topic Re: CAMERAS NOT RECORDING in Arlo Pro

Activity Zone - Notifications outside the zone.

Brennan90 — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 14:12:48 GMT

Any idea on how to stop getting notifications which fall outside of the activity zone which is set. I get about 60-70 a day of stuff outside of zone. I have tried literally everything I can think of. Smart Notifications, just put it on people and I still get them of the last second of a vehicle driving past. I have deleted and added the zone again and again. One of the biggest headaches is that its draining the battery rapidly having all these notifications . I have another camera on a shared drive of which activates when the neighbours go on the drive but this doesn't seem to drain the battery anywhere near as fast as my front camera. I subscribed to the plan so I can get the zones to reduce the amount of notifications but they just keep coming. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Re: Activity Zone - Notifications outside the zone.

StephenB — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 14:25:17 GMT

@Brennan90 wrote:

One of the biggest headaches is that its draining the battery rapidly having all these notifications

Activity zones can't solve that part of the problem. When you are on battery power, the camera always streams the video to the cloud when motion is detected. The cloud then determines if the motion is inside the zone or not. If it's not, then the recording is discarded.

This is needed because processing the activity zones in the camera takes too much power to be practical on battery.

To be clear - it's not the notifications themselves that are draining the battery. It's the video streaming.

Switching to AC power (or the solar panel) would fix the battery drain. The other options are to reduce motion detection sensitivity and/or adjust the camera to remove as much of the undesired region as you can. In my experience adjusting or changing the camera position is more effective than changing the motion detection sensitivity.

Pro 2 cameras detecting motion outside of activity zones

ENF — Mon, 11 May 2020 18:25:12 GMT

I have seen tons of complaints about the Arlo systems in general and wonder how Arlo can honestly believe this is a security system. I purchased this system Arlo pro 2 because it got pretty great reviews on Best Buy but I am thinking now that those reviews were not real. Since I installed this system 3 weeks ago nothing has worked right especially my cameras not recording. I have 5 of them and only one seems to work. I have contacted Arlo support several times with no fix and have also read all the complaints on here about this same issue but nowhere do I see a fix. Somewhere I saw that this issue was resolved but clearly not. So $800.00 later I have a touted security system that is useless. I can't bring it back and Arlo wont do anything... Buyer beware!

Re: CAMERAS NOT RECORDING

barnes3001 — Sat, 18 Apr 2020 14:17:21 GMT

I agree with the the previous entry. support is not very helpful in resolving issues. My problem is with activity zone and motion activating notification outside of the activity zone. Several times I have been asked to remove/deleted the activity zones then add the activity zone again which does not resolve my issue. What's the saying, doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Now my Arlo Pro 2 camera without the Smart Plan does not record video of motion. This is just after purchasing the Smart Plan for my front camera.

Re: CAMERAS NOT RECORDING

ShayneS — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 20:59:41 GMT

Hi @ENF

May I ask which troubleshooting steps you have performed so far? I don't want to suggest any prior methods you have previously performed.

Re: CAMERAS NOT RECORDING

barnes3001 — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 15:59:21 GMT

I have removed the device, South Camera, added the device. Stopped and started my base station.

When performing the "Motion detection Test" the South Camera picks up movement, camera flashes yellow.

When in live mode I can see myself in the camera view.

This all started happening just after I went on the "Smart Plan Single Camera" for my Front Camera.

My Front Camera has a view of a busy street.

Thanks for your interest in my issue

Re: CAMERAS NOT RECORDING

barnes3001 — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 16:02:11 GMT

I can agree with you whole hearthly. Support/fixes leave something to be desired/

Re: CAMERAS NOT RECORDING

ShayneS — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 17:59:24 GMT

HI @barnes3001

Are vehicles being detected outside of the zones, or all motion such as people/animals?

Activity zones are not working with my battery powered cameras when paying Arlo Smart

Reallyconfused — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 17:07:39 GMT

So.....I have a case pending [#41609248] for Activity Zones which according to my desktop portal, will not work on battery powered cameras. Yet I am paying for Arlo Smart Premier which is suppose to include Activity Zone function on battery powered cameras. [The zones are working on my ac powered cameras I think]

Case has been "endorsed" as they say, to a higher level and I received the email asking for call back time. But......NO ONE IS CALLING BACK?

Anyone home?

Re: Activity Zone issues

Reallyconfused — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 16:13:25 GMT

I just retested all 5 cameras. The two cameras plugged into ac respond to the set activity zones.

