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Geolocation / IFTTT custom modes / improvements

Hi,

 

I am genuinely excited to see geolocation and IFTTT has been implemented, and yes I know its still 'Beta' but while it is still work in progress i would like to suggest a couple of improvements....

 

1) You need to support multiple devices. it makes no sense to have the cameras arm as I leave for work, only to get tons of videos of my wife leaving 10 minutes later.

You need to check for all devices to be out of the area before arming the cameras.

 

2) It should be possible to schedule 'geolocation' control.

 

Currently geolocation cannot be included in the schedule, which means i need to change the mode manually if like me you set them on during the night when you go to bed.

 

 

3) IFTTT - support 'custom' modes.

Currently you can only choose the standard armed or disarmed modes, you need to include for custom modes as well as being able to select gelolocation mode..

 

This would mean you could use the 'do' trigger to change mode quickly, helping to ease the pain of issue 2.

 

 

Overall though i have to say i am impressed with the additional functionality, but please Netgear, keep us informed of what you are working on!!!!

 

Kind Regards

Nick

 

 

Comments
XJW
Apprentice
Apprentice

@scrampker 

 

Perhaps start a new post  to provide better visibility.  It looks like you have done some great work to work out how to integrate these systems and solve gaps in Arlo functionality.

scrampker
Tutor

FYI, ended up having to scrap the IFTTT stuff because it was too much work. I had issues with things staying in sync. What I did for my own use case was install the hub linking apps/drivers found here:

 

https://community.hubitat.com/t/release-hubconnect-share-devices-across-multiple-hubs-even-smartthin...

 

This allows real-time 2-way sync between Hubitat and SmartThings. Since I already had the Arlo integration on the ST cloud/hub (heh), those Arlo devices came over. I get to see motion status, on/off, and other values that ST normally tracks. 

 

Not only do I get motion triggers, but they are real-time triggered/untriggered. Before I was just using a momentary button of 30 seconds. Now it can STAY triggered as long as motion is present. Just one example. The speed and reliability is much better. I was attempting all sorts of staggered rules to push to IFTTT, but no matter what I did, some of the cameras would always be unresponsive. Now every step of the way is actually confirming an action takes place. I'm pretty happy, and there's no external hardware hub I have to worry about maintaining.

 

I cannot recommend this solution enough.

KikBxr1969
Aspirant
FYI, All those wanting to use the Smartthings/Arlopilot integration - Not too long after it was mentioned in here, Arlo had Smartthings kill the integration as it was causing too much traffic on their servers. So, I am now tired of waiting. I hope that someone from Arlo is actually reading and cares. (I doubt it, but it would be nice) Regardless, I am glad I did not invest more money into this system. I bought two cameras and a base just to test the waters. After three years, I have to admit that Arlo doesn't care about retaining or building it's customer base. Congratulations. I will be going to another solution in the very near future. Bye Arlo.
scrampker
Tutor

My ST/Arlo integration is still humming along happily. I just triggered it from Hubitat a few times and watched it toggle on my ST dashboard, as well as the Arlo app greying out my cameras.

KikBxr1969
Aspirant
If by ST integration, you mean the ability to trigger a recording from ST, then yes, I am sure it is humming along just fine. However, you cannot arm or disarm the system. I have yet to find a way to silence the alerts from arlo when using the ST mode. Regardless, using ST in this way is just a workaround. You can get the same functionality out of the $25 wyze cams AND have local storage. So, for the price I paid for my 2 camera Arlo system, I could have had 8 cameras and some change. I am talking about the ability to access modes other than arm/disarm as was in the complaint of the OP over 3 years ago. It is not something that cannot be done. It is something that Arlo WILL NOT do. I know it can be done as there was an app available in ST that I was using as a workaround. However, Arlo had ST kill that app on May 8th with no notice to users. I was out of country, and the changes they made caused my system to start acting up. I could not reset it until I physically got home and removed power from the base station. To be honest, that app would not be needed if the geolocation was not still in "beta" after > 3 years. If the geolocation was accurate, it would have natively done everything I needed it to do. I am glad the ST workaround with the official "integration" works for you. There are a lot of us who expected more from this company and they have not delivered.
Srki
Initiate
A question: It seems that Netgear / Arlo don't care about software updates so my question is can you use two arlo base station in order to let the one base control the outside cameras and the second one two control the inside cameras? In that way it would be possible to arm/disarm seperately.
Angus_Marshall
Aspirant

You must be mental to spend any more money with these prime idiots at Arlo. Buy another hub because they don't fix their f###ing issues? No thanks. 

Srki
Initiate
Take it easy. It was a simple question. I agree it should not be like this but I am just asking a simple question, does it work or not? Some peaple sell these really cheap. Do you really think you will get a solution from their side? They don't care. So get over it, find alternative solutions and don't buy their **bleep**ty products.
sep2li
Tutor

Triggering custom modes via IFTTT might be possible via Python API scripts - I have not had the opportunity to dig into these, but here are some links I found. Maybe someone can get this to work (especially #1 & #2 seem promising for custom modes) and write a non-Python-expert manual for all of us...

 

1. https://github.com/tchellomello/python-arlo (base.mode = 'custom')

 

2. https://python-arlo.readthedocs.io/ (publish(action='get', resource=None, camera_id=None, mode=custom, publish_response=None, properties=None)

Run action.)

 

3. https://github.com/jeffreydwalter/arlo

 

4. https://github.com/nevertheless75/node-arlo-api

Wetzel402
Tutor

@sep2li , this is an interesting find.  I used they Python library and a basic script to confirm this does work.  What I find the most annoying is that this confirms Arlo does have APIs in place that can both get and set custom modes so little work would be necessary to give us direct access in IFTTT.