Arlo Pro - geolocation fails to detect location?

[theromit]

I have an Arlo Pro and I have two cameras set up and the setup itself works well. 

My wife and I have iPhone 6s and iPhone 7+ and I have set up the Arlo to detect location based on both the devices. That way, if either of us is at home, it should detect as "Home" and if both of us are away, then it should detect as "Away". 

Since the past few weeks I have noticed that even if I am away, Arlo detects that my phone is "in zone". A few times when it happened, I was able to open the app and force it to detect the correct location to correct the problem. But 3 days ago I noticed that no matter what I tried, I was not able to force Arlo app to detect my phone's correct location. Apple Maps, Google Maps, etc. were able to detect my location fine, and I did not make any changes to privacy settings to stop Arlo app from seeing my location. In fact, the problem resolved by itself later that day when I got home. 

I would really like the Arlo team to do more testing on these kind of anomalies because false negatives will make it essentially useless to have motion-detection-based security cameras. 😞

[JamesC]

theromit,

Consider refreshing your enabled devices within Geofencing settings. Disable all listed devices, save and then enable the devices again.

Log in to your Arlo Account (the primary) and navigate to Mode > select your Arlo system > edit Geofencing > click "Enabled devices". Toggle all of the listed devices off and save. After you have finished saving, navigate back to "Enabled devices" and toggle all desired devices back on and save.

JamesC

[theromit]

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JamesC wrote:

theromit,

Consider refreshing your enabled devices within Geofencing settings. Disable all listed devices, save and then enable the devices again.

Log in to your Arlo Account (the primary) and navigate to Mode > select your Arlo system > edit Geofencing > click "Enabled devices". Toggle all of the listed devices off and save. After you have finished saving, navigate back to "Enabled devices" and toggle all desired devices back on and save.

JamesC

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Are you seriously suggesting that I should do this every time one of us leaves the house or enter the house? The issue I am facing is a) intermittent and b) happens with either device. 

I think it is unreasonable to expect us to react to a false negative instead of fixing the issue 😞 

Remember, I only know this is an issue because every now and then I stop getting motion detection alerts when I know that my wife and I are not at home and kids have come back from school. So between the time we left and the kids came back home, there could have been some burglary and we would never have known, nor have any video to know who entered the house. This is a serious enough of a bug that I am considering selling my Arlo and getting a competing product. 

[soyee7]

I'm running into a very similar issue with the Geo location feature. When I leave my home and my phone switches from wifi to 4G I get a message from Arlo saying that Geo location will not work without an internet connection and that it will resume working when an internet connection is found again. Unfortunately it does not detect my location once I regain my internet connection and I have to manually open the app to make it detect where I am. Please fix this issue Arlo team.

[slhenry415]

Im having same problem. Is there anyway the arlo system could see your phones on the same wifi network to activate and deactivate geofencing....that seems that it could be more accurate way to turn off and on... just a thought arlo team...

[nelson4183]

Same problem here.  Not a single response from Arlo on this?  One of these days I'm going to get home to find out I was robbed and not a single notification from Arlo.  

[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.