Article Summary:
Activity Zones tell your Nest Cam to pay closer attention to motion in specific areas. To use Activity Zones you’ll need a Nest Aware subscription (sold separately), and you’ll need to use the Nest app on a computer to create them.
You can use Activity Zones to do things like get an alert on your phone whenever your kids come home from school, or mark your Video History timeline if there's motion around an important object in your camera's view.
Imagine that you forgot to put a cake away before leaving the house. You want to keep an eye on it – and catch anyone with sticky fingers – but you don't want to have to watch it all day long. This is when Activity Zones come in handy. You can make an Activity Zone to watch the cake for you.
You can create Activity Zones with just a few clicks of your mouse. It's easy to make one for your cake – or anything else that you want to keep an eye on. Here's how:
1. Open the Nest app on your computer.
2. Select the camera that you want to make an Activity Zone for.
3. Click the Activity Zone icon on the lower right corner of the browser window. If you don't see the Activity Zone icon, make your browser window bigger.
4. Click Create.
5. Click anywhere on your video to make a new Activity Zone.
Customizing the Activity Zone
Now that you have a new Activity Zone, let's move it and change its shape to fit around the cake. Here's how:
- Click inside the zone to select it.
- Click and drag inside the zone to move it.
- Click and drag any of the 8 points on the sides of the zone to change its shape.
To change the color of the Activity Zone, click the colored circle in the lower left of your screen. You can pick from four different colors. Let's use orange this time.
Once you've given the Activity Zone the shape and color you want, give it a descriptive name. Let's call this zone "Cake". Type the name into the box in the bottom left corner of your browser.
The Cake Activity Zone will help keep track of your cake – If there's motion in the Cake zone, it will be marked in orange on your timeline (more about timeline markers below). Timeline markers will let you easily go back through your Video History and catch a cake thief red-handed.
Activity alerts
You'll probably want to know right away if anything happens to the cake. So let's turn alerts on for the Cake zone. Check the box next to Notify me of motion in this zone, and you'll get an alert on your phone or tablet as soon as motion is detected in the Cake zone.
How do I set up alerts for my Activity Zones? >
Adding more Activity Zones
You can have up to four Activity Zones per Nest Cam, which helps you keep an eye on multiple things at once. For example, if you have kids who walk home from school every day, try an Activity Zone around your front door. Name it "Front Door" and check Notify me of motion in this zone.
Now whenever the front door opens, you'll get an alert on your phone or tablet. You'll have peace of mind knowing when your kids are home. And you'll also know right away if something happens to that cake.
Changing your Activity Zones
You can move Activity Zones and change their shapes and colors, which comes in handy if you move your camera – or maybe the cake has been moved to another spot. Here's how:
1. Click the Activity Zone icon on the lower right-hand side of the screen.
2. Click on Edit.
3. Click on the zone you want to edit.
4. Change the zone as you like.
5. When you're finished, press done.
Activity Zone markers
When there's motion in your Activity Zones, Nest Aware automatically marks your Video History timeline. Markers on the timeline are the same color as the Activity Zone that motion happened in. You won't have to watch, fast-forward, or rewind hours of video to find what you're looking for. Just click on the markers to jump right to the important parts.
If you have multiple Activity Zones, hiding the markers for zones you aren't focused on can help you find the motion you're interested in. You can hide or unhide an Activity Zone's markers by clicking on the Activity Zone icon and then clicking the Activity Zone name.
The left picture below shows the purple markers on the timeline for the Door Activity Zone. In the right picture, the purple markers are hidden.
Looking for motion after it's happened
We don't always know before something happens when an Activity Zone will come in handy. Let's think about the cake again. What if you didn't create an Activity Zone around it? And when you get home from work, you're surprised to find that the cake is gone. It's not too late to use Activity Zones to your advantage.
With an Activity Zone you don't need to go through hours of video to find out what happened to the cake. Nest Aware will do the work for you. Simply create an Activity Zone around the spot where the cake was. Nest Aware will go back and automatically mark your timeline when there was motion around the cake, making it easy to find exactly when the cake disappeared and who took it.
How do I remove an Activity Zone?
When you've finally gotten a chance to put the cake into the fridge, you won't need the Cake Activity Zone anymore. You can get rid of it by following these steps:
1. Click the Activity Zone icon on the lower right-hand side of the screen.
2. Click on Edit.
3. Click on the Activity Zone that you want to remove.
4. Click on the red Delete button.
5. Confirm by pressing Delete one more time.
Experimenting with Activity Zones
Now that you've created a few Activity Zones, you might be wondering what else you can do with them. Every home is different, and you're only limited by your imagination. Try experimenting to see what you can do.
To get the most out of your Activity Zones, read the following article for some tips on how to create and place your Activity Zones.