Basic ?s on Mode/Rules: Setup group of cameras e.g. Inside, Outside groups etc.

[lite1]

Newbie; using basic/free subscription 5 cameras I want to understand best practices for programming so can easily change functionality based on various situations. Arlo help articles are not that helpful!!

My understanding - please correct my misconceptions:
1) Device Utility | Motion Detection Test does NOT actually permanently alter sensitivity of that camera. Changing sensitivity from the default 80% to something else can ONLY be accomplished via Mode/Rule.
2) A Base Station (mine is VMC4500) operates in only one Mode at a time and as shipped this is Armed. 

3) For a custom Mode withOUT any cross triggering:
In order for a camera to be included in that Mode, then it must be "named" in a Rule. 
Cameras that are NOT named in a rule, can be ON or OFF. If ON, then in Devices one can see a Live view, however at the top of the screen the icons for listening/microphone & movement are greyed out. It seems like such a camera will NOT record anything, correct?

4) Arlo makes dealing with similar Modes and Rules cumbersome. By this I mean that you can NOT make a copy of a Mode, rename it, and then make slight modifications to it. Similarly you can NOT define some group of settings for a Camera and then when adding a device to a Mode simply choose how camera #1 will function in that Mode, but must recreate each time the Rule for that Camera/device. If this is true, and I believe that it is, it seems that having a good strategy for how to setup your Modes is imperative to keep a cumbersome process as efficient as possible.

5) It seems that once a custom Mode is being used by a base station that unless I have written things down (probably in spreadsheet) the only way to know within the App what sensitivity a particular camera is currently using, is to edit the Mode/Rules and set what the settings are. Hopefully I am wrong on this one as this would be cumbersome and annoying.

?s and your suggestions for strategy/tips:
I expect that I will need several custom Modes e.g.
# Inside Only; Outside Only
But in addition will want different settings (probably especially motion sensitivity) applied, because it is windy or calm; or day vs night.

Tentatively I expect that I will want to accomplish some of these things via Modes/Rules:
A) Increase or decrease sensitivity for a group of cameras while leaving my own basic/default settings for all other cameras the same. Reason: In part I monitor the movement of pets going in and out of cat door and being outside. Also when on vacation probably willing to have false positives of possible intruders rather than missing events.
B) Daylight versus night/artificial light which also typically impacts greatly whether I am inside or outside; pets are always inside dusk to dawn.
C) I can not find how to "apply scheduling" to a Custom Mode. By this I mean, I had thought/hoped that part of a Custom Mode is that you can choose what time frame it operates in.  I thought that scheduling (and GeoFencing) acted like Overrides for a Mode? I do see in Modes that you can manage by Schedule. So it seems that one first creates a Custom Mode and that if you want it to also have a timing factor that you then need to go to Mode | Schedule and do things there. Am I correct that one can only save one Schedule so it is NOT possible (via Schedule) to operate via Schedule say having "at home summer schedule" "at home winter schedule" "vacation schedule".

While I am after understanding the principles and Arlo requirements, knowing how many custom Modes you have and what they accomplish for you could help me think about strategy for my setup.

Do any of the paid subscriptions make programming easier? I know that some of them add other Mode settings.
Does having a 2nd Base station make managing Modes/Rules easier? This ?, I expect is perhaps an advanced topic and probably does not have a simple yes/no answer. (But I could see perhaps an advantage in having 2 base stations with 1 dedicated to Indoor & other to outdoor.)

My guess is that typically if one finds themself often wanting to edit a Mode (say to adjust the sensitivity for just 1 camera in that Mode) that you are better off creating a new Mode for that "situation." Unfortunately it seems that since adjustments are a bit time consuming that in practice one ends up with a choice of Modes that work fairly well (but far from ideally) and one simply puts up with false positives & false negatives; etc. and go on living your life rather than get caught in endless tweaking. I am still at a stage where I am not sure whether Arlo (or any system) is worth it. 

Sorry for such basic ?s from newbie, but Arlo Help and manual is quite poor around some of these core functionality areas.

[lite1]

Would using IFTT be a good approach to dealing with Arlo Modes? (I don't see how OP can edit their original post!)

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

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@lite1 wrote:

My understanding - please correct my misconceptions:
1) Device Utility | Motion Detection Test does NOT actually permanently alter sensitivity of that camera. Changing sensitivity from the default 80% to something else can ONLY be accomplished via Mode/Rule.
2) A Base Station (mine is VMC4500) operates in only one Mode at a time and as shipped this is Armed. 

3) For a custom Mode withOUT any cross triggering:
In order for a camera to be included in that Mode, then it must be "named" in a Rule. 
Cameras that are NOT named in a rule, can be ON or OFF. If ON, then in Devices one can see a Live view, however at the top of the screen the icons for listening/microphone & movement are greyed out. It seems like such a camera will NOT record anything, correct?

