Geofencing~I'm wandering aimlessly

[RegularJoe]

I am confounded with the Geo instructions. I'm not even sure I got it enabled or if it's even active at the moment, or not.
  There is only going to be one person using this, so only one phone to worry about.
  The language is confusing to me:
  It is overwhelming trying to set this up and write this diatribe, because there is so much to unpack.
  I'm having a bit better luck right now.. and I've gotten to some part of the process where it shows what devices (my only phone) available, and in small letters below that it says "all devices must be away from the location to arm geofencing. When any of the devices arrive or leave to the location using the automations, geofencing will activate."

  So, I am going to go get on my motorcycle and head out and see if I can get this show on the road.

[DannyBearAgain]

I find you need to connect the mobile device to external power as you enter or exit the home zone for the geofencing to update. Unless I do this the arlo app can take up to an hour to update the location change to the arlo server, usually 20miles away.

[RegularJoe]

Well I can if I can remember to do that, I will.. but that makes absolutely no sense, does it? Who decided on that combination of events to make that function occur? If that is the case, why wouldn't they make a tutorial about that that's easy to understand? If a relatively long time user like me can't figure this out how do they expect a newcomer, a new buyer, to figure something like that out? It makes absolutely no sense.

[jguerdat]

Must be a specific phone issue since mine (Pixel 6) switches GF as appropriate. I occasionally check to make sure and the only times there's a problem is when my wife hasn't opened the app recently so gets logged off (which causes GF to fail since there's no reaction from her phone). I added a notification to her calendar to remind her to just open the app once a week.

[DannyBearAgain]

@jguerdat,

I can’t test if the behaviour is phone specific since we only use Apple devices. I do know that the behaviour is consistent and reproducible on multiple devices.

It is possible that the behaviour is regional or carrier related if not phone specific.

Regards the 14day auto logout sessions, this just adds to the frustration of trying to use geofencing as we need to manually logout the background arlo app before the session expires.

[RegularJoe]

  So, I messed around with it and was pretty sure I had done everything right. Drove half a mile away from the house to set it up (because somewhere in all those screens one time I read that you had to be away from where you were setting up the fence- but I haven't read it again since, imagine that) and got it done.
  My system is 10 cams... all 10 on when armed away. When I'm home, only 9 are armed.. the one in the house is off.

  I had the fence set so that when a person left, it would go to "armed away", all cams on... and when a person returned, it would "armed home", all but 1.

  There is a notification on my phone that said "geofencing active", or something like that. I can't tell you how the system itself was armed... didn't look.. but when I left the house I had it "armed away". 
  
  So, I drive home and drop off a passenger. 2 cams in front of the house see me. Passenger walk up on porch, one up there sees her.
  Opens the front door... and the cam in the house, which should have been disarmed... sees her.
  That was a failure.
  I went round and round with this **bleep**... set things up opposite of what I wanted it to do.. thinking maybe I'm not reading the non-existent instructions wrong.. nothing worked.
  Frustrated, I finally deleted all automations.

  What in the hell does that crap with the arrows mean?  

  There is waaayyyyy too much crap to decipher to make this user friendly.
Wayyyyy too many steps in the process for me to easily take pictures of each step so someone could tell me what I'm doing wrong.
  You'd think that this piss poor excuse for a company would have that **bleep** figured out already and a step by step guide online here somewhere.
👿Can you tell I'm frustrated with this piece of **bleep**?
  Android phone, btw.

s

[RegularJoe]

  What in the hell does that mean? Not a damn thing to me. Too much crap to enable/disable/fill in

[jguerdat]

I haven't messed with that so can't be sure but I have never changed that setting and things work fine.

BTW, 1/2 mile may still be in zone if you're using the biggest radius in your GF location settings.

[RegularJoe]

---

@jguerdat wrote:

I haven't messed with that so can't be sure but I have never changed that setting and things work fine.

---

  That's not a setting to change, it's one of the choices you have to make to set the fence up.

[jguerdat]

I'm referring to the Always Enabled setting when editing your GF automations. In there you can change whether any of the modes are apparently available.

[RegularJoe]

Well, that doesn't make any sense to me.
  WHen you set up the fence, your instructions have to tell it what to do when you leave the area, and what to do when you return. There are only 3 modes available, so it has to do one of three things.
  Why wouldn't they be available? 
The words that they wrote....that I pictured....don't make any sense.

 It's gobbledegook

[jguerdat]

Just trying to suggest things that I haven't tried. I recently tried using my own suggestions and found that it didn't work as I anticipated but I can't find directions to help out. @JamesC or @ShayneS any help?

[Dom_donald]

I feel your pain. I've been using Arlo for a few years now. With the previous app I had finally figured out how to make combinations of geofencing and schedules, so when either me or my wife were away, the mode was Armed, and when either of us returned the mode changed to Home (unless one of us had been auto logged out by Arlo!)... and then during the night, the mode was 'Armed' regardless of who was there or not.

Now, with the new 'automations', i'm completely bewildered. I've used computer systems, devices and apps for decades, yet this is beyond me. 

Why can't the help/support describe scenarios and how you'd set up the system, rather than useless information that describes only what each individual discrete function / button does instead of explaining how to use them in any useful combination? 

[RegularJoe]

Well, I tried one last time and it failed.

I would leave and come back... mode never changed, that I could tell.

What a frickin waste of time.

I just do it manually, when I remember to do it at all.

[DougalArlo]

I'd also like to know what this really means - "By default Automations will be always enabled when you enter any Mode. All other automations will be disabled when entering this mode"

It is not making any sense to me.

[Dom_donald]

I have a solution that works, offered to me by another Arlo community member. Needless to say, the solution was totally different than the one proposed by Arlo support. I now have the geofencing working alongside time schedules for mode changes. 

Enabling/Disabling a Mode is not the same as triggering a Mode change (e.g. to Armed Home or Armed Away). If you disable a Mode, then it can't be triggered by an event (such as a Schedule or geofencing). The way in which the Modes, their statuses, and the Automations interact is by no means intuitive. Except when you know the answer.

I couldn't get the geofencing to work previously, but since I've configured the Automations correctly, the geofencing works (the issue was nothing to do with the geofencing itself - although it's worth checking the your device is sharing its location with the Arlo app and that all devices are connected).

Here's a link to the thread with my solution: Solved: Re: Arlo Pro 5 - Setting up Geofencing and Schedul... - Arlo Community