HomeKit Home notifications for security cameras are weird ... advice?

[jen729w]

Hey there. Just got a couple of Logitech Circle View which are great. Home integration is great. But the notifications, am I missing something?

I get that this is Apple and things are simplified but the notification options are so woeful as to be useless. From what I can gather, I can set up one notification per camera. For example, when it detects a person, and I’m not at home, regardless of the time, get a notification.

What I really want is to be able to configure a few, with different parameters:

1. If nobody is home, always notify me if you see something.
2. If I’m home but it’s night, notify me. Because maybe I’m in bed and someone is prowling round the back.

Additionally, it’s very spammy. If I walk in front of the camera, I get a notification. I step out of the frame for a second and back in, and that’s another notification! When my partner is pottering about on the front porch watering the plants the thing just goes mental. Isn’t there a way to tell it to group these up in to “an event”? (Hence me wanting the granularity as described above.)

Is there a power-user way to do this? Shortcuts? Some other app? Help!

 

[Itinj24]

It’s always been like this and it is annoying. They give you a lot of options but what it really needs is the ability to snooze notifications for a set amount of time right from the notification. For example, I don’t get a lot of driveway traffic so I have the camera out there set to notify me always whether home or away. However, occasionally my kids play in the driveway and it causes my notifications to go bonkers. Would love the option to snooze notifications for a set amount of time, say 1 hour, so I don’t have to either deal with them or go into the app and disable them in which case I may forget to re-enable. Ring has this and it was excellent when I had a Ring doorbell.

 

[Mrfatboy]

I use a Hue outdoor sensor to trigger the notifications. You will need to pair it with a Hue hub.

The automations are very flexible and the nice thing about it is that the sensor will not rearm until it detects a no motion event.

Most camera motion sensors are terrible.

 

[jen729w]

Is there a way to use Shortcuts to 'automate' the notifications? So at least I could design a Shortcut and stick an icon on my home screen to quickly disable/enable a particular camera's notifications.

Hue isn't an option for me, I don't have any of those devices.

The camera's motion sensor is terrific, by the way. It's Apple Home's notifications of such events that is terrible.

 

[Mrfatboy]

I don’t think so. Also on 14.2 if you launch a shortcut from the Home Screen it launches the shortcut app also. This will supposedly be fixed in 14.3.

why don’t you just launch the Home app and disable the notification automation you don’t want? Then toggle on when ready.

 

[Itinj24]

Is there a way to use Shortcuts to 'automate' the notifications? So at least I could design a Shortcut and stick an icon on my home screen to quickly disable/enable a particular camera's notifications.

Hue isn't an option for me, I don't have any of those devices.

The camera's motion sensor is terrific, by the way. It's Apple Home's notifications of such events that is terrible.

I don’t think so but try playing around with it. Far as I know, Shortcuts can’t dig into HomeKit settings. Mainly just control a device or get the state of it.
I suppose you can have the notifications deliver quietly when you don’t want to be spammed and then let it loose when you do.

 

[jen729w]

why don’t you just launch the Home app and disable the notification automation you don’t want? Then toggle on when ready.

Because I just know I'll forget to turn it back on. At least with a button on my home screen that'll serve as some sort of trigger.

But yeah, as of now that's my option. This is bananas.

 

[Mrfatboy]

You could set an automatic for on and off at certain times of the day if you know the specific times.