Arlo Essential cam wireless 2k

[ignoic]

For those who have an Arlo essential wireless camera, I wanted to find out what settings you are using to make the battery last? People doing something outside cause it to trigger a lot. I will not like to disable person detection but then yet again having the same person walking in front of the camera a few times drains the battery quickly

[StephenB]

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@ignoic wrote:

I will not like to disable person detection but then yet again having the same person walking in front of the camera a few times drains the battery quickly

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Person detection won't improve the battery life.

The motion detection is done using a passive infrared (PIR) sensor in the camera.  Similarly, audio detection is done from the camera microphone.   Whenever the PIR sensor triggers when the camera is armed, the camera sends video to the Arlo Cloud.  It doesn't matter if the motion is in the activity zone or not, and it doesn't matter what smart notifications / AI feature you have enabled (or not enabled).

The Arlo Cloud does the rest.  If you use activity zones, it will first decide if the motion is in the zones or outside.  If the motion is outside the zone, it ignores the video (supressing the notification and not recording).  If it is in the zone, then the AI processing (e.g. person detection) is done by the cloud platform - NOT the camera.

The only way to improve the battery life is to reduce the amount video being streamed to the cloud.  You can do that by 

1. reducing the motion sensitivity
2. disarming the camera when you don't need it to be active
3. turning the camera off when you don't need it to be active

You might start by running the motion detection test while walking around in the field of view.  Find the lowest sensitivity that reliably detects you, and set the motion threshold to that value.

• https://kb.arlo.com/000062895/How-do-I-change-the-motion-sensitivity-on-my-Arlo-camera-Arlo-Secure-4-0

[StephenB]

---

@ignoic wrote:

I will not like to disable person detection but then yet again having the same person walking in front of the camera a few times drains the battery quickly

---

Person detection won't improve the battery life.

The motion detection is done using a passive infrared (PIR) sensor in the camera.  Similarly, audio detection is done from the camera microphone.   Whenever the PIR sensor triggers when the camera is armed, the camera sends video to the Arlo Cloud.  It doesn't matter if the motion is in the activity zone or not, and it doesn't matter what smart notifications / AI feature you have enabled (or not enabled).

The Arlo Cloud does the rest.  If you use activity zones, it will first decide if the motion is in the zones or outside.  If the motion is outside the zone, it ignores the video (supressing the notification and not recording).  If it is in the zone, then the AI processing (e.g. person detection) is done by the cloud platform - NOT the camera.

The only way to improve the battery life is to reduce the amount video being streamed to the cloud.  You can do that by 

1. reducing the motion sensitivity
2. disarming the camera when you don't need it to be active
3. turning the camera off when you don't need it to be active

You might start by running the motion detection test while walking around in the field of view.  Find the lowest sensitivity that reliably detects you, and set the motion threshold to that value.

• https://kb.arlo.com/000062895/How-do-I-change-the-motion-sensitivity-on-my-Arlo-camera-Arlo-Secure-4...