How to Stop Your Blink Camera's False Motion Alerts
Blink cameras offer an excellent and simple way to monitor your home, but their effectiveness is significantly reduced if you're constantly bombarded with notifications for events that don't matter. If your phone is buzzing every time a car drives by or the wind blows, you might start to ignore the alerts, potentially missing a real security issue.
This empathetic and professional guide will walk you through the settings within the Blink app that you can adjust to make your motion detection smarter and more accurate. By fine-tuning these options, you can dramatically reduce false alarms and ensure you're only notified about what's important.
## Key Settings to Adjust in the Blink App
All the necessary tools to fix this issue are located within your camera's settings. Open the Blink app and navigate to the settings for the specific camera you want to adjust.
### 1. Adjusting Sensitivity
This is your primary tool for controlling motion detection. The sensitivity setting determines how much movement is needed to trigger a recording.
- How to find it: Tap the settings icon next to your camera, then go to Motion Detection.
- The Setting: You will see a Sensitivity slider, typically ranging from 1 to 9.
- Recommendation: If you are getting too many alerts, the sensitivity is likely set too high (e.g., 7-9). Try lowering it to a mid-range value like 5. This tells the camera to ignore smaller, less significant movements. After adjusting, monitor the alerts for a day before deciding if it needs further tweaking.
### 2. Configuring Activity Zones
Activity Zones are one of the most powerful features for eliminating false alarms from predictable sources. This feature allows you to tell the camera which parts of its view to ignore.
- How to find it: In the camera's settings, tap on Activity Zones.
- How it works: You'll see a grid overlaid on your camera's view. Any square that is greyed out is an inactive zone, meaning motion in that area will be ignored. Tap on the squares to grey them out.
- Best Practice: This is perfect for blocking out areas that have constant, irrelevant motion.
- Busy Roads: Grey out the section of the view that shows the street.
- Moving Trees: Deactivate zones that contain large bushes or trees that sway in the wind.
- Neighbour's Property: Disable zones that cover your neighbour's garden or driveway to respect their privacy and prevent unnecessary alerts.
### 3. Setting the Retrigger Time
The retrigger time is the period the camera will wait after it finishes recording a motion clip before it can begin detecting a new motion event.
- How to find it: This setting is located in the Motion Detection menu.
- The Setting: It can be set from 10 to 60 seconds.
- Recommendation: If a single, ongoing event (like someone gardening or a delivery driver dropping off multiple packages) is creating a long series of clips, increase the retrigger time. Setting it to 30 seconds, for example, means that after the first clip is recorded, the camera will wait 30 seconds before it's ready to detect motion again. This helps to group a single event into fewer notifications.
## Other Important Considerations
Camera Placement The physical location of your camera plays a huge role.
- Avoid pointing at sources of heat or light: Do not aim the camera directly at the sun, streetlights, or reflective surfaces. Rapid changes in light can be misinterpreted as motion.
- Position for clear views: Place the camera so it looks down on an area and focuses on entry points, rather than across a busy public space.
Infrared (IR) Sensitivity At night, the camera uses an infrared sensor to detect motion.
- How to find it: In the camera's settings, go to Night Vision. You'll find an IR Intensity or IR Sensitivity setting.
- Recommendation: If you're getting false alerts at night from things like insects or dust illuminated by the IR light, try setting the IR Intensity to Low or Medium.