Big moving objects like cars even at a distance are enough to trigger the PIR sensor, even when set to a low sensitivity.
Every time this happens, the camera rolls for about 6 seconds to analyse the image for humans (if set) and then shuts off if it didn’t find any. This goes on forever until the battery is dead.
I have encountered this behaviour numerous times. Mine is wired up, and set at a fixed recording time. Oftentimes when someone is at the door, I get 30+ seconds of footage just after a car passed by. As it is set at a fixed recording length, it will keep recording and if within that period a human is detected, it will push the entire video starting from when the car triggered the sensor.
It’s sh*t because it’s a doorbell, a camera you can point down, but the doorbell always faces traffic.
It’s like this (record time is 45s):
T=0: car passes by, recording starts because sensor is triggered
T=30: mailman comes up to the door, detects human
T=31: notification of someone at the door
T=45: recording stops
So that’s a clip of 45s where the first 30s ‘nothing’ happened.
I believe this is inherent to the use of a PIR sensor, a big enough object will always trigger such sensor.
Maybe there’s some tape or layer you can put over the PIR sensor to lower the sensitivity further, has anyone tried something like that?
EDIT:
Assuming these numbers are reliable, these are my doorbell stats.
