Constant Notification Interruption Yet Not There When Needed - Very Dissatisfied

[CentralAlley]

Right now my Arlo camera only works as a decoy deterrent and was/is a waste of money. I'm not happy. Here's why:

I own the Arlo Essential Wire-Free Video Doorbell and Arlo Pro 4 Wireless Security Camera , powered by an Arlo solar panel. My city paid for all three (doorbell, camera, solar panel) because I signed up for the ongoing monthly subscription and have agreed to share footage with the police. A condition of the city refund is to pay for the subscription for three years. Good deal, except...

I also downloaded the app. I tried configuring the zones because I was getting 200+ notifications a day, 99.99% of them ordinary city life (traffic, birds, people on the sidewalk and in the alley). The zones were still too sensitive so I set the app to geofencing so I'd only get notifications when away from my house. (I work from home.) This was still SUPER ANNOYING - because now I was getting 200+ notifications when I'm out and about and this drains my phone battery and doesn't give value.

So: out of pure frustration I deleted the app, figuring that the cloud recording (i.e., my monthly subscription) was still going on and I could access it when necessary from the web. CUT TO:

LAST NIGHT -- someone broke into our neighbor's cars. My husband happened to interrupt them as they came onto our property from the alley; he saw them flee. WHAT WASN'T SEEN - ANY OF THIS ON THE CAMERA!!! The camera DID NOT carry on recording to the cloud as expected. It hadn't recorded since I stopped using the awful app! So now, at a moment I could've provided information and helped my neighbors THE CAMERA IS USELESS. 

I am extremely disappointed with this purchase. I'm also pissed on behalf of my city's taxpayers who paid for it! I set up the app again on my phone and in the time it's taken me to write this on a sleepy Sunday morning I've had 42 notifications. 

I would like to know if there is a setting to keep the cameras recording to the cloud, because I'm done with this useless app. I'm resigned to keeping the camera only as a decoy, and warning others not to use Arlo.

[jguerdat]

There's a learning curve for many, especially in an urban environment, to eliminate false triggers while still getting what you need. There's 2 things you can check - camera positioning as well as motion sensitivity.

Positioning is important to get rid of 200+ false triggers. Since the cameras only detect people to ~25 feet (it's a PIR (passive IR) sensor, which is the same as most other outdoor motion-detection items like lights, there's little sense in pointing the camera in a way that includes the sky, street and likely many sidewalks except leading to the house. Reposition the cameras to capture only the portion of yard/sidewalk/driveway that is within the 25 feet for best operation. That will immediately remove the recordings of cars going by, etc.  Also, note that best detection for any PIR detector is side-to-side, not directly at the camera so use that to help choose the camera location/positioning.

https://kb.arlo.com/37/Arlo-Camera-Placement-Tips

The second thing is to set the motion sensitivity in your modes and rules to capture what you need without getting false triggers. This will also help reduce the false triggers of cars reflecting the sun's strong IR as well as from moving leaves and branches. Additionally, while you're modifying that setting if you're getting videos noted as audio detection, you may want to turn off the audio detection in your modes and rules. Audio detection works best indoors and/or in quiet neighborhoods (I have trains in my backyard so audio detection is useless).

https://kb.arlo.com/42/What-are-modes-and-rules-and-how-does-Arlo-use-them

https://kb.arlo.com/1015583/How-do-I-optimize-motion-detection-for-my-Arlo-camera