Are Your Canary Activity Zones Not Working Correctly?
Canary's Activity Zones feature is a smart tool designed to reduce the number of unwanted motion alerts you receive. By allowing you to "mask" out certain areas of your camera's view, it should, in theory, only notify you of movement in the specific zones you care about. However, if you're still getting notifications for activity outside these zones—like cars driving by a window you've masked—it can undermine the feature's usefulness.
This guide will help you troubleshoot and fine-tune your Activity Zones to ensure they are working effectively, giving you peace of mind and a quieter notification history.
## Essential First Step: Check Your Canary Membership
Activity Zones (also known as "Masking") is a feature of the Canary Premium Service.
- Confirm your subscription: Log into your account on the Canary website and check your membership status. If your premium subscription has lapsed, the Activity Zones feature will no longer be active, and your camera will revert to detecting motion across its entire field of view.
- If you do not have a premium membership, you will need to subscribe to use this feature.
## How to Optimise and Fix Ineffective Activity Zones
If your membership is active but the zones are still not performing as expected, these steps can help you improve their accuracy.
### 1. Redraw Your Activity Zones Carefully
The most common issue is a poorly defined zone. A small, unintentional overlap can be enough to trigger an unwanted alert.
- Open the Canary app and select the camera you want to adjust.
- Tap the gear icon to go to "Settings".
- Select "Manage Activity Zones".
- Delete your existing zone/mask and start fresh.
- When creating your new zone, be precise. Drag the corners to tightly cover only the area of interest. For example, if you are monitoring a doorway, ensure the zone does not accidentally cover a sliver of the hallway next to it.
- Use multiple masks if necessary. You can create several smaller, distinct zones to mask out different sources of unwanted motion.
### 2. Account for Environmental Factors
Canary's motion detection is sophisticated, but it can be tricked by light and reflections.
- Reflective Surfaces: Look for shiny floors, windows, mirrors, or picture frames. A reflection of movement from an area outside your zone can appear inside the zone and trigger an alert. If you have a highly reflective floor, try to angle the camera or adjust the zone to exclude it.
- Shadows and Light Changes: Fast-moving shadows from trees blowing in the wind or the sweep of headlights from a passing car can be interpreted as motion. While Canary's AI tries to differentiate, strong light changes can still cause a false alert. If this is a recurring problem, you may need to adjust the positioning of your camera.
### 3. Adjust Motion Notification Sensitivity
If your zones are perfectly drawn and there are no environmental factors at play, the overall motion sensitivity might be set too high.
- In the Canary app, go to your camera's "Settings".
- Find the "Motion sensitivity" slider.
- Try lowering the sensitivity by one level. This will make the camera less likely to react to minor movements, which can help reduce false alerts from outside your defined zones. Wait for some time to see if this reduces the unwanted notifications before lowering it further.
### 4. Reboot Your Canary Device
A simple reboot can often resolve temporary software glitches that might affect how the camera processes its motion detection rules.
- Unplug your Canary device from the power source.
- Wait for at least 60 seconds.
- Plug it back in and allow it a few minutes to fully restart and reconnect to the network.