Missed motion recordings

[K80Shooter]

So within the last week 9-5-20 thru 9-13-20 I have noticed that my cameras (all 3 of them) just has not been recording most types of motion. I have recordings of people leaving my door but none of them arriving, cars leaving but never returning and such. I have personally witnessed my pets walking in front of the cameras with no recordings. Even the pesky wind motion from limbs and things are no longer getting recorded. I have increased the sensitivity levels on all of my cameras to over 96% and still nothing changes. I have rebooted the hub a couple of times with no improvement. All of my cameras are ac powered and all have strong wifi signal.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed this? I went from getting over a hundred recordings a day to less than 20, sometimes none. Has there been a cloud update or software update of any kind that might cause this?

[dcfox1]

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@Signlguys wrote:

My Home Depot has Arlo 2 Combo pack (2 cameras and base) on clearance for $350. I was about to consider it but read that detection zones can only be used if cameras are plugged in. What good is a camera if you can’t have detection zones set up to alert you?

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It only needs AC power for activity zones if you do not have a smart subscription. With a sub you can be on battery as it is processed in the servers, not the camera. 

[qpham504]

Unable to update to the latest firmware and I'm not sure why.  I've click the radio button 7 times in the last 9 days and it keeps asking me the next.  I've tried updating it from the camera icon and the base station icon in the app.  Sigh...the white flag is up.....

Yes, I've officially can confirm missed motion footage because I have one camera behind another and they view the same street at different angles and the I had this happened 3 times last week.  Must be a limit to how many cameras can record at the same time

[Signlguys]

So is Arlo 2 combo with 2 cameras and base worth the $350 clearance price plus the cost of the subscription? I don’t want to waste even more money after spending $350 on Blink cameras that either don’t detect stuff I want to detect or detect stuff in the areas I have set up to not detect in.

[Kaynadian]

@Signlguys 

Arlo Pro 2s do not require paid subscription if you're okay with 7 days of cloud history, if you want more then you will need to pay, and that will give you 30 days of cloud history. Alternatively, an USB option is available if you'd like longer/permanent history.

Personally, in the beginning I had good experience with Arlo Pro 2s, but with the recent updates, my Arlo Pro 2s and 3s are all missing lots of motion. If you ask me, I don't think it's worth it. I'm personally contemplating switching to a paid and more expensive and proper security camera company as I'm so tired of all these Arlo issues and the lack of response (although I'm really upset over the fact that I spent so much on my Arlo Pro 3s and haven't had them for even a year and all I have experienced is missed motion and recordings!!!)

[MVT]

this is an old thread that seems to have died - was there ever a resolution for missed recordings?  I am having similar troubles.  I noted someone coming to my door the other day and it didn't record - I was sitting right in front of the window.  many other instances of non recordings very similar - people leaving but no record of them ever arriving etc.  I don't store recordings locally so I am reliant on the web.  the point of the subscription is to not have to manage local recordings.

funny thing is Arlo seemed to work more reliably before I bought into Arlo "smart" ecosystem.

[JehovasFitness]

It resolved itself or there was a firmware update, not sure.

It may miss about 1:20 times that our cars pass it.

[MVT]

1 out of 20 is still missing 5%!  Unacceptable to me.  Especially considering that there is always a missing time segment between the time a recording stops and it posts to the server and the camera starts recording again even though I have it set to record until motion stops with the max time frame of 5 minutes.

thanks for replying

[Signlguys]

I gave up and moved on. Bought a bunch of Ring Wireless Battery Powered Stick Up Cameras. So far they work better than the Blink,  SimpliSafe and Arlo Cameras I have tried. Their app works pretty good as well. I have expanded to 6 of their Stick Up Cameras, 2 Doorbell Cameras and 2 Chime Pro/Wi-Fi Extenders.

[K80Shooter]

The reason this thread has faded out is because it's like fighting a losing fight, it is what it is and there seems to be no solution.

[Retired_Member]

I've run into this issue now quite a few times - recordings intermittently failing to appear in the library. I assumed it was something on my side, a connection issue or similar, but I've come to realize I should be starting with the assumption that things are broken by design or lack thereof. Is Arlo Smart perhaps filtering and clipping recordings to save money on data storage? Really? Please tell me there's some setting I missed, the 'Enable Security System Mode' checkbox or similar? I bought this product because I have a problem with prowlers in the area surrounding my elderly parent's house, an area recently plagued by vandalism and anti-social behaviour. I am really not in the mood to learn I've spent so much money and precious time on a system that promises security in name only. Please tell me Arlo Smart never limits the quantity and duration of recordings from motion activated security cameras to knock 50 cents off the price of a monthly subscription. Please say it's not so. Please tell me this was fixed long ago, an appalling piece of belligerent incompetence that got several people fired, that all I need to do is restart the hub just one more time and I'll have a product that can be called a reliable security system without the slightest hint of dark sarcasm?

