topic Thoughts about Arlo Smart in Arlo Smart

Thoughts about Arlo Smart

bhoolbela92 — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 17:44:22 GMT

I watched the live stream this morning and decided to go ahead and sign up for the free trial. Setup was straightforward and simple. There is, however, one big issue I have noticed. The lag between detected motion and an alert coming through used to be just a few seconds. Now it’s averaging about 20 seconds. I assume the video is streamed to their servers, analyzed, then the notification is issued if the algorithm detects motion that matches the zone area and/or person detection I’ve selected. I’m sure that takes time, but I wasn’t expecting quite that much lag.

I am still testing the new features with my 5 cameras (some original Arlo, some Pro). Maybe since it’s the first couple of days and there’s a lot of signups and new activity, they may be dealing with higher bandwidth and server load. Regardless of the reason, a few seconds of lag is OK, but 20 seconds seems unusable. A quick package thief will snatch a box from your door and be gone in 20 seconds. You might have them on video, but too late for siren or voice.

Re: Thoughts about Arlo Smart

LandJS — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 03:35:37 GMT

That is what you will find and it will vary dependent of connection speed. I canceled my plan once and the notifications were almost instant but then you lose the purpose of smart. I have trees around so that could be 100 notifications for motion per day and that can be irritating. I do think the smart plan has much room for improvement both in correct identification and in speed of identification. By today's standards both suck. So for now it's a choice between smart and many unwanted notifications. There are some DVR's and NVR's today that can do it right at the local storage and I wish the Arlo hub would but the cloud is their business so I doubt it. So it depends on their improving it but nobody will completely get rid of lag to and from the cloud. I will go DVR/NVR when these break down, just hope they increase the cams width by then or I will have to double the number of cams. I have most of mine at 180 and will need 2 at each point with cams that don't. The cost wouldn't be more, just the need for more.