The three cameras which are powered by batteries do not respond to any set activity zones.

The Arlo portal, when accessed on my laptop show a yellow "caution" exclamation mark warning me that "camera has been unplugged from ac....activity zones won't work" or words to that effect. This is on the three cameras running on battery power.

The Arlo portal, when accessed via my iPhone app, does NOT worn me of anything!! The iPhone app is my preferred method of accessing the Arlo portal. Without any warning how do I know how long I HAVE BEEN PAYING FOR A SERVICE IM NOT GETTING!

Arlo,l be asking for a partial refund for services not rendered.

Re: Activity Zone issues

jguerdat — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 13:47:07 GMT

Have you verified that all cameras are activated in Settings, Smart Notifications?

Re: CAMERAS NOT RECORDING

barnes3001 — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 14:42:54 GMT

Yes, objects outside activity zone trigger recording/alerts. That is even tweaking sensitivity.

Activity Zones using batteries?

ScotCamera — Sat, 02 May 2020 00:21:29 GMT

Is there anybody that can clear this up for me? Do activity zones only work with a paid subscription and with an AC connection? I've read conflicting articles about this.

Couple of my cameras read "AC power has been disconnected from your Arlo device. Activity Zones are currently disabled". I'm using batteries and what I thought was working correctly, isn't. Meaning activity zones are NOT working on battery power and a paid subscription.

Thanks

Re: Activity Zones using batteries?

TomMac — Sat, 02 May 2020 13:33:39 GMT

Zones on the Pro2 ( TMK ) do not require ac power.... but can still record if outside zones, but you should not get a notice or recording in library ( as the zone info is processed at the cloud end to determine if you need to be notified )

Re: Activity Zones using batteries?

ScotCamera — Sat, 02 May 2020 20:51:48 GMT

I'm getting recorded video to my library that shows no activity in the designated activity zone. There is a lot of movement from tree branches moving due to the wind. I purposely made the activity zones as small as possible and in areas that avoid all this branch movement.

The AC error message only shows in my chrome browser but not on my iOS app. This seems odd to me.

Re: Activity Zones using batteries?

StephenB — Sun, 03 May 2020 19:10:44 GMT

@ScotCamera wrote:

Meaning activity zones are NOT working on battery power and a paid subscription.

I've seen this also, and reported it to Arlo. It seems to come and go. Right now I'm only seeing it on a camera on a trial subscription. But I've seen it on other cameras over the past couple of weeks.

I'm not 100% sure that the warning means that activity zones aren't working. The warning might just be shown by mistake. Thanks to the lockdown, I'm not needing activity zones as much as I did a while back.

Re: Activity Zone issues

Reallyconfused — Tue, 05 May 2020 15:19:18 GMT

Um...I mean this in the most light hearted way......Yes, I also make sure I turn my tv on BEFORE I try watching it. 😜

Re: Activity Zone issues

Reallyconfused — Tue, 05 May 2020 15:42:19 GMT

But all fun aside.

I get an email from Fitz {level 3 I think they call it} re: my open case number asking for contact info. so he can call me. That was 8 days ago and no call yet.

Four days ago I phone back in to Arlo and speak with Anisha. She looks over the case and confirms to me that this is a known issue and that their techs are working on a fix. I tell her that I will be looking for a rebate on a service I am paying for which is not working, as they are aware of. My phone company does this. My internet service provider does this. Anyone who sells me a service which temporarily fails will offer me a rebate. Its called customer service. I will soon look into what my legal rights are as a consumer of a paid for service which does not work.

Anisha offers that she will call me back with an update in 24 hours. Again, that was four days ago.

Anisha tells me I could temporarily cancel my plan. ??? Sure! Its a grandfathered plan which they will not offer back to me if and when they fix the issue. A great way to increase their sales as I will be forced to buy a higher priced option.

And on a side note, if this is a "known issue" does this mean that all of you good folk reading this also have faulty activity zones? Maybe you should double check it.

Re: Activity Zone issues

StephenB — Tue, 05 May 2020 19:20:52 GMT

@Reallyconfused wrote:

And on a side note, if this is a "known issue" does this mean that all of you good folk reading this also have faulty activity zones? Maybe you should double check it.

I have been seeing this on-and-off on some of my cameras. It's showing up on one of them at the moment.

Re: Activity Zone issues

Reallyconfused — Tue, 05 May 2020 20:32:31 GMT

So you’re like me then. Paying for a service which is not working. Have you contacted customer service? More people need to complain about this until they fix it.