Geofencing Is Not Working Properly When I Return

[Mag1980]

I recently installed a 3 camera Arlo Pro setup. I am using geofencing and it seems to detect accurately when I leave but when I return, it doesnt seem to update my location. I have a Samsung Galaxy S8. If I quit the app or sometimes going into the settings of geofencing, change something, and save again, or will sometimes make it work.

Any ideas what is going on?

[jguerdat]

The app is using the location provided by the OS. Try different settings for your phone's location services.

[Mag1980]

Thank you for the reply. I'm not sure what you mean by different settings. I dont see any way to change location service settings on my Galaxy S8. I have seen many people have issues with geofencing. Is there a universal approach that works for all Android and iOS devices from Netgear?

[jguerdat]

There are 3 different settings for Android location services in the phone settings. Try each one to see what works best for you.

Each model/OS device may have different issues, not to mention the location of the cameras and how the phone's location is determined. No, there's no clear answer as to what works best for any particular person.

[Mag1980]

The three options you mentioned are not really three distinct options. Only one option is effective. The others are for power and data usage savings. I have been running High Accuracy for years and is the only one that really works.

I tried the others as tests earlier today and locating me was actually worse.

[jguerdat]

I was trying GF yesterday and found that eithe battery-saving or high accuracy worked fine although didn't necessarily pick me up immediately upon return (took a few minutes). I suspect that it's the phone sleeping that causes this even though I went through the battery optimizations to try to eliminate it.  My thought is that it's the location service itself that has to wake up and that can't be controlled.

[pc2k17]

Just to add....... what jguerdat said is correct, it's kinda a sleep thing. Android only updates it's location at specified intervals unless an app is activly polling the location service. An app polls the location service also at specified intervals when it's running in the background. Depending on when android last updated it's location and the time the app last polled the location service it could be several minutes before android and the app know where you are (unless you open an app that polls your location on launch). For example: if location services ping the towers and determines your location is 2 miles away from your house and the next time it asks for your location is in 3 minutes, but you already arrived home in 2 minutes..... you guessed it, it doesn't know your home because it didn't update your new location yet. Thus arlo doesn't know you're home yet.

When I tried geofencing on two different products it didn't work well on either, so it's not just Arlo. Geofencing that doesn't utilize a GPS sattelite is always going to be slow to determine your location.

This is why I stopped using geofencing long ago. My solution now, since I have SmartThings, is to use a SmartThings arrival sensor. This sensor connects to the smartthings base. It looks for the base every 1 minute. When I pull into my driveway, it knows in less than 1 minute that I'm home, it turns off my cameras, and changes the Arlo mode automatically using Arlo Pilot. When I leave, it takes 2 minutes to know I'm gone and change everything, because smarthtings makes you delay 1 minute when leaving to prevent false alarms. It works 100 times better than geofencing.