Adjusting Motion Sensitivity for your Blink Camera

Your Blink camera captures motion based on either Passive Infrared (PIR) or Pixel Difference Analysis (PDA). Your camera's Motion Sensitivity setting adjusts how much input it takes to send you a notification. Learn more about how Blink cameras detection motion.

Low sensitivity is less responsive, so a larger amount of heat or motion are needed to cause a notification. The highest setting may cause alerts from blowing leaves or even shadows.

If you are receiving too many notifications with nothing interesting, try reducing the Motion Sensitivity down two levels. If that is effective, test by arming the system, and walking in the field of view when Motion Detection is on, to make sure a human sized object will trigger a notification.

Be careful if you tap the notification and enter Live View with your microphone or speakers on, since significantly loud feedback may occur. In this case, tap mute speaker in the upper right corner of the Live View.

Each camera has an individual sensitivity setting and you can find this in the Device Settings for each camera in your system.

Choosing High or Low Sensitivity

The motion sensitivity setting on your camera not only depends on what is making the movement, but how long the movement is occurring. 

  • High sensitivity (values of 6-9) means less motion over a shorter period of time will create a notification.
  • Low sensitivity (values of 1-4) means more movement over a longer period of time will create a notification.

Note: Default sensitivity is normally a value of 5, except for Outdoor 4 cameras which have a default sensitivity of 6.

The motion can be a big or small object, or a lot of small objects. Motion detection depends on where the object is in relation to the camera lens. For example, a bird flying close to the camera can be perceived as bigger than the person walking on the sidewalk in the distance. A person walking directly toward the camera will produce less motion than a dog walking left to right across the camera's field of view. It's about the amount of motion that's occurring within the detection zone of the camera and not necessarily how large the object is.

Testing sensitivity for your home camera

  1. Tap More  on your camera's thumbnail and select Device Settings .
  2. Select Motion Settings.
  3. On Motion Sensitivity, move the slider two or three increments to the left for a lower numeric setting. Tap Save to save this setting and walk out of the frame of view of this camera.
  4. From the main screen of the Blink app, set your system to Armed to enable Motion Detection.
  5. Test the camera sensitivity by introducing movement.
  6. If the sensitivity is not successful, reduce the slider more, save, and try again.
  7. If you have adjusted the sensitivity to your liking, proceed to test with a larger moving object, such as yourself. Walk in front of your camera and check to see if the setting gives the desired motion alert.
  8. If the lowest sensitivity continues to cause an unwanted Motion notification, you may need to create an Activity Zone instead. Learn more about setting Activity Zones.

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