Geofencing broken with iOS 13. Need to open app and it figures out my location changed.

[markjericho]

After updating to iOS 13, my geofencing no longer works. Shocking. Geofencing is the most unstable feature in this product. I find I need to open the app and then it figures out my locations has changed. Come on Arlo, does anyone test this stuff there?!?!

[85BearsFan]

My wife saw the "internet connection lost" regularly until she updated to 13.2.2.  I don't recall seeing the message, but I'm in the beta program and have been running the 13.3 beta.  What's been most frustrating is that all three of us (my wife with her iPhone 7 Plus, my younger son with his iPhone X, and me with my iPhone XS Max) have been forced to leaving the Arlo app open in the background (not force quit) and need to make sure the app is logged in.  It seems like the app periodically will log out, and when it does log out, geofencing doesn't work.  I've had Nest Cams for years, and never once had a geofencing issue with them.  I've had Arlo for barely six months and for at least 1/2 that time geofencing hasn't work properly.

[Dr_Henning]

On my IPhone i dont get the "internet connection lost" anymore, and i also updated to 13.2.2, on my wife´s Samsung G10+ it never had showed "ICL" , but the Geofencing still not works….. Surprice.

I dont know how big company Arlo is anymore, but on Wikipedia was there 319 employés in 2018, i wonder how 319 employés can be so silent about this, i dont expect that they are answering here, but maybe make a statement on the webpage that they are working on this, or trying to hire some new employés that actual can fix this problem for good

and doesn´t ruin all the other things in the App..

 I´m thinking about changing to Nest or Eufy soon.. (maybe they have hired Arlo´s most talented employés.)    

[Stunew78]

Our consumer guarantee laws in Australia are very tight.

Right now, Arlo are in breach of our law even as they continue to sell products that do not fill the following legal obligations:

Products must:

match descriptions made by the salesperson, on packaging and labels, and in promotions or advertising
match any demonstration model or sample you asked for
be fit for the purpose the business told you it would be fit for and for any purpose that you made known to the business before purchasing.

[Boomer_1]

So for those who do have Nest Cams, Do you use them for Indoor use,Outdoor use, or both. Do they connect direct to wifi, a hub or something else. How is the Battery life on their outdoor cameras?

[85BearsFan]

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@Boomer_1 wrote:

So for those who do have Nest Cams, Do you use them for Indoor use,Outdoor use, or both. Do they connect direct to wifi, a hub or something else. How is the Battery life on their outdoor cameras?

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I have three Nest Cams.  All three are located indoors and are powered by a USB  power brick.  They connect directly to my WiFi access point and do have their own base station.  Frankly, I was very pleased with the Nest Cams except for two things.  First, Nest charges $100 per year for the first camera and $50 for each additional camera so I was paying $200 per year for the three cameras, which I thought was outrageous.  Second, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, last year I needed to retrieve some video footage from Nest's cloud service, and it turned out to be a real pain.  Basically, I had to make a request to Nest under some EU law (even though I live in the US) and then wait a couple of days while Nest gathered the requested video archives and then sent me a link to download some huge files. 

[Boomer_1]

Thanks. That answers my questions. A subscription is a non-starter for me. Will never have one for my cameras. For my in-home cameras I will not use cloud based services. If I could find external cameras I could use on my current inHome system without having to run power to it, I would dump the Arlo cameras. My inhome system is directly in my control at all times and other than a 2-3 blip, I have never had any geofencing problems with it. I just don't want to run power or cabling outside for the external cameras. If there are any changes made to it, I make them etc. I just wanted to get more details on the Nest as some have mentioned it.

[ambroze72]

Yes I am having the same issue. It will not change my modes to AWAY or HOME until I open the app on my phone. I tested it and logged into the web browser at work to check the mode and it was disarmed to HOME. I logged into my phone and BAM it changed to AWAY and armed. What in the hell are they doing at this company? It's one issue after another and never seems to ever work correctly. The HOMEKIT integration is worthless since there's no way to use HOMEKIT's geofencing to handle modes. Also, using IFTTT is useless for the recipes they allow because you can only use location to ARM or DISARM but cannot specific any custom modes. I wouldn't reply on IFTTT for handing a security system honestly. 

