topic Re: Suddenly many false motion notifications in Arlo Video Doorbell 2nd Gen

Suddenly many false motion notifications

Rusty-Alvin — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 19:05:02 GMT

We've had our Video Doorbell for about 9 months. Suddenly, just before and after its most recent recharging cycle, the last 10-14 days, the Video Doorbell is detecting/reporting motion that does not exist, or it is entirely too sensitive.

I work in a front room next to the front door, so I see what's going on in front of the house. But I receive many alerts throughout the day for "motion" detected by the doorbell that has not happened. IT JUST HAPPENED WHILE I WAS POSTING!

Worse, these false alarms occur after we set the doorbell to "lockdown" mode where it runs a siren and flashes lights. Last night, it woke me up twice for phantom activity – nothing recorded, not people, not animals, not wind, nothing. I switched the system off from "Arm Away" (alarms) to "Arm Home" (no sirens). That stopped the sirens, but 5 more "phantom" events were recorded in the feed.

I have restarted, and I have confirmed that firmware is up to date.

The device is useless if it is going to be triggered constantly by nothing!

Re: Suddenly many false motion notifications

Rusty-Alvin — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 19:07:54 GMT

I should add, I also tried drastically reducing motion sensitivity to 35% (it was at 45%) and setting up an "activity zone" that could only be triggered by someone being very near to the door.

None of these steps, independently or together, ended the false alarms.

Re: Suddenly many false motion notifications

jguerdat — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 14:24:53 GMT

Reflections of the sun's strong IR is a likely cause. However, if this happens with the same frequency during the night, that is ruled out. As the sun changes its angle relative to the earth, this situation may occur at certain seasons/times of the year but not others.

You may also want to remove/reset/reinstall the doorbell as a test.

Re: Suddenly many false motion notifications

Rusty-Alvin — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 20:28:21 GMT

No way to know what was going on, we did remove the Video Doorbell, force a reset (with the button in back) and after it restarted AND uploaded a firmware update, it seems to be working.

From now on, I will assume that weird behaviors require a forced reset.