Arlo|Smart Home Security|Wireless HD Security Cameras
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TomMcBride
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I have a new Pro 4 camera and it is detecting animals (deer) well. I get the notifications on my phone but I need a way to get those notifications to a Raspberry Pi so I can take action to chase them away. Mainly, I'm looking to frighten the deer by turning on my sprinkler system for 5 seconds. Any ideas would be most appreciated. I have a Hubitat device but there seems to be no support for Arlo on Hubitat.

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jguerdat
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You would either need to be able to use the Arlo app on the Pi (very unlikely) or perhaps use email notifications that could be filtered and monitored. Keep the recordings short so the emails come through quickly since they're not sent until the recording is done and uploaded.

TomMac
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you may want to check out the Pi board

 

https://escapologybb.com/receive-sms-raspberry-pi/

 

https://www.raspberrypi.com/

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Morse is faster than texting!
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TomMcBride
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Apparently, the only choices for finding out about a detection are: (1) push notifications which only apply to the app; (2) SMS messages which can only be sent to a phone number; and (3) email notes. Since a Raspberry Pi can't run the app and doesn't have a phone number, it seems email is the only choice. I appreciate the information about when email notifications are sent: i.e., after the video is completed and uploaded. Keeping the videos short is a good idea but I don't see where I can set that. Can you tell me how to do that?

StephenB
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@TomMcBride wrote:

. Keeping the videos short is a good idea but I don't see where I can set that. Can you tell me how to do that?


It's in the rule for the camera. https://kb.arlo.com/42/What-are-modes-and-rules-and-how-does-Arlo-use-them

TomMcBride
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Thanks for the info. I found the option and set it for 10 seconds. 

 

I created a simple program on my Raspberry Pi to read the email notes that the Arlo service sends when an animal is detected and extract the time the note was sent. I can use this to know when something (likely a deer) is in the back yard and take some action to frighten it away. This is certainly not an ideal solution because of the delays involved. Apparently the note is not sent until the video has been uploaded. I suspect that the actual analysis of the video to determine that an animal caused the motion detection is being done by the cloud service, not the camera itself. I understand the need for the 2FA security but it seems that more and more manufacturers are providing only an app interface to their products which, while useful, is really out of touch with the IOT world where people want to take various kinds of actions depending on their specific needs. 

 

There are other delays in getting email notifications since my program must repeatedly check for mail. Eventually Gmail will shut down the connection and the program must detect that and log back on and start again.

 

I considered IFTTT but it seems that the Arlo functions there have no ability to detect when an animal is present in the video and, even if that were provided, IFTTT has the same issues with notification to a program running in a Pi.

TomMcBride
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I've gotten my prototype program to work fairly well. I have Smart Notifications enabled for animals only and have requested both Push Notifications and Email Alerts when motion is detected. I am, however, getting Push Notifications and Email Alerts for people and for animals. I can change my program to ignore the ones for people but I don't understand why I'm getting those. Clearly, there is either something I don't understand or there is a bug.

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