Tune Protect detection zones and notifications

Goal and requirements

Create one useful notification: a person entering the front path after hours. Keep a written description of the intended event so that each setting can be tested against it. In this example, the desired schedule is 22:00 to 06:00 daily and the camera is Front Entry.

You need an adopted camera, working recordings, Protect administrator permission and the Protect mobile app on the receiving phone. Confirm that your camera supports the chosen detection. Ubiquiti's compatibility table distinguishes basic motion, people, vehicles and more specialised recognition; some capabilities require additional AI hardware. A missing trigger is not necessarily a configuration fault. [1]

Understand the three controls

The detection zone describes where an event may be identified. The alarm selects which event should produce an action. The recipient's notification settings control delivery. Treat recording mode as a separate choice: reducing notifications does not require switching off continuous recording.

A privacy zone masks part of the recorded image. An exclusion zone suppresses smart detections within its area. Choose the latter for a nuisance region that you still need in the recording; choose privacy masking when that image must not be captured. [2]

Configure the notification

  1. Save the starting configuration. Take screenshots of the camera's existing zones and the relevant alarms. Note which people currently receive alerts. Leave one working alarm available while testing, then disable duplicates once the replacement works. Make the change at a time when a missed test notification will not affect an operational response.
  2. Open the camera's zone editor. In Protect 7.2 and later, begin in Recording Manager, select Front Entry and open its detection-zone configuration. Older help documentation describes Devices › camera › Recording Mode › Detection & Privacy Zones. Labels such as Zones & Lines vary with version. Open the smart detection editor offered for your camera. [2] [4]
  3. Draw the useful region. Cover the walking route from the boundary towards the door. Exclude the road and moving vegetation where practical. Leave enough area for a person to be visible before reaching the door. Name the zone Front Path and save. Where available, add a smart exclusion zone over a reflective window or another recurrent nuisance area. [2]
  4. Prove detection before configuring delivery. Walk through the path at normal speed. Open Find Anything, select the camera and inspect the corresponding person event. Repeat near the zone boundary. If events are absent, temporarily expand the zone and check framing and supported detection settings. Do not compensate by enabling unrelated alarm types.
  5. Create the alarm. Open Alarm Manager › Create Alarm. Choose the person-detection trigger and scope it to Front Entry. Select Front Path if the trigger exposes a zone selector; otherwise the camera's saved detection zones govern which events it creates. Choose Notify as the action, select the intended recipient and save. Avoid adding an automatic unlock or other physical action to this notification exercise. [3]
  6. Apply the schedule. If the selected trigger supports scheduling, create the after-hours schedule. When the editor does not accept a range crossing midnight, enter 22:00 to midnight and midnight to 06:00 as separate periods. Check the site's timezone. Test with a temporary schedule including the current time, then restore the intended hours. [3]
  7. Configure delivery. In the alarm table, open My Notifications and select push and, if wanted, email delivery for the recipient. Check the phone's Protect notification permission and focus or do-not-disturb settings. Enable Ignore Repeated Actions if repeated alerts are excessive, using the controls actually offered by your version. [3]
  8. Remove redundant notifications. Review other alarms for the same camera, event and recipient. Disable overlapping motion or person alarms only after the new alarm passes the test. Keep a separate record of any deliberately retained system-health alarms so that a camera-offline alert is not mistaken for an unwanted motion notification.

Run a small acceptance test

Use three deliberate scenarios: walk through Front Path during an allowed time; move outside the intended detection region; repeat the walk during an excluded time. Record the event shown in Protect and the notification received for each scenario. These are observations you must collect, not guaranteed outcomes.

Repeat the first test after dark. A scene that is easy to classify in daylight may need better framing or lighting at night. Review real alerts over several days, then adjust one zone boundary or alarm condition at a time. A useful log records time, weather, event type and whether the notification justified attention.

Troubleshooting and recovery

An event in Find Anything without a phone alert directs attention towards alarm scope, schedule, recipient selection and phone delivery. No event directs attention towards the camera, image and detection settings. Duplicate alerts usually warrant checking overlapping alarms before changing sensitivity.

If the changes suppress useful events, restore the saved zone and enable the previous alarm. Keep the new alarm disabled while diagnosing it. This preserves a known working configuration without deleting the work you want to refine.

Sources

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