Geofencing fix (until Netgear fixes)

[Toledori]

Hello everyone. As the title says, I am having issues with my Geofencing. I have searched online every where. Many are having similar issues, most I have read are with Iphone, but below is my problem.

I have 2 Samsung S7 (mine and my wife). When We both leave the house, her phone will still show that is IN THE ZONE while mine OUT OF ZONE. Sometimes it will show her phone as UNAVAILABLE. What it wil cause is that it will keep the Geofencing under HOME MODE stuck there.

I have unistalled her app, reinstalled it, mine as well. With no solution to this problem

The same goes from when we leave separate times, due to our different work schedules. It will stay stuck at HOME MODE. Today, the problem even showed with my phone.

Due know GPS in our phones are always on.

How to fix this?

Thanks in advance

[RChobby]

Today is another day without effective geofencing at my house. Come on, Netgear! I spent an hour with you on second level tech support yesterday, I’m glad I saved all the boxes and purchased at Costco.
The issue is with the second iPhone, the Arlo software does not follow its location anymore. It worked two weeks ago, but something changed on Netgear’s side, evidently.

[RChobby]

I have the exact same issues, you are not alone.

[mjmeli]

You are not alone with this problem. The Arlo app without the last couple of weeks has stopped working with geofencing completely. I suspect it is one of the recent updates. As of now, geofencing does not work unless I open the app. At that point, it will detect the location as in or out of the zone (well, often with inaccuracy). But never tracks location in the background like it used to.

[Guinness835]

Ever since the last update on March 4th, my geofencing is terrible. It constantly fails to arm/disarm when leaving or home. As I write this both my wife and I are sitting in the house, yet the system is armed and the phones show unavailable in the geofencing. I have tried renaming our phones to remove apostrophes, delete and then re-add the phones to the list, change the radius, reset the system and pretty much everything else. This is very frustrating, especially when leaving the house and you don’t check to system until later too find it is unarmed. The geofencing worked great until very recently. I sure hope this gets fixed very soon as it was the primary reason I bought these cameras. Netgear, get a fix done ASAP or you risk losing customers to other systems.

[RChobby]

Until Netgear fixes geofencing issues there is a fix using the free applications “life360” and “ifttt”. I’ve tested it successfully with my two iPhones, it has worked 100% so far. Life360 monitors the locations of your family members. A stock ifttt “applet” runs on “last family member out”, arming arlo. The second iftt applet disarms arlo with “first family member in”. Works consistently. We should not have to do this sort of work around, but it is nice that it is available.

[SallyC]

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@RChobbywrote:
Until Netgear fixes geofencing issues there is a fix using the free applications “life360” and “ifttt”. I’ve tested it successfully with my two iPhones, it has worked 100% so far. Life360 monitors the locations of your family members. A stock ifttt “applet” runs on “last family member out”, arming arlo. The second iftt applet disarms arlo with “first family member in”. Works consistently. We should not have to do this sort of work around, but it is nice that it is available.

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@RChobby, thank you for posting this.  Those IFTTT applets say they're for iOS but, since I already had IFTTT on my Android Samsung S6, I turned on those applets.   I tested it out this morning and it worked fine!  Only wish I could pick which Mode it activated, but that's easy to work around.

Thanks!

[ubrkmifixm]

@RChobbywrote:
Until Netgear fixes geofencing issues there is a fix using the free applications “life360” and “ifttt”. I’ve tested it successfully with my two iPhones, it has worked 100% so far. Life360 monitors the locations of your family members. A stock ifttt “applet” runs on “last family member out”, arming arlo. The second iftt applet disarms arlo with “first family member in”. Works consistently. We should not have to do this sort of work around, but it is nice that it is available.

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Thank you!! Those apps are great! Geofencing was driving me nuts, alerting constantly even though I was standing in my own driveway! That, and thinking I was Home when I wasn't.

[Pgsullivan]

Yep I agree the last iOS update has definitely fudged up Geofencing! Mine only (and only ssometimes) correctly does the geo fencing when I open the app, even though it was in the background! I have had no problems with geofencing for over a year and since the last iOS update it’s just not worked properly!

[RChobby]

BTW if you get iftt, try the Button Widgets for Arm and Disarm, I have them on my Today screen, very handy.

[pren6]

We have been having the same problem! This worked when we initially set up the cameras. Now we get logged out or kicked off line several times a day. We have tried re-setting the unit as well as uninstalling/reinstalling the app. It is very frustrating!

[Camily]

Exact same problems here.  

[DaveWoj]

For the first time in a long time, my Geofencing finally kicked in about a mile from my house this morning.

Hopefully the issue was fixed.

[Toledori]

I will say, at least the new update keeps both of my Samsung S7 logged in. However, Geofencing still sucks badly. It will never change from Home Settings. It will always keep a phone IN ZONE, when we both are not or it will just say UNAVAILABLE, even when we are home or out. So, I literally have a very expesinve security system that rarely works. Those apps mentioned above, I dont like them. IFFT doesnt quite works.

[PGB15]

More than a dozen complaints about this an no response from Arlo?  What gives?  Why aren't you guys fixing this?  This system is nearly worthless without geofencing working.

[pc2k17]

Just my 2 cents....

In my experience, geofencing for any product just doesn't work very well right now. It's still a new technology and since the vast majority use cell tower triangulation to determine your location, which isn't a very accurate method to determine location, your going to have some issues. Satellite based location services are much more accurate. My car, which uses satellite to determine my location can tell me within 5 feet where I'm located. Apps on my phone that use cell towers, hundreds of yards.

I have several home automation systems in my home, two of them have geofencing capabilities, SmartThings and Arlo, and neither of them work very well at all. They think I'm home when I'm away, they think I'm away when I'm home, they take 10-20 minutes to realize I'm outside the geofence, or they simply never change status. I eventually stopped using geofencing on SmartThings and on Arlo. It's just far to inaccurate, at least for me. I have freinds who report the same thing with SmartThings (thye dont have arlo cameras).

So it's not just Arlo, I believe it's the tech and how it's implemented that is the main problem. Unless they switch to satellite location I'm not sure it will get better any time soon.

Since I have smartthings I'm able to use an open/close sensor to let Arlo know when I'm home and when I leave, as the garage door is closing, I have a smartthings widget on my phones home page that I just tap to arm the cameras and set smartthings into armed away mode. I'm sure you could do the same with IFTTT.

[Toledori]

I completely understand your statement. Geofencing still a new tech. Triangulations from cell towers still suck. But Why can't they implement a technology where the actualy Arlo Base can read if any or all cell phones attached to the system are within range or not?

The worst thing is that no one from this company response. They are selling a very expesince product with a great feature that does not work. Most of us, who have bought this product, where sold on this feature. My other issue, is that it was working fine the first couple of days when I got it. Now is not. So, something happened that made it stop working.

[pc2k17]

@Toledori

That's actually a good idea. Instead of using location services just link the phone and the base together. When they are in range of each other you're home, when not in range you're away. Not sure how they'd implement that, maybe thru bluetooth. Integrate a bluetooth connection into the base, maybe for the Pro 3. And maybe for people with the Pro or Pro 2 base create a standalone bluetooth unit that plugs into the usb slot in the base that you can pair your phone to. Bluetooth devices using bluetooth 4 can have a range up 200 feet, but that spec is device dependant. If the phones hardware can't handle the extended ranges it will at least be able to have a range of 32 feet, which would be more than enough range for most cases. Something like that would be a much better solution than using the location service.

I agree, I also wanted the geofencing feature and it was one of the reasons I went with Arlo, but it's a dud for now on Arlo and on SmartThings.