[AncientGeek]

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@ambroze72 wrote:

Yes I am having the same issue. It will not change my modes to AWAY or HOME until I open the app on my phone. I tested it and logged into the web browser at work to check the mode and it was disarmed to HOME. I logged into my phone and BAM it changed to AWAY and armed. What in the hell are they doing at this company? It's one issue after another and never seems to ever work correctly. The HOMEKIT integration is worthless since there's no way to use HOMEKIT's geofencing to handle modes. Also, using IFTTT is useless for the recipes they allow because you can only use location to ARM or DISARM but cannot specific any custom modes. I wouldn't reply on IFTTT for handing a security system honestly. 

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Are you certain that you are allowing Arlo to track your location "Always" and not just "when using the app"?  That would certainly result in this problem.  Now that iOS is telling us about apps using our location and asking us if we want to change that, it seems like we could be removing "always" reflexively and causing this problem.

[85BearsFan]

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@85BearsFan wrote:

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@Boomer_1 wrote:

So for those who do have Nest Cams, Do you use them for Indoor use,Outdoor use, or both. Do they connect direct to wifi, a hub or something else. How is the Battery life on their outdoor cameras?

---

I have three Nest Cams.  All three are located indoors and are powered by a USB  power brick.  They connect directly to my WiFi access point and do have their own base station.  Frankly, I was very pleased with the Nest Cams except for two things.  First, Nest charges $100 per year for the first camera and $50 for each additional camera so I was paying $200 per year for the three cameras, which I thought was outrageous.  Second, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, last year I needed to retrieve some video footage from Nest's cloud service, and it turned out to be a real pain.  Basically, I had to make a request to Nest under some EU law (even though I live in the US) and then wait a couple of days while Nest gathered the requested video archives and then sent me a link to download some huge files. 

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The third sentence of my post should have read the the Nest Cams "do NOT have their own base station" (I omitted the "not").

[85BearsFan]

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@Boomer_1 wrote:

Thanks. That answers my questions. A subscription is a non-starter for me. Will never have one for my cameras. For my in-home cameras I will not use cloud based services. If I could find external cameras I could use on my current inHome system without having to run power to it, I would dump the Arlo cameras. My inhome system is directly in my control at all times and other than a 2-3 blip, I have never had any geofencing problems with it. I just don't want to run power or cabling outside for the external cameras. If there are any changes made to it, I make them etc. I just wanted to get more details on the Nest as some have mentioned it.

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I like that Arlo gives me the option of local storage or cloud storage (or both).  I prefer the cloud storage so that if someone breaks into my home and steals my equipment (e.g., the security cams and/or NAS) or burns down my house, I can retrieve the video from the cloud.  However, I also like to have some local control.  That said, I have been lazy with Arlo and still haven't connected a local drive to it.  I've been meaning to set up one of my old Netgear ReadyNAS units (which I replaced with a Synology) to serve as dedicated local storage for the Arlo but haven't gotten around to doing so.

I also like the Arlo gives the option of going wired or wireless.  Initially, I set up my 5-camera Arlo system as all wireless, but I slowly have been making all of them wired so I don't have to worry about charging batteries.  In fact, at this point, I have nine Arlo Pro 2 cameras  set up at my house; seven are wired, one is running on an Arlo solar panel, and one is running on battery.  Of the seven wired cameras, six are inside the house and one is in the garage; I ran all the wires through my attic, with several USB chargers in the attic.  The camera running on solar is on my back patio.  As for the ninth camera (the one still on battery), I am planning on making that one wired by running a USB cable through the attic when I have some free time.  I have a tenth Pro 2 camera that I'm planning on installing above or near my front door and attaching it to a solar panel; again, I just need some free time to do so.  For all ten cameras, I'll end up paying Arlo about $120 per year for cloud storage.  That many cameras would have cost me $550 per year if I were using Nest (not to mention the cost of the Nest Cams are more than the Arlos).

