Geo-fencing Arlo Pro/Arlo - second use problem..

[BillMcI]

Got Arlo Pro Base unit with 2 Pro cameras and 2 Arlo cameras a week ago. I'm not too tech savvy, I'm over 70, but got it set up and working without too much difficulty. I set it up initially with one enabled device, my iPhone 5, and tested it. Everything worked fine including the geo-fencing. Having got all that to work, I then added my wife's iPhone, also a 5, but didn't give her any rights because she knows less about it than I do!

Everything other than geo-fencing worked and even then the problem with geo-fencing is only partial but very annoying. Location services work fine on both phones. In geo-fencing mode, when my phone is out and my wife's phone is in, my phone is shown as "out of zone", my wife's as "In zone" BUT the status is ARMED and I get a load of alerts and have to manually disarm it. However, when my wife's phone is out and my phone is in, geo-fencing works fine - my phone "in zone", wife's phone "out of zone" and system "disarmed". On coming home, both shown as "In zone". I've tried refreshing with no success. Can anyone help, please?

Is it possibly to do with how I set up her phone? I simply enabled it and gave her no rights and her profile has my email address. Of course, I then got logged out if she logged in! In part, that was because when I tried to set up her email address, an error message said it was in use. It's fairly unique so I'm surprised. It's never happened before with any other site. Sorry it's a bit long but thanks anyway. BTW my firmware etc is all up to date.

[shen-shen]

I have exact the same problem, geo-fencing partially working

[BillMcI]

This seems to be an on-going problem. There have been many messages about it over the last 18 months or so. For at least part of that time geo-fencing was being reported by some as in Beta mode. Refreshing devices or deleting/restoring seems to work for some.....but not for me. In any case you would expect a quality product to work as it was intended without all this hassle. It's not too difficult a concept to understand. 2 devices equals 4 geo-fencing options. Both In Zone, both Out of Zone, Primary Device In and Add on Device out, Primary device Out and Add on device In. The first 3 work for me but not the last, even though the system correctly knows which Zone both devices are in. We can send spacecraft billions of miles into space, how difficult is it to get geo-fencing to work for two devices as intended?

[shen-shen]

Hi Bill,

Thank you very much for sharing your experience!  My case is same as yours.  Arlo does not work when the primary device is out of the zone and added on device is in the zone.  I also noticed that there are many messages in this community complaining the same geo-fencing problem. It seemed that there is no conclusive solution.  I am not sure how Netgear thinks about for the not-cheap devices like Arlo Pro.  Too bad!  We may have to wait Netgear' new firmware to fix this.    

[JessicaP]

Hi @BillMcI and @shen-shen,

What devices are you using for geofencing? Have you tried disabling all devices on "Enabled Devices" through Geofencing, save, and re-enabling the devices back on?

[shen-shen]

Hi Jessica,

Thank you for the suggestion!  I tried it. It did not work for me. Arlo seemed only count the primary device in geo-fencing mode. When the primary device is out of the zone, It sets to armed regarless if sendary device is the zone or not. So far I have tried sevveral things people suggested in this community. None of them worked for me.

[shen-shen]

Hi Jessica,

I forgot telling you that I have Arlo Pro2. 

Regards,

Shen

[JessicaP]

What is the phone device is the secondary device? And when the primary device is actually out of zone, have you tried checking on "Enabled Devices" and see if the secondary device is in zone (when it is actually in zone)? 

[shen-shen]

Both devices are iphones.  The status on "Enabled Devices" of the second phone shows "unavailable" most of time on the primary phone.  This might cause the problem that the status of second phone is not reported/detected correctly. Sometime I had to log in and quit out the Arlo app on the primary phone to get the status of the second phone refreshed.  I did few tests and made sure the status of the second phone was in zone while the first phone was out of zone.  The tests did not work.  I did not do anything special on both of phones.  I just set location service Always on both phones.   

[JessicaP]

And to confirm one more thing, do you have Background App Refresh turned on for Arlo? You can check this by going to your iPhone Settings > General > Background App Refresh.

[shen-shen]

I checked. Background App Refresh is enabled on both phones.

[BillMcI]

Hi Jessica

Both my enabled devices are iPhone 5s. I had disabled and re-enabled both devices and followed the relevant How to .....for multiple devices. That didn't do it. But I have some good news. I increased the geo-fence radius late yesterday and geo-fencing is working on all variations, so far! The combination that wouldn't work for me was Main Device Out of Zone, add-on device In Zone. That is working although on a couple of occasions, it's had the add-on device briefly in the wrong zone but the base station in the right mode.  

[JessicaP]

Hi @shen-shen,

Let me create a case for you so our support team can look into this further. I'll send you a private message to gather more information from you.

Hi @BillMcl,

Glad to hear that you made it work somehow. If you are still seeing any problems, feel free to let me know.