Geofencing - this is really getting bad

[mudbug99]

Come on Arlo, you really need to put some effort into improving geofencing. Pretty much every time there is an app update, it breaks. Random other times, it breaks.  I just invested more money into new cameras due to your EOL on some I bought not all that long ago, and promised myself this is the last time. But now, the last 3 days we have left home, it didn't arm, and now someone stole something from our yard. Right where a camera is pointed, but it didn't work.

Everything is correct on our end. We've tried rebooting everything, adding and removing geofencing devices,all the suggestions. We can usually get it working that day with some mucking around, but then it messes up again.

We have contacted support, but the last experiences were bad. Remember back when the Arlo app included a map, showing the zone and location of devices? That was great, when Arlo support blamed our phones we could quickly turn it around and point out that their own software sees that our phones are out of the home zone. Didn't help, but made me feel better.  Well, Arlo fixed that inconvenience by simply removing the map! And now they can blame phones without the clear evidence showing their mistake, within their own App.  Great solution!

I have other geofencing apps that work fine, or at the very least with minimal issues. (disabling other geofencing apps doesn't help btw, your support already tried that one and its an absurd solution). The bar should be pretty high here, your customers use this system for personal security. The thing we had stolen wasn't worth much, I guess I should be thankful for that at least. It could have been worse.

So, what are you going to do Arlo? Keep ignoring the issue, or get it fixed? I'd like to know if there is any point to continuing with these cameras, or it would be better to just cut my losses and move on.

[DannyBearAgain]

Arlo customer support doesn’t activity monitor this forum, but there are a couple of arlo employees on here that manage users posts for compliance purposes. @JamesC & @ShayneS.

They are genuinely easy to approach if you wish to Private Message them to ask questions etc but naturally limited by what they can say and/or do like any employee.

Given that geofencing has always had problems especially with changes implemented by arlo there are a number of specific issues that they can improve upon.

The arlo mobile app will automatically logout the  arlo background process every 14days. When the session logs out the app will no longer allow geofencing location updates and will also stop the mobile from receiving any arlo generated push notifications. There is no indication when this happens until you start the app and login again which restarts the background session again. A workaround is to force logout the arlo app every 13days to refresh the session’s timeout counter. I use the mobile reminder app to facilitate when I need to go into the app and select settings/profile for the logout button (which incidentally pushes you a logout notification). Be aware that any granted users attached to geofencing will need to do same.

Another issue relates to the arlo app geofencing processing thread which is normally slow, maybe to reduce mobile processor usage but it gets ramped up when the mobile device is connected to external power. What this means is that the geofencing location update will not retry updating the arlo server if the update fails so it will wait until a fixed time later to try again.

Generally it can sometimes take up to an hour for this to occur. The workaround is to plug the mobile into a charger as you leave the zone and re-enter again. Same for any granted user mobiles if implemented.

If the geofencing mode selection itself fails to respond to location changes or its in/out status is out of whack, you need to re-sync the geofencing by selecting the app disarmed mode then selecting geofencing again to allow it to update all devices with the changes. You will also need to do same for any granted users attached. 

[DannyBearAgain]

I forgot to mention that when you do the app logout and log back in process mentioned you also need to also re-sync the geofencing as above to get it working with the arlo server again.