Is Your Blink Camera's Person Detection Working Incorrectly?
Blink's Person Detection feature is a fantastic tool that uses on-camera AI to differentiate between general motion and the specific movement of a person. This helps to reduce unwanted notifications from passing cars, pets, or swaying trees. However, when the feature works incorrectly, sending you false alerts or missing people entirely, it can be frustrating.
If you're getting notifications for things that aren't people, or none at all when someone is clearly there, this troubleshooting guide will help you fine-tune your settings for better accuracy.
Common Person Detection Problems
You might be facing one of two main issues:
- False Positives: You receive a "Person Detected" notification, but the recorded clip shows a pet, a moving shadow, a car, or rustling leaves.
- False Negatives: A person clearly walks through the camera's view, but you either get no notification at all, or it's only labelled as a generic "Motion Detected" alert.
How to Fix and Improve Blink Person Detection
The accuracy of the AI is highly dependent on the camera's setup and settings. Let's optimise them.
1. Optimise Camera Placement and Angle
How the camera sees its environment is the most important factor for accurate detection.
- Height and Angle: Mount your Blink camera between 7-10 feet (2-3 metres) from the ground and angle it slightly downwards. This gives the camera a clear perspective of a person's entire body shape, which is crucial for the AI to make a correct identification.
- Avoid Complex Backgrounds: Try not to aim the camera directly at busy roads, rustling trees, or areas with constantly shifting shadows. This "visual noise" can confuse the detection algorithm.
- Ensure Good Lighting: While Blink cameras have excellent night vision, person detection works best in well-lit conditions. Ensure the area is adequately illuminated at night if detection accuracy is a problem.
2. Fine-Tune Motion Sensitivity
The sensitivity setting determines how much motion is needed to trigger a recording. This has a direct impact on person detection.
- In the Blink app, go to Camera Settings.
- Find the Motion Sensitivity slider.
- If you are getting false alerts, the sensitivity is likely too high. Try lowering it to a value between 4 and 6.
- If the camera is missing people, the sensitivity might be too low. Try increasing it slightly.
- Make small adjustments and test for a day or two before changing it again.
3. Configure Activity Zones
Activity Zones are essential for telling your camera where to look for motion and what areas to ignore.
- In your camera's settings, tap on Activity Zones.
- You will see a grid overlay on your camera's view. Tap on the squares to deactivate them.
- Deactivate zones that cover moving foliage, a busy street visible in the background, or a neighbour's property where you don't need to monitor motion.
- This prevents motion in those areas from triggering an alert in the first place, giving the AI a cleaner event to analyse.
4. Keep Your Firmware Updated
Blink regularly pushes out firmware updates to cameras. These updates can include improvements to the motion and person detection algorithms. Ensure your Blink Sync Module and cameras are online and connected to receive these updates automatically.
5. Understand the Limitations
While powerful, AI-based person detection is not infallible. Unusual angles, poor lighting, or partially obscured individuals can still sometimes lead to misidentification. By optimising the settings above, you can significantly increase its reliability and reduce the number of incorrect alerts you receive.