Arlo Pro 2 activity zone

[NFid]

Can the wireless cameras be set for activity zones? When I’m researching it states they must be plugged in to set the zone - but does that zone stay after just unplugging ? Hard to plug into AC to set a zone outdoors. Our camera sensitivity has been turned way down and still motion alerts for small flowers and sun/shade dappling are triggering the camera alerts. I need to get this fixed. 100s of alerts for smallest motions are draining batteries.

[Dannybear]

Where are you adjusting the camera motion sensitivity? In camera settings or the mode camera rules.

Regards the activity zones, no subscription requires Ac power constantly applied.

If using a subscription plan you can create three zones with the Ac power applied, unplug, then locate the camera to final position and then edit the zones to suit. Swiping left on the unwanted zones to delete.

[StephenB]

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@NFid wrote:
When I’m researching it states they must be plugged in to set the zone - but does that zone stay after just unplugging ?

To add to @Dannybear's answer: If you don't have a subscription, then the zones require AC power from the camera.  That is because the camera hardware is always processing video and looking for motion in the zone.  So you need power to use the zones, not just set them up.

If you do have a subscription, then when the camera is on battery power, the zones are processed in the Arlo cloud.  The camera streams to the cloud whenever it detects motion.  The cloud then determines whether the motion is in-zone or not.  If it's not, then the notification and cloud recording are both supressed.  Local recordings to USB storage are still made.

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@NFid wrote:
Our camera sensitivity has been turned way down and still motion alerts for small flowers and sun/shade dappling are triggering the camera alerts. I need to get this fixed. 100s of alerts for smallest motions are draining batteries.

Activity zones can reduce the alerts and recordings, but they will not improve battery life.  As explained above, the flower and dappling will still trigger the camera, and it will stream as it does now.  The cloud supresses the unwanted recordings, but that will not help the battery life.

The camera is more sensitive to motion at the bottom of the field of view than the top.  So you could try inverting the camera (and applying the 180 degree rotation setting in the camera).  That might help with the flowers.  Adjusting the field of view to remove as much of the flowers as possible from the image would also help.  Shadows are more difficult - some of my cameras trigger a lot more in the summer, due to shadows from trees and sometimes clouds.  

Some here use custom modes and scheduling - creating a custom mode with a fairly low motion sensitivity that they schedule during the times when they get the most unwanted recordings, and scheduling a different mode the rest of the time.