Camera Don't Work Consistently

[JasonKing]

Help! I have two Pro 4 camera on opposite corners of my house facing my front yard, and a wired doorbell. Between them they have good overlap of coverage. They are always Armed, and set to record on all three cameras if any of them detects motion. They are so inconsistent of when they actually record anything to be basically worthless. I watch Amazon and UPS walk up my driveway delivering to my door and none of the cameras will detect more often than not. Even if one of them detects motion, the other two camera rarely will record anything like they should. The "spotlight" on the Pro 4's will light up when I walk out of the house (day or night, doesn't seem to matter), so it seems they are detecting me, but nothing gets recorded half the time.

Has anyone been able to make Arlo cameras work together? I'm seriously considering cancelling and ripping them off my house at this point.

[StephenB]

I've seen another post saying that cross-triggering isn't working on all systems at the moment.  I'm tagging the mods ( @JamesC and @ShayneS ), in hopes they will provide more information on that.

---

@JasonKing wrote:

Even if one of them detects motion, the other two camera rarely will record anything like they should.

---

Are you using activity zones?

One annoyance with cross-triggering is that any activity zones on the triggered cameras still apply.  So if motion is out-of-zone on the cameras that didn't detect motion, then the notification and recording is suppressed.

Also, are the cameras connected via home wifi, or are they connected via a base?

[JasonKing]

The cameras are wifi only, I don't own the base. Are you suggesting that activity zones are the reason that none of the cameras record anything, or only why the other cameras wouldn't record? 

[StephenB]

---

@JasonKing wrote:

Are you suggesting that activity zones are the reason that none of the cameras record anything, or only why the other cameras wouldn't record? 

---

It is a possibility.  So you might try removing the zones, and see if they behave differently.

If you have Camera A triggering, and Cameras B and C are recording, then if the cloud sees no motion in the activty zones of B and C then recordings will be supressed.

[JasonKing]

Predictably, removing the activity zones does result in the camera recording. Unfortunately they now alert me every time any one drives or walks past my house - so every 30 seconds or so. What is the point of the system if you can only make it work by removing the activity zones? I've re-added the activity zones but removed the linkage. Hopefully the cameras will actually record when their supposed to now?

[StephenB]

---

@JasonKing wrote:

Predictably, removing the activity zones does result in the camera recording. Unfortunately they now alert me every time any one drives or walks past my house - so every 30 seconds or so. What is the point of the system if you can only make it work by removing the activity zones? I've re-added the activity zones but removed the linkage. Hopefully the cameras will actually record when their supposed to now?

---

I'd leave things as they are for a day or two, and verify the cameras are recording as expected.

But if the cameras are triggering w/o activity zones every 30 seconds, then you will have a very short battery life.  Activity zones are processed in the Arlo Cloud so they don't reduce power drain.

When/if you add back the linkage to a camera make sure you test it while you are in the activity zone of both cameras.