Why Timely Notifications Are Crucial
The effectiveness of a security camera system depends heavily on receiving timely alerts. A notification that arrives minutes after an event has occurred is of little use. If you're experiencing a significant delay between motion being detected by your Unifi camera and the notification arriving on your phone, it's a problem that needs to be addressed. This guide will help you diagnose the source of the lag and take steps to ensure your alerts are as close to real-time as possible.
Notification delays can be caused by a number of factors, from your network configuration and camera settings to the performance of your Unifi Protect controller. By working through the steps below, you can systematically eliminate potential bottlenecks.
Common Symptoms of Notification Lag
- Delayed Alerts: Push notifications arrive on your mobile device seconds or even minutes after the event took place.
- Missed Events: By the time you open the notification, the subject has already left the camera's view.
- Inconsistent Speed: Some notifications arrive quickly, while others are significantly delayed.
- Slow App Connection: The initial notification is slow, and the app takes a long time to connect to the live stream.
Troubleshooting Unifi Notification Delays
Let's break down the potential causes and their solutions, starting with the most common and easiest to fix.
Step 1: Optimise Camera and Detection Settings
How your cameras are configured to detect motion plays a huge role in notification speed.
- Refine Motion Zones:
- Navigate to the specific camera's settings in Unifi Protect.
- Go to 'Motion Zones'. Avoid using a single, large motion zone covering the entire view, especially in busy areas.
- Create smaller, more precise zones around key areas like doorways or pathways. This reduces the amount of motion data the system has to process, leading to faster analysis.
- Leverage Smart Detections:
- Ensure 'Smart Detections' are enabled for person and/or vehicle detection.
- In your main notification settings, set alerts to trigger only on these smart detections, not on general motion. While smart detections add a fraction of a second for analysis, they drastically reduce the number of false alerts from things like moving trees or shadows, which can clog the notification pipeline.
- Adjust Motion Sensitivity:
- If you are using general motion zones, try lowering the sensitivity slightly. A setting that is too high can cause constant triggers, overloading the system.
Step 2: Evaluate Your Network Performance
The journey of a notification from your camera to your phone depends on a healthy network.
- Check Controller Connectivity:
- Ensure your Unifi Protect controller (e.g., Cloud Key, UNVR, UDM Pro) has a stable, wired connection to your network. A wireless or unstable connection will introduce delays.
- Assess Mobile Device Connection:
- The problem isn't always on the Unifi side. A poor Wi-Fi or cellular signal on your smartphone will delay the receipt of push notifications from any app. Test the notification speed when your phone is on a strong Wi-Fi network versus when it's on a weak cellular signal.
- Review Network-Wide Latency:
- High latency (ping) on your local network or your internet connection can slow everything down. Run a ping test from a computer on the same network to a reliable external server (like google.com) to check for general network sluggishness.
Step 3: Check Unifi Protect Controller Health
The hardware running your Protect application needs to be in good shape.
- Monitor Resource Usage:
- Log in to your UniFi OS dashboard and check the CPU and memory utilisation statistics for your controller.
- If the CPU usage is consistently high (e.g., more than 80 percent), the controller may be struggling to keep up. This can be caused by having too many cameras, high bitrate settings, or other demanding applications running on the same device.
- Ensure Software is Updated:
- Regularly check for and apply updates to both the Unifi Protect application and the firmware of your cameras. Ubiquiti frequently releases performance improvements and bug fixes that can resolve issues like notification lag.
- Reboot the Controller:
- If you haven't restarted your controller in a while, a simple reboot can clear temporary glitches and improve responsiveness.