How to Improve Netatmo's Facial Recognition Accuracy
The facial recognition feature on the Netatmo Smart Indoor Camera is one of its most powerful assets, allowing you to receive notifications that tell you who has arrived home, not just that someone is there. However, if you find the camera is struggling to recognise familiar faces or is misidentifying people, some simple adjustments can make a world of difference.
This guide will explain how the technology works and provide you with practical tips to troubleshoot and significantly improve its performance.
### Understanding How Netatmo Learns
Netatmo's facial recognition is an AI-powered system. It is not a perfect process from day one; it needs to be taught. Every time you identify a face in the app, you are providing a new piece of data for that person's profile. The more varied and accurate data you provide, the smarter the algorithm becomes. Inaccuracy is often not a fault of the camera, but a result of insufficient training data or a poor camera position.
Key Steps to Fix Recognition Issues
Follow these best practices to get the most out of your camera's facial recognition feature.
1. Perfect Your Camera Placement
The camera's perspective is the single most important factor for accurate recognition.
- Place it at Eye-Level: The camera should be positioned to get a straight-on view of a person's face. Placing it too high (looking down) or too low (looking up) will distort facial features and make recognition extremely difficult. A bookshelf or mantlepiece is often an ideal location.
- Avoid Backlighting: Do not point the camera directly at a window or a bright light source. Strong backlighting will cast the person's face into shadow, making it impossible for the camera to see their features clearly.
- Ensure Good Lighting: The area where faces will be seen should be well-lit. While the camera has night vision, facial recognition works best in good lighting conditions.
2. Actively Train the Face Profiles
You need to be a diligent teacher for the first few weeks of using the camera.
- Identify 'Unknown' Faces: In the Netatmo Security app, you will see events with "Unknown face seen." Tap on these events. If it's a person you know, long-press on the face and identify them by selecting their existing profile or creating a new one.
- Correct Misidentifications: The camera will sometimes get it wrong. If it identifies your son as your daughter, for example, go into the event, long-press the incorrectly identified face, and choose the option to "Identify this person" with the correct profile. This is a crucial learning step for the AI.
- Build Robust Profiles: A good profile isn't built from one or two pictures. You need to teach the camera what a person looks like from different angles, in different lighting, and with or without accessories like glasses or hats. The more varied images you tag for a single person, the more reliable their recognition will become.
3. Manage the Face Profiles
Regularly curating your profiles can help improve accuracy.
- Check Profile Photos: In the camera's settings, you can view the profiles for each person. Check the collection of photos associated with each one. If you see a clearly incorrect image in someone's profile (e.g., a picture of someone else), you should delete it.
- Reset Profiles (As a Last Resort): If a profile has become hopelessly confused with multiple people, you can choose to "forget" that person. This will delete their profile and allow you to start teaching the camera again from scratch. If all profiles are performing poorly, you can "Forget all faces" to start completely fresh.
4. Reboot the Camera
If the camera suddenly stops recognising anyone or becomes unresponsive, a simple reboot can often resolve software glitches. Unplug the camera from power, wait for a minute, and then plug it back in.
By focusing on optimal camera placement and actively training the AI, you can turn your Netatmo Smart Indoor Camera into a highly accurate and reliable facial recognition system.