Teach your Lighthouse to recognize people on sight! Then you can tell Lighthouse to "Ping me if you see John" or ask it "Did you see Jane yesterday?"
Note: facial recognition is not used for security alerts. See below for details.
Lighthouse will start looking for faces as soon as it's set up, but it may take a few minutes to see them under the faces section of the People tab. To help Lighthouse recognize faces more quickly, we suggest people walk back and forth, 3-10 feet from the camera, with their faces clearly visible.
When new faces are detected, you’ll notice a Tag Faces icon appear on the Home tab. To tag new faces:
- Click the Tag Faces icon to view new faces seen by the camera
- Tap on a few images of someone
- Choose the + icon to add a new name, or tap the name of an existing user
You can also assign new face pictures on the People tab. Just take the following steps:
- Open the People tab
- Tap the Faces icon
- Tap on a few images of someone
- Choose the + icon to add a new name, or tap the name of an existing user
We recommend tagging 15-20 faces per user. If you create a new user to assign the faces to, this is called a Tagged User.
Note: Lighthouse recognizes faces better when there's movement, so make sure the person you want to tag is not sitting still the entire time.
Tagged Users are different than users you've invited to download the app; see our Tagged User article for more information.
Once you've assign a few faces to a user, your Lighthouse will collect similar-looking faces for you to confirm and assign to him or her:
- Open the People tab
- Tap one of the users you've assigned faces to
- Under "Recognized by Lighthouse:", tap each of the images of that person
- Tap the name of the user
- Tap to confirm the images
You'll also see a section labeled "Tag to improve recognition:" where you can assign other face pictures to the same or other users. The more you do this, the more accurate your Lighthouse will get.
If you accidentally tag a face to the wrong person, you can delete it easily:
- Open the People tab
- Tap on the user you incorrectly assigned the face to
- Tap on the incorrect image
- In the menu that pops up, tap the icon to remove that image
Once Lighthouse has learned who's who, try using that knowledge in searches or Pings:
- "Did you see Steve between 3pm and 4pm yesterday?"
- "Ping me if you see Sean after 10pm"
If you've taught Lighthouse to recognize your family, you can use Lighthouse to keep track of anyone else coming into your home:
- "Did you see any unknown people yesterday?"
- "Ping me if you see Dave with any unknown people"
Note: Lighthouse recognizes faces better when there's movement, so make sure the person you want to tag is not sitting still the entire time.
Lighthouse comes with a preset security Ping, which notifies you of “Person-related activity while all invited users are away.” This means you’ll get a notification if a person is seen while all app users are away, even if you’ve tagged that person’s face so Lighthouse can recognize them.
Why isn’t facial recognition recommended for security notifications?
Since we can’t guarantee your camera will get a good look at every person who comes into your house, the preset security Ping doesn’t use facial recognition when sending a Ping. Instead, we alert for any person-related activity and let you decide.
To avoid notifications for trusted family and guests, you have a couple options:
- Add them to your Lighthouse account so your system knows when someone you trust is home.
- Snooze the “person-related activity” Ping (or any Ping) either by toggling the slider next to it (just don’t forget to turn it on again), or by tapping Manage Pings on the Home tab and then tapping Notifications for the Ping to snooze it for a set amount of time.
Facial recognition is only available with an AI Service plan.