Delay between camera activation and notification. 4-5 second record delay and notifications delay.

[Coolers]

Was an excited purchaser and happy user originally. Recommended to several neighbors who are now Arlo owners. However, I (actually all 3 of us) have noticed a significant downgrade in performance. There is now a large enough delay between event trigger and actual camera recording, that these are almost useless for security purposes. Where I would frequent see vehicle turning around in front of my house, I now only hear the sound of the vehicle off camera - driving away. Instead of seeing someone walking up my sidewalk/porch, I’m seeing the top of their head as they are already at the door. My estimation is all my cameras now operate with a 4 to 5 second record delay. Additionally, notification alert time has slowed down by 20 - 25 seconds. We sadly laugh now, because we are in our garage and door closed before either of our phones alert of our activation. Total time is closer to 45 seconds between trigger and notification. Originally it was 5 - 10 seconds!!! I no longer recommend your product and if it isn’t fixed soon, will be seeking a different product - to the loss of over $850 invested. I’ve tried all the fixes. Rebooting & updating system/routers/reconnect cameras/ensure clean, etc. No other parameters have changed in my home and network. Just a degrading of the performance of your cameras and App. I loved the simplicity and battery life. Please fix the functionality!!

[JessicaP]

Hi Coolers,

If you're experiencing any delays between the motion detection and notification, try reading this article to see if this helps: How do I optimize motion detection for my Arlo camera?

If you're still having problems,  contact the Support Team to further investigate this issue. You will find several options for contacting support in the provided link.

[shoustonnz]

Jessica P. These tips Do not make any difference. People are saying it was good. Now it's not. The only thing changing is firmware, and app updates.
Cut and paste answers are not helping.

[Bellaloo]

Sadly, you are not alone. I loved them so much, I now own 4, all bought one at a time. Buyers remorse much? Definitely. And the "tips" are time wasting and frustrating. I even had a camera replaced with one that's worse.

[Mobis]

I thought it was just me too. I have tried every trick in the book, something has changed and its been pi$$ing me off big time!
There is such a delay, now you can run up to the camera and steal it and not get picked up, cars go past and all you hear is the noise of the car in the distance. Once upon a time the cams would catch the cars pretty fast and was very impressed, but now they are slow as F..K
I had been recommending the cameras to a fairly switched on person, and now, I'm so glad he did not get them. My motion detection is at 100% and still slow as.
Arlo please investigate what happened, has there been an update that's done this? Can we get a firmware roll back so we can check to see what one has corrupted them, as these, as they are, are useless. Believe this or not, I thought the street speed had changed and thought that was the reason the cameras were slow lol... NOT BLOODY HAPPY please fix this now!

[shoustonnz]

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@Mobis wrote:

There is such a delay, now you can run up to the camera and steal it and not get picked up, 

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If someone did pinch your camera, and it went out of range, or they took the battery out. Would the record complete, and be saved to the cloud??

[Bellaloo]

Mobis, you are my hero. Your words convey what is in my heart perfectly. Why didn't we get a choice when the parents split up? Thinking Netgear would have been the smarter choice, if we had one. Feeling betrayed right now.

[jfcoll]

Agree with all the above. This product was good. Now it's not. Love affair is over. 

[jfcoll]

Ha! This is faster than my camera. 

Wow, you've made your first reply, Congratulations!

[SMLBound]

Same exact issue. I have four cameras, all worked perfectly until one of the recent revisions. It’s approx 4.5 second delay before the camera begins to record. The system worked flawlessly for at least 2 years. All the friends I recommends the system to are experiencing the SAME issue. This isn’t a settings issue on the user end -  it’s an app or firmware issue and needs to be fixed immediately,

[Mobis]

Today I took down the cams, removed the batteries, removed them from the account, reset the base station, added the cams back in, still no joy, lots of videos and nothing moving, I hear the cars that have gone past, but no video of the cars doing the limit, (50kmph) If the cars are going very slow they get picked up. Under mode section, the
cams are set at 90% detection, Under devices utilities, motion sensor is at 100% (if that makes any difference)
These cams used to be pretty sensitive and would record every car. I used to make comments to my wife I thought this street was a quiet one, never noticed the traffic until I was recording heaps of cars lol, I thought it was a main highway after that.

[StephenB]

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@Mobis wrote:
 Under devices utilities, motion sensor is at 100% (if that makes any difference)

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It doesn't - that is only a starting threshold for testing with the motion detection test.  The operational settings are in the camera rule(s).

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@Mobis wrote:
These cams used to be pretty sensitive and would record every car. I used to make comments to my wife I thought this street was a quiet one, never noticed the traffic until I was recording heaps of cars lol, I thought it was a main highway after that.

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Do you actually want to see cars going by at 50 kmph?

It's possible that the firmware updates have retuned the motion detection (slowing it down a bit).  Though if you haven't cleaned the front of the cameras, you might want to try that (possibly some dirt is blocking the PIR sensors).  Do the cameras have skins?  They can also interfere with motion detection.

