Fine-Tuning Your Focus: The Ultimate Guide to Eliminating Reolink False Alerts
A Reolink security camera offers powerful features to protect your property, but its effectiveness can be undermined by a constant stream of false alerts. When you're notified about swaying branches, passing cars, or the neighbour's cat, you can become desensitised and risk missing a genuine security event.
This guide will provide you with a comprehensive set of tools and techniques available within the Reolink ecosystem to dramatically improve detection accuracy and all but eliminate false alerts.
## Understanding the Source of False Alerts
Your Reolink camera detects motion by analysing changes in pixels in its field of view. This is effective, but it means that any change can potentially be flagged as an event, including:
- Environmental Motion: Swaying trees, bushes, and even shadows.
- Weather: Heavy rain, snow, or fog.
- Lighting Changes: The sun going behind a cloud, or car headlights at night.
- Small Objects: Insects, birds, or falling leaves close to the lens.
- Reflections: Movement reflected in windows or puddles.
The key is to use Reolink's advanced settings to teach your camera what to ignore.
## Your Strategy for Achieving Accurate Alerts
Work through these settings in the Reolink app for the specific camera you want to adjust.
### 1. Leverage Smart Detection (Person/Vehicle/Pet)
This is your most powerful weapon against false alerts. If your camera supports it, make it your first stop.
- Go to Settings: Open the Reolink app, select your camera, and tap the gear icon.
- Find Detection: Navigate to 'Detection Alarm'.
- Enable Smart Detection: Find the 'Smart Detection' section. Here, you can enable 'Detect Person', 'Detect Vehicle', and 'Detect Pet'.
- Customise Alerts: Crucially, you can then choose to only send push notifications for these specific events. This means that while the camera might still record general motion, your phone will only buzz when a person or vehicle is identified, effectively cutting out 90% of false alerts.
### 2. Calibrate Sensitivity Settings
For each type of detection, you can fine-tune the sensitivity.
- Motion Sensitivity: This is a general setting. If you're getting alerts from wind or rain, try lowering this slider slightly. A setting between 25 and 40 is often a good starting point.
- Smart Detection Sensitivity: You can also adjust the sensitivity specifically for how the camera identifies people, vehicles, or pets. If it's missing real events, increase this. If a bush is being mistaken for a person, decrease it.
### 3. Define a Precise Detection Zone
Tell your camera exactly where it should and shouldn't look for motion.
- Access Detection Zone: In the 'Detection Alarm' settings, find 'Detection Zone'.
- Mask Out Problem Areas: You'll see your camera's view with a grid. 'Paint' the areas you want the camera to ignore. This should include any public roads, pavements, neighbour's property, and any large trees or bushes that move a lot.
- Be Specific: The more precise you are, the better. Leave only your property, driveway, and pathways uncovered.
### 4. Use the 'Object Size' Filter
This advanced feature helps the camera ignore objects that are too small or too large to be a threat.
- Find the Setting: This is usually located within the 'Motion Detection' settings.
- Set Minimum and Maximum: You can draw boxes on the screen to define the smallest object you care about (e.g., a person) and the largest. This can prevent a spider crawling on the lens (too small) or a cloud's shadow (too large) from triggering an alert. Experimentation is key to finding the right sizes for your scene.
### 5. Reduce Infrared Reflection at Night
At night, false alerts can be caused by the camera's IR lights reflecting off nearby objects, like a wall, soffit, or even raindrops.
- Reposition the Camera: Ensure there are no surfaces immediately in front of the camera that could cause glare.
- Adjust IR Intensity: Some Reolink models allow you to adjust the power of the IR LEDs, which can reduce reflection and subsequent false alerts.
By methodically applying these advanced Reolink features, you can filter out the noise and build a truly smart and responsive security system.