[StephenB]

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@Retired_Member wrote:
 Is Arlo Smart perhaps filtering and clipping recordings to save money on data storage? 

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No, Arlo Smart doesn't affect recordings at all.  It only filters notifications.

[Retired_Member]

I have a number of recordings of a spider spinning a web in front of one of my cameras.  The recordings appear on local storage but not in the cloud and I received no notifications.  The spider is inside activity zones.  I have other recordings of spiders which did appear in the cloud, one of which was detected as a person and for which I received a notification.  I'm not sure if the spiders themselves triggered the motion sensor - the motion sensor on this specific camera triggers regularly at night, but not during the day, and I suspect it's caused by bats flying in front of the camera.  I won't know that for certain until winter when the bats are hibernating.

There are other recordings which appear locally but not in the cloud, though I haven't spent time to do an analysis to figure out if there is something they have in common, yet.  The Arlo hub did not lose internet connectivity while the spider was busy - my broadband is pretty reliable and I receive a notification from Smartthings whenever my Smartthings hub loses it's internet connection, and the two hubs are connected to the same switch. I received no Smartthings notification indicating the connection went out that night.

If the spider was not filtered by Arlo Smart - any ideas on how this might have happened?

[StephenB]

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@Retired_Member wrote:

I have a number of recordings of a spider spinning a web in front of one of my cameras.  The recordings appear on local storage but not in the cloud and I received no notifications.  The spider is inside activity zones.  I have other recordings of spiders which did appear in the cloud, one of which was detected as a person and for which I received a notification. 

If the spider was not filtered by Arlo Smart - any ideas on how this might have happened?

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I think there are at least two possible scenarios

• The base->cloud connection might be dropping (which would appear to be a cloud issue, since your broadband is stable).
• The cloud might be mistakenly classifying the spider as out-of-zone.  One aspect there is that if the base->cloud connection has some loss, the cloud activity zone algorithm will struggle due to video corruption.

Of course it could also be a bug somewhere...

One thing you might try is disabling activity zones for a while, and see that makes a difference.

[Retired_Member]

Many thanks - I had not considered corruption between hub and cloud.  In this case, as there are a number of videos (the spider spent quite a bit of time making that web) I wouldn't have thought it was likely but I'll keep that in mind.

To your knowledge, does Arlo Smart apply any filtering to motion within activity zones?  If say a video with a moving plant, rain or insects is stored on local storage, does that automatically imply that the video will appear in the library?

I have one camera with no activity zones and it creates a lot of 'motion' videos in the library, apparently when when a specific plant within field of view moves in the wind.  I do not get that to the same extent with other cameras, the ones with activity zones, even though there are plenty of plants and other small movements within view.  Activity Zones exclude movement outside the zone, but do they also exclude tiny movements within the zone?  If so, does that ever go wrong and exclude video of people?

[StephenB]

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@Retired_Member wrote:

To your knowledge, does Arlo Smart apply any filtering to motion within activity zones?  If say a video with a moving plant, rain or insects is stored on local storage, does that automatically imply that the video will appear in the library?

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AFAIK, the only cloud feature that filters recordings is the cloud activity zone feature.  Arlo Smart only filters notifications, it doesn't filter recordings.

There have sometimes been bugs reported here with activity zones (mostly when out-of-zone motion is recorded anyway, but that is the easiest thing for users to detect).  So it would be good to figure out if the feature is misbehaving.

[Retired_Member]

Many thanks.  When I said 'Arlo Smart' I was referring to the cloud feature set as a whole.

I've started noting when I think a video of a person *should* be present in the library but is missing - instances where two cameras have a view of the same area, with cross-triggering in place so motion activating one camera also activates the other, but where a video of a person lands in the library from one camera but not the other.  When I have a significant number of these I'll go back through local storage for those instances and see what I find.

I have verified that there is a 'threshold' of motion inside an activity zone required for a video to appear in the library (which makes sense). I have one camera that is regularly triggered by (I think) bats flying close to the camera where there is plenty of small motion, insects flying around in front of the camera, but where no video appears in the library.  This is fine - I have no need of videos of insects, but if this same filtering of small motion occasionally causes a video of a person (perhaps wearing dark clothes against a dark background) to not show up in the library this would be a problem.  Personally I'd rather flip though a lot of insect videos tagged 'motion' checking them than miss a video of  a person.

