topic Re: Pet alert not working in Arlo Smart

Pet alert not working

RKiperman — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 04:30:41 GMT

My camera is picking up on my dog even when pet detection is off and the areas are selected to where the dog cant go. Help, this is very annoying and is draining the battery of my camera rapidly.

Re: Pet alert not working

StephenB — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 10:09:21 GMT

@RKiperman wrote:
My camera is picking up on my dog even when pet detection is off and the areas are selected to where the dog cant go. Help, this is very annoying and is draining the battery of my camera rapidly.

FWIW, turning off animal detection won't help battery life. The classification is done after the fact in the cloud (and only surpresses the notifications, not the recordings). Similarly with activity zones - also processed after the fact in the cloud. Though out-of-zone motion should surpress both recordings and notifications.

Are the recordings classified as "animal"? Or something else?

Re: Pet alert not working

RKiperman — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 10:27:30 GMT

Thanks for your early comment.

It’s classified as ‘motion’

Re: Pet alert not working

StephenB — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 10:38:44 GMT

@RKiperman wrote:

It’s classified as ‘motion’

Any possibility of slight motion inside the zone(s)?

You can of course supress the notifications by also disabling "all other motion". Though it might be better to try reducing the motion sensitivity.

https://kb.arlo.com/41/How-do-I-change-the-motion-sensitivity-on-my-Arlo-camera

Re: Pet alert not working

RKiperman — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 10:57:51 GMT

I will try the reduction, but it’s definitely our dog (a small Dachshund btw!)

Any other option?

Re: Pet alert not working

StephenB — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 11:47:58 GMT

@RKiperman wrote:
Any other option?

Reducing the motion sensitivity or changing the field of view are the only options that will improve battery life.

One trick here - the camera's passive infrared (PIR) sensor is arranged to be more sensitive to motion at the bottom of the field of view than the top. Sometimes inverting the camera (and also applying the invert video setting) helps in this scenario - shifting the most sensitive detection to the top of the field of view.