Motion detection runs on the camera phone using on-device ML — no cloud processing. If it’s not working, one of a few things is usually wrong.
Quick checklist
In rough order of likelihood:
- Camera phone has the Oriel app in foreground — iOS suspends backgrounded apps; if Oriel isn’t actively running, no detection
- Phone screen is on, or Camera Mode is engaged — the dim “always-on” mode requires Camera Mode UI from the home screen
- Notifications enabled for the Oriel app on your viewer phone (Settings → Notifications → Oriel → Allow Notifications)
- Detection sensitivity is not set to lowest (Camera settings → Motion → Sensitivity)
- Detection zones aren’t excluding the area you care about
- Camera phone has decent lighting — very dark scenes give the ML detector less to work with
More detailed troubleshooting
“App says detection is on, but nothing notifies”
Check the detection log in the app: Camera → ⋯ → Detection log. If events show up there but no push notifications, it’s a notification issue, not detection.
If the log is empty: detection isn’t actually running. Causes:
- Battery saver: when battery < 20% iOS throttles ML inference
- Phone overheating: thermal throttling pauses detection (especially in summer)
- Camera mode UI not engaged: tap “Switch to Camera mode” from the home screen
“Too many false positives — every shadow triggers”
Lower sensitivity, or define exclusion zones (Camera → Detection → Zones → exclude). Oriel’s “ignore pets” toggle (Premium) helps if the false triggers are your dog/cat.
“Misses real events”
Raise sensitivity. Check that the detection zone covers the actual entry path. If lighting is poor (night, no IR), consider an external light or move the camera to a more lit angle.
What detection actually runs
A small on-device CoreML model — tiny YOLO variant trained for indoor home scenes. Inference runs every ~500ms on the camera phone. No video is uploaded; only the detection result (bounding box + label) is sent over the WebRTC data channel to your viewer phone, where the app decides whether to push a notification.
If detection feels worse than other apps you’ve used, that’s the trade-off for not uploading your video. We’re improving the model — feedback in Feature Requests helps.
— Oriel team