4) Arlo makes dealing with similar Modes and Rules cumbersome. By this I mean that you can NOT make a copy of a Mode, rename it, and then make slight modifications to it. Similarly you can NOT define some group of settings for a Camera and then when adding a device to a Mode simply choose how camera #1 will function in that Mode, but must recreate each time the Rule for that Camera/device. If this is true, and I believe that it is, it seems that having a good strategy for how to setup your Modes is imperative to keep a cumbersome process as efficient as possible.

5) It seems that once a custom Mode is being used by a base station that unless I have written things down (probably in spreadsheet) the only way to know within the App what sensitivity a particular camera is currently using, is to edit the Mode/Rules and set what the settings are. Hopefully I am wrong on this one as this would be cumbersome and annoying.

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All this is correct. 

Cross triggering doesn't really change things much.  All the cameras that you want to detect motion (or audio) need to have a rule that says how they are triggered.  As part of that rule you specify what devices you want to record, whether you want the siren activated, and whether you want to be notified.  The default rules say "if motion is detected by camera X, then record from camera X".  Cross triggering instead says "record from camera Y" (though of course you can have both "record from camera X and "record from camera Y" in a rule).

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@lite1 wrote:

But in addition will want different settings (probably especially motion sensitivity) applied, because it is windy or calm; or day vs night.

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Well, I haven't set different motion sensitivities at different times (except as a test).  Instead I find a threshold that eliminates the bulk of the false/uninteresting notifications and recordings, and then confirm that I still get reliable recordings for the things I care about (chiefly people and vehicles on my property, though it's nice to see animals too).

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@lite1 wrote:

A) Increase or decrease sensitivity for a group of cameras while leaving my own basic/default settings for all other cameras the same. Reason: In part I monitor the movement of pets going in and out of cat door and being outside. 

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Activity zones likely would be useful for you - allowing you to increase sensitivity, but still reject motion outside an area of interest.  For instance, aim a camera at the cat door, and use the activity zone to reject motion that isn't around that door.

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@lite1 wrote:

C) I can not find how to "apply scheduling" to a Custom Mode. By this I mean, I had thought/hoped that part of a Custom Mode is that you can choose what time frame it operates in. 

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That approach would be problematic, because you wouldn't easily be able to see gaps, and it would be difficult to deal with overlaps when you are changing the setup around.

Instead, "Scheduled" is treated as it's own mode.  But instead of rules in that mode, it contains a schedule for when other modes are automatically activated or deactivated.

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@lite1 wrote:

 in practice one ends up with a choice of Modes that work fairly well (but far from ideally) and one simply puts up with false positives & false negatives; etc. and go on living your life rather than get caught in endless tweaking.

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I've said a couple of times that IMO the approach to modes in the system should be re-thought - in particular, that it needs to be easier to control groups of cameras.  That said, I think even with a very fluid UI, you'd still end up with modes that work reasonably well, but have to put up with some false positives and false negatives.

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@lite1 wrote:

Does having a 2nd Base station make managing Modes/Rules easier? 

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It can.  The reason is that the current software only allows one mode to be active at a time in the base.  If you have groups of cameras that you want to manage together, you usually end up with more modes than you really want to handle all the combinations.  For instance, if you have an indoor camera group, and an outdoor camera group, you might want to arm/disarm those groups independently.  Today that requires four modes (indoor+outdoor armed, indoor armed+outdoor disarmed, indoor disarmed+outdoor armed, indoor+outdoor disarmed).  If you have another group (say you want to manage the cat door camera independently from the other cameras you'd need 8 modes to cover all the combinations.

Having one base per group of cameras is the only way to overcome that lmitation (at least right now).

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@lite1 wrote:

Do any of the paid subscriptions make programming easier? I know that some of them add other Mode settings.

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They don't actually add more mode settings, but they do make notifications and motion detection more fine-grained.

Activity zones are useful in eliminating unwanted recording/notifications.  If the cameras aren't AC powered, then they need a subscription (because they are done in the cloud).

The smart classifications might be helpful to you, since you have pets you are interested in seeing.   They aren't perfect - there will be a fair number of mis-classifications.  Though they are still useful in filtering the video recordings.  I don't think I'd get a subscription just to get the classifications - they need to be more accurate before I'd do that..  But I want activity zones anyway,  and I get the smart notifications along with that.

CVR (Continuous Video Recording) has value to many folks - they don't want to depend on motion sensing.  It can be difficult to find stuff of interest in practice, and it also requires that the camera be AC powered.

And some subscriptions give you longer retention for the recordings.  

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@lite1 wrote:

Would using IFTTT be a good approach to dealing with Arlo Modes? 

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Based on posts here, it's pretty broken at the moment.  So I wouldn't invest much time on IFTTT, SmartThings, HomeKit, etc until the problems are fixed.

That said, I think IFTTT is more useful if you are wanting to integrate other devices into the solution (for instance, if you have a non-Arlo sensor that also supports IFTTT, and want to use that to trigger a recording).

[lite1]

@StephenB again thanks for cutting my learning curve, and unfortunately confirming my very limited experience that programming Modes is cumbersome and that for my own needs that I might end up with 8 or more custom modes. Will do more experimentation.