[Mobis]

StephenB
We are saying that we all have noticed a slowdown on the cams picking up activity. Bit useless if we have a lot of empty videos, and yes if a cam pick up a video, I want to see what it captures.
Since you're in the know, as a guru, the cams, how much memory do they have to store video, I guess it's a buffer of some sort before it uploads the clip, do you have any idea the transfer rate, just curious to know.

[Mobis]

And yes I have the skins, I'll remove them and see if that makes a difference.
Stephen, do you have instructions on how to reset the system? Is it possible to reset a camera to old firmware?

[Bellaloo]

That would be awesome if we could go back to a previous firmware. I haven't been able to find that option.

[mamarcac]

@StephenB Nope, sorry -- I really wish people would stop trying to deflect Arlo's firmware issues onto the users. Read the posts:

Nothing has changed on our end, but the cameras now perform poorly.

The singular variable in all of our experiences, is the Arlo firmware, which starting in May 2019 has impaired our systems substantially.

[StephenB]

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@Mobis wrote:
 how much memory do they have to store video, I guess it's a buffer of some sort before it uploads the clip, do you have any idea the transfer rate, just curious to know.

...

And yes I have the skins, I'll remove them and see if that makes a difference.

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Some cameras do have a three second lookback feature (pro 2, pro 3, ultra).  But that can only be used if the camera is AC powered.  In that case, the camera is always on.

But if the camera isn't AC powered (or doesn't have the lookback feature), then the camera needs to be "woken up" when motion detection is triggered, so you can't see any video before that point.  It sounds like your cameras are taking longer to wake up than they used to.  

The skins can interfere with detection, so I think the next step is to see what happens w/o them.

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@Mobis wrote:
Stephen, do you have instructions on how to reset the system? Is it possible to reset a camera to old firmware?

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Your base station should have a reset button.  Some cameras will reset if you hold down the sync button for a while, but the best you can do with some others is to pull the batteries for a couple of seconds.  Probably you should remove the base and cameras from your account before you try to reset.

You can't roll back the firmware - Arlo doesn't provide any tools for that. 

[Snowball16]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one.   I will get a push alert then it could be at least one minute before I'll be able to see the recording in the library.   And lately I'm getting a double push notification with a very long delay before I get a recording.  (And yes, I've tried the troubleshooting remedies with no luck.  It  sure seems to be a firmware issue right?)

Has anybody looked into Blink?  I hear very good things about it plus two year battery life.  My coworker has that system and it's immediate and video is very crisp. I'm afraid the way Arlo exists today renders it useless.

[Mobis]

Well not much happening with Arlo, we now have this problem, and the flash issue, doesn't sound like much is going on at homebase 😞  
Friends that have the pro and pro 2 arlos are both experiencing same issues, all of the above. I have taken the skin off one camera and gave the camera front a good clean again, but I doubt it will make a difference. We just have to wait till the other arlo pro and pro 2 users start to notice the slow change and start posting on the website.

[Chess01]

Same problem here. The trigger event used to be the thumbnail for the beginning of the video. Now it takes more than a few seconds for it to show anything. I can turn into my driveway and pull into my carport and the video will show nothing. It might have the sound of my car, but that's it.

[Mobis]

Does anyone remember when Apple was slowing down their phones....

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/29/apple-apologises-for-slowing-older-iphones-batter...

[Bellaloo]

Hi Snowball, I have Blink also. It's good for alerts. You will know right away and have immediate viewing access. It is hit or miss on whether it picks up to begin with though. More hit than miss. Not like present day Arlo, missed what you wanted but got every mosquito within a half acre. Ugh. It's better than my Ring but has a ways to go to being perfect. Still, at a quarter of the price of Arlo, it's a great deal. The batteries only last a few months, not a couple years. But, a few months of heavy usage is a plus. They are difficult to mount as opposed to the Arlo. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

[SMLBound]

YES, I’m getting the double push notifications too and it’s driving me crazy!! Two instant notifications for each relayed recording, that captures nothing... how useful.

[Mobis]

I think the last time I had the double push I had to do this (Android Version 9 (Pie)) Samsung S9) 
1) Settings.
2) Apps.
3) Arlo.
4) Force stop the app.
5) Storage.
6) Clear Data.
7) Clear Cache.
8 ) Uninstall Arlo.
9) Play store and download new Arlo app.
10) Log in
11) Phone settings (not Arlos settings)
12) Notifications - Tap Arlo
13) Notifications - Vibrate on/off - Blink Light on/off - Notification Style Sound/Silent/Silent and minimised

[mamarcac]

It's not the skins - I've had my Pros for almost 2 years with skins on them. I set recording fixed to 30 second clips, and before May 2019 I always got 30 second clips. Since then, I get 25, 27 and29 second clips.

The lag was introduced by Arlo firmware with no changes on the users' end.