topic Re: Do Smart Notifications override Activity Zones? in Arlo Smart

Do Smart Notifications override Activity Zones?

BaldBen — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:53:13 GMT

I have an with an Activity Zone at the bottom of the view area. Movement outside the Activity Zone activates and creates video and notifications.

I have “people” as a Smart Notification, but it notifies me of people not in the Activity Zone as well as motion that is not people outside the Activity Zone.

attached photos show Activity Zone and circled headlights of car outside Activity Zone that created notification and video.

Any ideas or feedback is appreciated!

Re: Do Smart Notifications override Activity Zones?

jguerdat — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:14:44 GMT

Cars can be detected not only by their IR signatures but also by reflections from them or off them. Headlights seem to be a constant possibility, especially since your zone seems to be very much at where your image shows. I don't know how "strong" a cutoff there is to a zone but there could be enough flare to allow detection/recording.

I'd suggest bringing the top of your zone down a bit which may also help with the people issue. In addition, reduce your motion sensitivity in your modes and rules - I happen to use 45 which works well for me.

Re: Do Smart Notifications override Activity Zones?

BaldBen — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 16:57:24 GMT

Thank you @jguerdat ! I moved down the top of the zone and turned down from 50 to 45. I’ll respond with how it goes!

Re: Do Smart Notifications override Activity Zones?

StephenB — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 17:12:43 GMT

To circle back to your question -

The camera PIR sensor detects motion, which will start streaming video to the cloud
The cloud then determines if the motion is inside the zone or not. If it is inside the zone, then you will get a recording and a notification. Otherwise the video isn't stored and no notification is sent.
If smart notification is enabled, then the classification is sent as part of the notification and saved with the recording.

So the notifications don't override the activity zones.

One thing that I'm not sure about (Arlo has never said): That is whether the classification is only based on the video inside the zone, or whether a person or vehicle outside the zone will affect the classification.

FWIW, the zone processing isn't perfect (based on several other posts here). One aspect is that the cloud can only examine the compressed video, which does have artifacts. Classifications are of course often wrong too.

Re: Do Smart Notifications override Activity Zones?

BaldBen — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 13:29:26 GMT

@jguerdat , shrinking the Activity Zones seems to have fixed the issue. Thank you!