? about your first response ...

@lite1 wrote:

A) Increase or decrease sensitivity for a group of cameras while leaving my own basic/default settings for all other cameras the same. Reason: In part I monitor the movement of pets going in and out of cat door and being outside. 

Activity zones likely would be useful for you - allowing you to increase sensitivity, but still reject motion outside an area of interest.  For instance, aim a camera at the cat door, and use the activity zone to reject motion that isn't around that door.

 Do "Activity Zones" truly increase sensitivity, or is it that they are simply setting two areas: 1 that allows motion detection and 1 that ignores all motion. While this would be helpful in reducing false positives, if it doesn't actually increase sensitivty; OR doesn't increase detection of movement that is NOT very oblique to the camera axis, then while of some value to me probably doesn't solve the problem. Namely that detection of my cats is often missed even when I can observe their movement cutting across the axis of the camera viewing direction. Increasing sensitivity on that camera has helped some (now at 95%) but still misses detecting too frequently. I expect that I need to move the camera closer and/or set camera axis to more oblique angle to likely cat movement when exiting cat door.

One post recommended for pet detection lowering the camera closer to the standard 7' above ground that Arlo suggests as default. I am not sure whether this lowering becomes more effective simply because at same location the camera would be closer to the movement; or whether the change in the relationship of camera view axis has also changed. On this latter point it seems to me keeping movement constant at 10' that the best camera position might be mounted above at 10' and looking straight downward - in such a position unless the cat is jumping up that virtually all movement would be at an angle to the camera view versus camera say 3' off of the ground pointed very slightly downward where much of the movement could be directly at (away from camera). Of course with the theoretical mounting directly above pointing downward there would likely be more reflection.

As an aside, I need to keep reminding myself that in battery operation mode these Arlo Pro 2 cameras are detecting changes (movement) in IR pattern (not change in visible light or in pixel changes) so what  I observe with my eyes is NOT a good proxy for guessing at what a camera in X position is going to "see" and detect in its field of view. Does that make sense? Is it a correct understanding? One of my cats is all black and to eyes can be hard to detect against blacktop driveway, but at 14# he is a big IR target versus his 7# grey sister - good example of why I have to think like an IR detector!

It would seem that the most foolproof solution for me if I am willing to spend the money is: Set a camera very close to and at right angles to the cat door. Use this as the motion detector and with Mode | Rule have this cat door camera trigger recording on 2nd camera that has a much wider field of view that includes the cat door and 30' all around it. I wish Arlo had a cheap motion detector (even a laser beam breaker) to act as the trigger, or even a pressure pad trigger!

[StephenB]

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@lite1 wrote:

Do "Activity Zones" truly increase sensitivity,

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No, and I didn't mean to imply that they did.  As you say, they just let you exclude areas from the motion detection.  But that often does let you increase sensitivity in the detection, because the activity zones can filter out a lot of increased false alarms.  One caveat is that if the cameras are battery powered, activity zones won't improve battery life.  All detected motion is streamed to the cloud, and the cloud determines whether the motion is in-zone or not.

We don't have cats, so I don't have practical experience with trying to monitor animals that size.  Hopefully other folks here who do will chime in.

@lite1 wrote: As an aside, I need to keep reminding myself that in battery operation mode these Arlo Pro 2 cameras are detecting changes (movement) in IR pattern (not change in visible light or in pixel changes) so what  I observe with my eyes is NOT a good proxy for guessing at what a camera in X position is going to "see" and detect in its field of view. Does that make sense? Is it a correct understanding?

Close.  The PIR sensors just detect changes in the amount of IR radiation that reach them.  That lets them detect general movement, and not much else.   There is no image (which might be implied by the phrase "IR pattern").  So for sure it isn't well related to what you see with your eyes.

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@lite1 wrote:

I wish Arlo had a cheap motion detector (even a laser beam breaker) to act as the trigger, or even a pressure pad trigger!

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They did announce sensors like that last January, but they haven't said much since.  @JamesC did say it's still in their plans, but no word yet on timeframe (and of course nothing said on pricing).

One thing that could maybe work as a sensor is the Arlo (audio) doorbell.  It does have a motion sensor, and it can be cross triggered.  However there are folks here who have had trouble getting the cross triggering to work.

[lite1]

@StephenB again much thanks for your clarity and cutting my learning curve. I expect that I'll probably keep my Arlo system in large part due to this excellent forum with tireless contributors like you who make up for what Arlo does not do as a company and from what I hear in posts here their usually terrible tech support. Having read earlier today posts on recent very frustrated users, as well as the exceedingly slow roll out of improvements to the app, I still in the grey area of wondering whether I should return the system before the return window is up. Because of the forum and that two friends have had it for a couple of years and have indicated that the pros outweigh the annoyances and frustrations, I will probably stick with things. It reminds me of my experience with Ooma VOIP that had fairly good hardware/software but it was really the forum and the experienced and knowledgeable tele users that made things workable. Going to mark this thread "solved." Again thanks for all of the help.