Activity Zones and Motion Detection not working as mentioned - Pro 4 XL VMS4352P from Costco

[coolcatt]

I have one camera in the driveway and one on the Frontdoor. The front door camera picks up vehicles passing on the subdivision street (more than 25 mtrs away from the camera) from the top left corner of the camera even though it is outside the activity zone and motion sensing is set at 50% (I have turned off vehicle detection)

The camera in the driveway does not pick up the vehicles even though they are pointed at the road and do not detect vehicles till they are midway up the driveway (vehicle detection is turned on)

Seems like activity zones are being ignored and so is the vehicle detection option.

I am in the 90 day trial period.

Has anyone experienced similar issues and any resolutions available? Customer service is not being helpful at all. They cannot even seem to be able to convert their own videos for troubleshooting (I had to convert them and send it to them for viewing).

BTW: I have the cameras as wireless connection with trial subscription.

Any help you can provide would be appreciated else this goes back to Costco.

[dcfox1]

You can try deleting the front cam Activity Zone and create a new on, The borders are not exact. Vehicles usually do get picked up farther then 25 feet.  For Smart Notification you will still get the recording just not the Notification, are you getting both? But if outside the Zone you should get neither. 

[coolcatt]

Thanks for the quick response, but I have tried the following with no success:

1. Deleted and recreated the activity zones multiple times and changed the dimensions of the zones to be farther away from the road for the front door camera (sensitivity is at 50%)

2. Does not explain why the motion is not detected within the activity zone on my driveway camera till such time the person / object is well half way within the activity zone (sensitivity is set at 100%). And yes I have deleted and recreated the activity zones multiple times on this camera also

3. Vehicle detection is turned off on the front door camera and turned on for the driveway camera and I also have rebooted both the cameras multiple times

4. I get not only the recording but also the notifications for both.

5. My firmware is up to date.

[dcfox1]

Have you turned Vehicles off and back on in Smart settings? Not sure why your zones and smart notifications are not working on door cam. On the driveway the PIR sensors pick up motion better across the fov rather then head on. You can post pics here of your cams view and zones to help here. 

Arlo Camera Placement Tips

[jguerdat]

Post a screenshot of the camera view for suggestions.

[coolcatt]

see attached pdf file for details

[jguerdat]

1) the first image shows a car backing out of the garage. The nature of the wireless cameras is that there's a 2-3 second delay between motion detection, waking the camera and establishing a connection to the server and then recording. Using AC power gets you the 3 second lookback to minimize this (the camera buffers). Also, the angle and distances may preclude the "out of zone" recording seen in the front door camera. Hard to say.

2) It's been suggested that reflections from objects outside of the zone may be strong enough to cause a detection/recording. That could be the IR from the passing car bouncing off the car in the driveway. Reducing the zone and/or motion sensitivity may help.

[coolcatt]

1. Actually the car is not backing out but being driven into the garage. The motion sensor does not activate till the vehicle or even people are halfway up the driveway. Unfortunately there is no way for me to upload the actual video else you will see that. The anomaly in motion detection between the front door camera (more sensitive despite being set to only 50%) vs the driveway that does not pick up motion within the activity zone is perplexing. And Arlo has no videos on these types of issues one may face on how to setup the camera angle or activity zones etc. I cannot find any tutorial videos at all.

2. The motion get detected even when that vehicle is not in the driveway and also the motion detection sensitivity has been set to 50%.

So not sure what my solution options are here.  Maybe do a complete reset (factory reset) and re-install the cameras? I will try that next over the weekend.

[StephenB]

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@coolcatt wrote:

1. Actually the car is not backing out but being driven into the garage. The motion sensor does not activate till the vehicle or even people are halfway up the driveway.

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The Pro 4 camera is more sensitive to motion at the bottom of the field of view than the top. One thing you could try is to invert the camera (and use the invert video setting in the app to compensate).

[coolcatt]

Interesting so not sure why this works differently on different cameras, but will try this out today (I have changed the setting already). Just is weird to see the frame upside down now.

[StephenB]

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@coolcatt wrote:

Interesting so not sure why this works differently on different cameras, but will try this out today (I have changed the setting already). Just is weird to see the frame upside down now.

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Note you do need to physically invert the camera, to change the position of the passive infrared (PIR) detectors.

[coolcatt]

Yes I understand, its a setting and I changed the "Rotate Image 180 degrees" and it's just weird to see the inverted image on my system. But will see if this fixes the issue and if it does will physically move the camera at some point and reset the rotation so I can see the image properly.

More to come on my findings. Thanks for the suggestion.

[StephenB]

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@coolcatt wrote:

But will see if this fixes the issue

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It won't.  Motion detection is done by the PIR sensors, and is not based on the image captured by the camera.

You need to physically invert the camera to make it more sensitive to motion at the top of the field of view.  The setting just lets you see the image rightside up after you've done that.

[coolcatt]

ok Got it Stephen, will try to adjust the camera later during the week and see if that solves the issue. Will update this forum