Arlo Pro no longer detecting animals at night

[Cmarg]

These worked great for almost 3 years. Now I’ve noticed that they don’t detect our outdoor cats at night which is the main reason we got the cameras. I’ve reset a few times. Reset the base station, etc. Sensitivity is 100. We used to have to lower to 80 but now 100 doesn’t even work. I’ve read a lot of people having similar issues after a few years. Any advice?

[Dannybear]

Where in the app are you adjusting the motion sensitivity? In the camera rules or the motion test utility?

Have you tried cleaning the camera front face to remove any grime?

If you’re using smart notifications, do you get recordings of the animals that trigger the camera?

[Cmarg]

They’re both set to 100. I’ll try cleaning the face again. What are smart notifications? In the past I would just check the library the next morning to look for recordings. I turn notifications off so my phone doesn’t blow up all night. I’m now not seeing anything in the library. We got the cameras to make sure the raccoons aren’t stealing our outdoor cat food. Thanks.

[Dannybear · Accepted solution]

Smart notifications are a feature that arlo provides with a subscription. When the camera is triggered the recording that is sent to the cloud server gets object recognition to selectively notifies you of what object was recorded.

Since you don’t have the feature then ignore.

As you don’t have recordings at all then the following should be looked at.

The camera is triggered when the PIR sensor located below the camera lens on the front face detects a change of infrared heat and could be faulty but unlikely if it has occurred on all cameras.
You can test this using the motion detection utility in the camera settings menu to prove that the sensor is working.

If you’re not getting recordings it points to the system firmware so a reset of the cameras and base station would be a good place to start.

There have been recent reports of cameras not triggering during the night time periods. Some have resolved the issue with toggling the arm/disarm mode.

[Cmarg]

Thanks for the info! I did a hard reset and install of the base stations and all cameras. It’s now working and recording our cats with night vision.