understand how to setup motion, first setup email. We have a detailed article on how to setup email on an Amcrest HDPro or HDSeries camera.
Amcrest provides a fairly good overview on how to setup motion. Check these out if you haven’t done that yet then come back to learn how to eliminate false motion alerts.
False motion alerts are what drives a home security camera owner up a wall. You get these alerts in email or on your phone, stop what you’re doing because you think something icky is taking place. Dive into your phone and find out it’s a tree branch or maybe your dog. Hate it when that happens.
It’s through my experience with a lot of different cameras that I learned how to eliminate (or at least minimize) false motion alerts. Each camera is different and as I mentioned in my review of the Amcrest HDPro, this one is really different. So let’s look at how to eliminate false motion alerts on an Amcrest HDPro or HDSeries camera.
Fortunately, the Amcrest HDPro has motion activity zones. Every good home security camera has these. The photo that accompanies this article is of the motion detection zone in front of my door. In this case, I have the Amcrest HDPro pointed out the window on top of the entry door. I don’t want the motion to go off when it sees leaves move. I want it to go off when it sees a person walk up to my door. I set the activity zone to only react to the area in front of the door.
How do you do that? Click on Setup then Event then Video Detection then click on Detection Area Setup. That gets you into a display that shows the current image with a grid of what looks like a few hundred boxes. Highlight the boxes where you know motion will occur. In my case, it’s the lower potion. If you have a dog, highlight the area that’s higher than the dog. Motion that occurs outside of the highlighted boxes will be ignored.
Before you hit save, check out the sensitivity and threshold settings. Sensitivity is the amount of change required to increase the motion detection by a percentage. I have to admit I’m not terribly sure what that means but can tell you that you want to change it and make it low. This is something you may need to experiment with. I keep mine at 20 and this keeps the motion alerts to humans standing at my door. The threshold setting is the level that the motion detection needs to reach in order to trigger an alarm. Set this higher. I keep mine on 70. The idea is to only get an alert from an actual human.
Now you can click save.
Using this feature, my false motion alerts were eliminated for this camera. Leaves blowing aren’t detected because they are out of the activity zone. The only times the motion goes off is when I get a package that needs to be signed for. I hope it stays that way.
The next suggestion to eliminate false motion alerts on an Amcrest HDPro or HDSeries is to utilize the motion schedule. This is what’s used to tell the Amcrest camera when to monitor the action. This is my front door so I only want it on when I’m not home during the day. Since we’re in and out to go to work in the morning and evening, I have motion turned off. Click on Setup then Event then Video Detection then click on the Schedule Setup. The schedule setup is what’s shown in the photo that accompanies this article. It’s a critical piece to eliminating false motion alerts.
Hopefully this tutorial helped those needing assistance with false motion alerts on an Amcrest HDPro or HDSeries Camera.