If Arlo would just fix geofencing.....

[AncientGeek]

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@Boomer_1 wrote:

So for those who do have Nest Cams, Do you use them for Indoor use,Outdoor use, or both. Do they connect direct to wifi, a hub or something else. How is the Battery life on their outdoor cameras?

---

We are definitely off topic here, but ...

I have used "Nest" cameras since they were "DropCam" ...Before Nest/Google bought them and ruined the app for two years.  I use them inside and out.  I used them in a 3rd party weathertight housing before Nest even offered an outdoor camera.  Nest cameras have ALWAYS been powered directly from an adapter and they communicate via WiFi.  There is no hub as other have also mentioned.  

I use Nest, Arlo and Axis cameras primarily and I use them all because they all have strengths and weaknesses.  Nest cameras record continuously and are fairly heavy users of your network uplink bandwidth.  I have two on a 1MB uplink DSL circuit and that's about all I could hope to put on that link.  I like the Nest time-lapse feature that allows me to create a time-lapse video for a given time-window.

I don't care for their User Interface as much as I liked the DropCam UI.  IMHO DropCam was better.  Nest offers geofencing (a surprise link to the actual topic of this thread!), but does not allow schedules and geofencing to be used together.  Nest restricts users to three physical locations, but at least does have the concept of locations built into their app, which Arlo doesn't...but can be accomplished via Base Station placement...as long as you don't care about E911 and all of the functionality that assumes all of your cameras are at the same house.

I do like the audio and low latency on the Nest Outdoor IQ camera.  I use those in a few spots.  If you need good two-way audio...that's a great solution.

If you need a battery or solar powered camera or want a wired camera...Nest doesn't have a product for you.

[steveomac]

The same problem keeps coming back.

Works for a few days, then if you dont enter the app the app loses it loses the location settings abd cant detect if you are in out of the zone.

Only way to get to work is open the app and within a minute it updates.

This is getting very tedious

[HBSofDE]

We officially hate Arlo. The geofencing issue is ridiculous. It took forever to fix and is now broken again.

Same issue as others. Product has no idea of my location. In or out of boundary, the system does not automatically switch to armed status. I have done all of the “stuff” - new app, logged out, changed location, disabled cameras, etc. Why do I (Or anyone) have to constantly go through these steps in an attempt to make the product function?

More, the system cannot be “disarmed”, it still sends a text notification signal when any camera is activated.

Come on Arlo! THIS IS THE CORE FEATURE OF YOUR PRODUCT. Why does it never work?

[Stunew78]

The incompetence of Arlo is astounding.

They behaved exactly the same way with their battery drain issues a year ago. 

Nothing has changed. Their QA teams are as useful as a chocolate teapot.

When asked to provide an update on resolving the issue, the silence is deafening.

The same thing will happen like with the battery drain issues, in a few months they’ll drop a release that fixes the problem, then 6-12 months later, their QA team will drop the ball again and we’ll all go for another play on this one song record.

This is an systemic organisational management issue. Arlo can’t get their house in order. I’m going to replace this system ASAP.

[Ugly_Bloke]

In fairness to Arlo, I’m now having similar issues with the Nest app not recognising the geofence on occasions which points the finger to iOS. Would still be nice for Arlo to update us once in a while.

[hikinman]

I'm appalled at the horrible service from Arlo.  To get support, I have found the LEAST effective way was to use the information listed on the website.  I've had better luck reaching out via twitter, and most recently i emailed the CEO.

I did not get a response from the CEO, however, I did get a call from Arlo "technical support" saying that they have "escalated" my case based on advice from the executive team.  My cases have been 'escalated' for numerous weeks now.   But it's the same lack of information.  And even then, they will often play games.  The games and tricks are the worst here.  Most recently, i was sent this:

"Good day!

