Cameras recording activity outside Activity Zone

[CMWK]

My cameras are being triggered constantly by activity outside the defined Activity Zones. If I long hold on a notification on my iPhone such that the preview thumbnail appears, it will draw a green rectangle over a car on the other side of the screen from the zone.

i may be wrong but all seems to be ok when the camera is first connected after a factory reset and the zone is first defined but, when the battery dies and is replaced, it’s as though the zone is erased but deleting it and setting it up again doesn’t fix the problem.

Has anybody experienced similar behavior?

[jguerdat]

This is usually caused by that car (or moving leaves/branches/etc.) reflecting the sun's IR. SInce the sun moves over the seasons, what works at some times doesn't for others. Repositioning the camera to eliminate excess view and/or reducing motion sensitivity while still getting the coverage needed will help.

[CMWK]

Thank you. I can see how that makes sense. I’ve dropped the sensitivity from 50 to 25 to see if that helps.

Regarding the thumbnail in the iPhone notification which draws a green rectangle around the object responsible for the trigger - is it, based on your explanation, reasonable to assume this logic is separate from the IR detection logic because, if the two were the same, I don’t really understand why the object, which it knows is outside the detection zone, should trigger the device; I could understand it if it thought the object were within the detection zone due to reflection, refraction, etc.

Thanks again.

[StephenB]

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@CMWK wrote:

I don’t really understand why the object, which it knows is outside the detection zone, should trigger the device;

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1. The camera always triggers when the PIR sensor detects motion (or when the mic picks up sound if you use audio detection).
2. The video is then streamed to the Arlo Cloud, which determines if the motion is in-zone or out-of-zone.
3. If the Cloud decides that the motion is in-zone, the Cloud sends the notification and keeps the recording.  Otherwise, it ignores the event (no notification and it discards the recording).

One consequence of this approach is that activity zones do not affect battery life.

The puzzle here is not the triggering - it is why the Cloud has decided that the motion is in-zone.  Maybe look carefully at some of the unwanted recordings - looking for any artifacts, or slight motion (wind) in the scene.

Reducing the motion detection threshold will reduce notifications overall, but it will not affect the Cloud decision process in step 4, as the detection threshold only affects the PIR sensor.  You might want to test your reduced threshold using the motion detection test while walking around inside the zone - as you don't want to lower it too much.

If you haven't tried deleting the activity zones and re-recreating them, then I suggest doing that.

[CMWK]

Your description of the 1, 2, 3 steps is great - thank you.

Do you think there’s perhaps a step 2.5 where the camera would stop recording prematurely if the Arlo Cloud advises the trigger is outside the zone or possibly a 1.5 where the cloud tells the camera to record?  I’m wondering if 1.5 is the case because, often times, our recordings will [annoyingly] catch the end of some trigger like some dodgy-looking person walking past the camera where, ideally, they’d have been captured on the approach.  The other reason I presume 1.5 is because I think this activity zone anomaly is new because these camera’s batteries are now draining overnight where, until recently, they would last a week, ie: they were recording content far less regularly.

How does activity zone work in terms of sound activation?  My sound sensitivity is set at #1 so I don’t think that’s the issue.  I dropped the motion sensitivity down to 10 to see if that makes a difference but haven’t had a chance to do a walk-by or drive-by.

Again I appreciate your detailed response.

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

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@CMWK wrote:

How does activity zone work in terms of sound activation?

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The same way.  The activation results in the camera streaming to the Arlo Cloud, and the cloud determines whether there is motion in the zone.

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@CMWK wrote:

 My sound sensitivity is set at #1 so I don’t think that’s the issue.  

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Better just to turn off audio detection in the camera rule.

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@CMWK wrote:

Do you think there’s perhaps a step 2.5 where the camera would stop recording prematurely if the Arlo Cloud advises the trigger is outside the zone

 There could be some other steps - Arlo hasn't said much about the details.  I doubt that the cloud tells the camera to stop streaming.  But there could be some scenarios where the cloud truncates the recording.

Do you have the rule set to record until motion stops?  In that case, the PIR sensor determines when the camera stops streaming.  Similarly for sound - when the sound falls below the threshold, the camera stops streaming.  (There is some lag, it doesn't stop instantly).

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@CMWK wrote:

 I’m wondering if 1.5 is the case because, often times, our recordings will [annoyingly] catch the end of some trigger like some dodgy-looking person walking past the camera where, ideally, they’d have been captured on the approach.  

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This of course could also happen if the threshold is set too low.

The PIR sensor is most sensitive to side-to-side motion, and it is more sensistive at the bottom of the field of view than it is at the top.  So the camera positioning (relative to the person approaching the camera) is also a factor here.  And of course the distance.

[CMWK]

@StephenB 
I’m sorry for the delay replying. Thank you for the additional information.

i do indeed have the cameras set to record until the motion stops but, in almost every case, the recording is only 15 seconds because the trigger is a car passing in the periphery at 45mph.

Great point about the low threshold being reason for delayed captures. A game of balance 🤨.

Thanks again for the super helpful information.