Geofencing Not Working

[Aaron323]

For some time now our geofencing has not been working. Before when my wife and I both left the house with our phones our “away” mode would arm and everything worked fine. Then when one of us got home our “home” mode would arm. 

Now, the “away” mode stays disabled (unarmed) when we both leave. The cameras stay in “home” mode and the app shows “away” mode “disabled”. 

The kicker is when one of us gets back home we get a notification that “home” mode was activated!

it’s so confusing. I’ve tried all the troubleshooting things except for deleting accounts and starting over. 

In home mode everything  records the way we want. But geofencing is clearly not working. 

Any help would be great! 

[Adam_B]

Hello @Aaron323 - can you try something for me?  Can you go to Arm Away Settings and Arm Home Settings and "Select All" in both of those and let it run. 

[Aaron323]

How does this work with the reminders app? 

[StephenB]

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@Aaron323 wrote:

How does this work with the reminders app? 

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Reminders is a pre-installed Apple app, so not the same scenario.

[Aaron323]

Tried your suggestion and nothing armed or worked as far as geofencing goes. 

[0168bill]

No, it's happening when it's in a Custom Mode which has it's own 'Armed Mode' within it. 'Arm Away' as I understand it is not available within a Custom Mode?

[0168bill]

@Adam_B  Sorry but I'm getting confused by this.

My current mode is 'Custom Mode' which has geofencing within it and one of my screenshots shows that this 'Custom Mode' is active. Another screenshot shows the geofencing rules that are set up within that 'Custom Mode' whereby when 'Everyone Leaves' the mode is changed to 'Armed'.

I don't understand your statement that "you must have the mode set to Geofence first". How do you do this within a 'Custom Mode' where geofencing is already configured?

I show my 'Schedule' screenshot (which is currently active) for more clarity, which should be active until the geofence detects 'Everyone Leaves' and changes mode.

Am I missing something basic here?

I read the FAQ that was specific to geofence in Custom Mode https://www.arlo.com/en_gb/support/faq/000063539/how-to-set-up-a-geofence-when-using-arlo-custom-mod..., as different to geofence in Standard modes, have I misunderstood it?

[Adam_B]

Hello @0168bill  - I am looking at this screenshot specifically and this is showing me that your mode for your basestation is on schedule.  If you click here and open the menu and change it to "Geofence" - that will set your basestation mode to Geofence.

 

[Adam_B]

@Aaron323  hmm, we are going to need to dig deeper into this.  What will help us pinpoint this is if you can provide approx time (and your timezone) when you expected arrive or leave to trigger.  Please let us know what you expected to happen and what actually happened.

[0168bill]

Wow!

So basic, but so unclear in the documentation!!

Just for future reference, how could you tell that 'schedule' was selected and not 'geofence' from that screenshot?

The docs don't even mention that there is a basestation mode that needs to be set or how to access or view it, or not that I could find anyway.

Thanks very much for that, I'll find how well it works when I go out tomorrow.

[Adam_B]

@0168bill I can tell by the icon.  The clock icon means its a schedule and when its on geofence, there is a pin icon.

Let me know how it goes!

[Aaron323]

We are not using a time or schedule. We simply want geofencing to enable the different modes when based on when we arrive or leave our house. This used to work flawlessly until a couple months ago. We are in the pacific time zone. 

We want:

When everyone leaves the mode changes to Arm Away

When anyone arrives the mode changes to Arm Home 

Our set up is very basic I think. We only have two phones involved in our geofencing. 

[0168bill]

Aaaaaaah, thanks again. 

Something else that would be good to see in the docs.........

Will update after I've been out tomorrow, definitely time for bed now 😴.

[Adam_B]

@Aaron323 I understand.  By chance - did either of you change phones?

[Aaron323]

We have had the same phones for a year now. Although we changed the name of my wife’s phone in her settings. But geofencing wasn't working before that. 

[0168bill]

@Adam_B Just to update, when I exited geofencing worked as expected and again when I reentered it worked as expected .

Thanks again for your assistance and guidance.

Perhaps the faq I linked to in the thread above, regarding setting up geofencing in Custom Mode, could be updated to include your very important info.

[Adam_B]

Hello @Aaron323  - I did some analysis and it looks like your wife's phone is not reporting its location properly.  Her phone is always reporting that it is "home" which is why your arrive and leave are not triggering. 

There are a few things that you can check/try:

1. Please confirm her Location Permissions is set to "Always"
2. Please confirm that her Background App Refresh is enabled
3. Make sure her phone is not on Low Power Mode — iOS aggressively throttles background location services and network activity in Low Power Mode
4. Make sure she logs into the app every once in a while — Arlo needs her to log into her account on her phone so iOS can deliver location events
5. If none of this works - we should always try to the one thing that never fails.  Power down her phone and then turn it back on and then open the Arlo app on her phone.

[Aaron323]

I did all your suggestions on both our phones and still the same outcome. 

We left this morning. Away activated but when we came home it did not change to standby. 

We also noticed one of our cameras is not recording now in away mode.