I would like to give you an update regarding with your case 41, ISSUE: Geofencing mode will change to away or home mode when app is opened.

Kindly do this troubleshooting to fix the issue and please let me know once the issue is fixed.

Detailed troubleshooting steps performed
- made sure that name of the device doesn't have any special characters
- disabled and re-enabled device
- powercyle the base station
- reset and removed the base station
- re-setup the system
- re-setup geofencing
- Logged out and logged back in from App.
- Restarted phone.
- made sure that permission is on
- made sure that location services is set to always
- made sure that phone is not on low power saving mode
- re-calibrated location

Thank you.

Anais Manait
Customer Care Advocate
Arlo Technologies, INC."

When I asked for clarification, because the email is inconsistent, and severely lacking in detail, i received no response.  I asked 2 more times, and then called.  The agent on the call said I should ignore the message from "customer care".

After the new case was created today,  I was told today that the 'engineering' team is working on it, and is testing a release that should come out "soon".  

My expectation is that they contract out their programming/support for this product.  So when a massive issue occurs, they literally do not have support staff to deal with it.  

The lack of information from ARLO about the issue is incredibly disturbing. 

[Ugly_Bloke]

Since my last message both an Arlo update and iOS 13.2.3 has just gone live.

Everything working (so far!) but won’t hold my breath...

[Boomer_1]

Interesting app update. I decided to update why wife's phone. Checked for updates. No Arlo update. It was running 2.10. So I deleted her app and went to redownload it. Up popped 2.11. Its release date is Nov. 11. I went thru the same process on my other phone. Same issue. No update showing. Once I deleted the app it presented 2.11 for download. So is this something that has been out there for 9 days and there is another process breakdown or just a release they never bothered to mention. Not sure if it will even fix anything and will not know until tomorrow.

[AncientGeek]

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@Boomer_1 wrote:

Interesting app update. I decided to update why wife's phone. Checked for updates. No Arlo update. It was running 2.10. So I deleted her app and went to redownload it. Up popped 2.11. Its release date is Nov. 11. I went thru the same process on my other phone. Same issue. No update showing. Once I deleted the app it presented 2.11 for download. So is this something that has been out there for 9 days and there is another process breakdown or just a release they never bothered to mention. Not sure if it will even fix anything and will not know until tomorrow.

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I have that problem quite often.  I have found that I can prompt the new version to show up if I just go to the App Store and look at the information about the app.  All of a sudden, it will show me I have an update available.

[Retired_Member]

It seems its a IOS 13 issue. ios 13.3 update might help.  I read somewhere it helps let apps run in the background.  I know what the original poster means.  You have to open the app on the iPhone every 12 hours or so to make geofencing work sometimes.   Mine works 95% of the time.  

[jpottaway]

No blaming iOS 13. That’s buck passing. They are terrible developers. App has worked about 50% of the time in last 12 months. Plus loads of other geofence and background apps have not even skipped a beat post 13. Nest, smart things (have personally), ifttt, ring. None of their forums have this level of discontent re geofencing since iOS13.

[Filou95]

Hello

Same thing for me since ios 13 update geofencing no more working ... I have ios 13.2.3 , iPhone Xr and it still doesnt work ... 

No update for Arlo app 

I am very disappointed ... Look for other cam ...

[Filou95]

New update yesterday : I read in description

....

Bug fixes for iOs 10.3   ( !!!!!! )  

...

[ambroze72]

Update to the newest Arlo app (2.11) yesterday did not fix the geofencing issue on my iPhone XR 13.2.3

[Boomer_1]

I think the app store is even having a problem with Arlo. You may need to delete the app off your device to reinstall it. When you go into the app store to download it, it will give you 2.11. That happened to me on one of my phones. This is the first time I have seen this behavior but apparently others have seen it before. It did not fix my problem even with 13.2.3.