[StephenB]

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@Retired_Member wrote:

 instances where two cameras have a view of the same area, with cross-triggering in place so motion activating one camera also activates the other, but where a video of a person lands in the library from one camera but not the other.  When I have a significant number of these I'll go back through local storage for those instances and see what I find.

Do you have activity zones set up for these cameras?

If camera 2 has an activity zone, then when camera 1 triggers it, the activity zone still applies.  If the cloud doesn't see motion inside camera 2's zone, then the recording will be suppressed.

Personally I don't think it should work that way, but it does.

[Retired_Member]

This is done - I noted where videos of people or vehicles should appear in the library but are missing.  I didn't go though all video in local storage, would take far too much time - just instances where I knew a video should be there but wasn't.

I found a number of possible issues where I couldn't be sure of the cause, but did confirm that activity zones can cause video of people to fail to appear in the cloud library.  From Sep 20th to Oct 20th I had 19 missing videos with people or vehicles in them where the video was of good duration and not corrupted.  Of those, most had one thing in common - the person (or vehicle) enters the frame between 6 and 10 seconds into the video.  This usually, but not always, occurs due to cross-triggering.  In short; cross-triggering works well for me when a person is approaching from one direction, activating a second camera early and giving me a good view of the person approaching.  If the person approaches from another direction the second camera is sometimes activated 7, 8, 9 seconds before the person enters the frame, depending on how fast they're moving.  (view blocked by a wall)  I also had videos where car headlights appeared to activate a camera 6 or 7 seconds before the car itself rolls into view.

I suspect the Activity Zone system checks the first 5 or 6 seconds of the video for motion inside the zone - if there is none, the video is discarded.  The reason it might do this makes sense - it suppresses recordings triggered by rain and similar where nothing much is moving.  It does cause a problem where cross-triggering is used, or if someone activates the camera a number of seconds before they step into good view of the camera (and into an activity zone).

Good people of Arlo - if I'm correct, if Activity Zones have a 'time limit' for motion, please add 5 seconds to this threshold.  If this is the cause, this would solve 90+% of my missing video problems.  I understand this might have big implications for computing resources required for processing video activity, so if it is not possible to add 5 seconds for all video processing, might it be possible to add 3 seconds for video from cameras with 'foresight' enabled and 5 seconds where a camera was activated via cross-triggering?

[Retired_Member]

I just tested this and confirmed it.  I'm not sure what the exact threshold time is as the camera I tested with has 'foresight' enabled, and I'm uncertain what effect the extra 3 seconds has.

This is the explanation, I think, for most or all of those people who say activity zones don't work for them or that Arlo cameras are very unreliable.  If you were to point a camera at a busy street for example then every passing car would trigger the camera.  If a person enters the activity zone a few seconds after the car passes the camera will keep rolling but the video produced by it will be dumped when it hits the cloud due to lack of activity in the first few seconds.

'Lets sell cars, but lets save ourselves a few bucks by putting a cardboard cut-out in place of a spare wheel'.

'Huzzah!!' cried the managers.  'Genius!! Only the people who get a puncture will notice!!'.

[Retired_Member]

I've submitted a support ticket with a bug report though I have extreme doubts that this issue is not already well understood by Arlo engineers.  It's too obvious to have gone overlooked this long.

Arlo - I'm invested in this system.  When you've had to use a hammer drill one-handed to drill holes into concrete while perched on a ladder 15 feet off the ground in order to install the wall mounts for cameras, you become a little 'attached' to making that camera system work as well as you expected when you purchased it.  Installing it is, after all, a mildly life-threatening activity.  You may not fully understand how many of your customers feel 'trapped' into paying their subscription, reluctant to admit to others how bad the system is.  'Oh, my Arlo security system?  It's awful, completely useless, but I had to climb ladders and drill holes to install it, and it's even more useless if I don't keep paying them.  Plus, I threw away the boxes which means Amazon won't allow me to return it, so...'

Solution 1:  Increase the threshold - analyze all video for motion inside the activity zones.  I imagine you'd need a lot more of those expensive servers to do this, otherwise you would have done it already.

Solution 2:  After the initial video processing, if no motion is detected inside the Activity Zones, check maybe 1 frame every 2 seconds from the remainder of each 'until motion stops' video clip for new motion inside the Zones.  If something appears inside the Zones, restart the normal video analysis at that moment in the clip to determine what entered the zone.  This should solve the problem, would make for lots more happy customers, and reduce the workload on your 1st level support staff considerably.  They must get pretty sick of telling people to move their cameras or make the Activy Zones bigger, knowing neither of those actions will fix the underlying problem.

Please, just fix it.  Stop embarrassing me.