Geofencing Reverts To Disarmed Even When II Clearly States Away Mode

[hallinmas]

I have Arlo Pro cameras and just today my geofencing is not working. I am home and the app says that I am "In Zone", yet it is saying that the system is armed. I also noticed that Arlo Smart is not filtering, and it is allowing all motion for one of my cameras to come through when it should only be People. Is there a bug? Any help would be appreciated. I already tried unplugging the base station and restarting. Thanks!

[A69galaxie500]

I’ve been having the exact same issue, I’m getting a little tired of wasting camera batteries on taking videos of myself every time I come home or walk outside. I shouldn’t have to manually disarm. Very annoyed with Netgear!

[robertoy]

Same issue here, happens with both an Android and iPhone in the house. Super annoying to have to geofence manually.

As far as I can tell it senses when you leave the fence but not when you enter it.

[User72]

Don’t know if this might be helpful for someone looking at the software for a fix but I've noticed that when I arrive back in the zone, (with mode set to geofence/schedule) and I open the app to manually disarm as a workaround,  I see 2 entries for the base station... and one eventually disappears when it’s managed to get the status. Seems odd. I only seem to see this when it’s failed to disarm upon arriving back in the zone. Any other time I open the app I correctly see just a single base station. Anyone else seeing that?

[waolson74]

Yes, I’ve noticed two base stations popping up as well when I go to disarm manually

[robertox]

"What other systems are you guys buying into? "

Amazon Blink XT2

I figure it can't be any worse than Arlo.

[timb2828]

Geofencing is not working on iPhone Max XS.  I am using the Geofencing mode with the "Away Mode" set to "Armed" and the "Home Mode" set to "Schedule". The schedule is set for 10 PM to 5 AM  "Armed" mode, The Enabled device is "In-Zone". The Geofencing works fine switching from "Disarmed" to "Armed" when I leave the geofencing area. However, the system does not switch to "Disarmed" when I arrive back in the geofencing area. 

I have deleted and reinstalled the App multiple times and have restarted the base unit multiple times. I am using the App version 2.7.10.

I have the location services set to "Always" on the phone.

Any suggestions for resolving the issue? The geofencing worked with my old iPhone 7 before I upgraded.

[mrjirey]

Just tried their latest update on 5/30/19 and still the same result. Armed when I leave the home zone. Get a message that I’m back in the home zone, but system remains armed.

[RSC1]

Except this morning my wife left before me as usual, but her phone was never recognized as away, so it didn’t even arm today.

[Lord_Polymath]

Another report of geofencing being broken.  I was hoping the update to the iOS app today would fix it, but it did not.  Geofencing arms when we leave, but does not disarm when we return. 

[AncientGeek]

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@mrjirey wrote:
Just tried their latest update on 5/30/19 and still the same result. Armed when I leave the home zone. Get a message that I’m back in the home zone, but system remains armed.

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As I recall, it takes several weeks for new apps to get through the Apple App Store review process.  It seems likely that the latest release was in the pipeline before they heard user reports of the geofencing problems.  I don’t think they could turn around an app update that fast even if they solved the problem the first day it was reported.

Also, there is some speculation the issue is with the firmware for the base ( for wireless cameras) or the powered cameras themselves.  If that is true, the app may not change at all.  Time will tell.

[olejnix]

I have had the exact same issue, also for some 1 or 2 weeks.

Have Geofencing mode (using 5 iPhones for all family members), with Custom mode while Away and Schedule with a mix of various Custom modes while Home.

Home / Away is always recognized correctly. However, when Arlo correctly recognizes transition from Away to Home, Away mode remains active - until I manually switch mode.

Really frustrating that Arlo has not been able to fix this until now!

[Brcllsn]

It’s not just Android, IOS is doing the same thing also videos are not being uploaded after showing a notification. Grrr

[TomGR1]

I am using IOS and using 2 cameras - Arlo Pro 2 - and everything seems to be working properly except geofencing.  With the previous version of Arlo app geofencing worked upon leaving but would not detect coming back home.  I just installed this update and geofencing still not working completely.  Leaving it detects and arms perfectly.  Arriving back home it now detects but does not disarm.  Anyone else having this problem?  Thanks.

[Brcllsn]

Yep mine is doing same thing!

[Guinness835]

App update from yesterday did not fix the issue.

[Midsouth-Gent]

I’m not sure how but mine is working now. I changed my settings from home to schedule. For some reason the account on my phone logged me out of Arlo and I had to sign back into the app. After I did that, when I get home, the system disabled the alarm.

[Eyball]

By turning my home mode from schedule to disarmed it fixed mine for now.  I did the same on my arlo Q and it did not work though.  Still staying armed when I come home.

[Catfarts]

Don’t think apple maps updates location to other apps. Actually sounds like Arlo is not successful getting the device to provide the updated location whereas apple maps is successful. Location data must be centralized or cached discretely to allow standardized api access across different apps. Maybe someone who develops iOS apps would know better though.

[Catfarts]

I Noticed the brief twin device also and likewise wondered if there was something funny going on with a duplicate “virtual” device, but I think it’s a red herring. More likely to be some bug in the code that causes an exception somewhere once in “away” Mode that prevents successful queries at your current location or connectivity. I say that last part, because for me, when it used to work, I had to connect to my WiFi for geofencing to detect I was home

[RSC1]

I’ll have to check that I’m connected to Wi-Fi before I set it to disarm and back to geofencing.

[Stewi]

Exactly same issue here. Been successfully using the feature for over a year and now out of a sudden seems not working properly anymore. Geofencing goes in away mode however base station stays disarmed.
I have now to activate the armed mode manually which makes that feature completely useless and brings massively down the user experience of the product.
@Arlo support, do something about this! It’s been over a year since this issue was first flagged...

[User72]

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@Catfarts wrote:
I Noticed the brief twin device also and likewise wondered if there was something funny going on with a duplicate “virtual” device, but I think it’s a red herring. More likely to be some bug in the code that causes an exception somewhere once in “away” Mode that prevents successful queries at your current location or connectivity. I say that last part, because for me, when it used to work, I had to connect to my WiFi for geofencing to detect I was home

My geofencing did work properly at the medium radius size, it would disarm when I was several blocks from home, never needed the home wifi to register before it disarmed. On the smaller radius it did on occasion fail to connect until I was already heading into the garage so either it was slow to register with the base station, or the coverage in my area wasn’t good enough to detect where I was with enough accuracy. I’m pretty sure though that now with the bug, I don’t see 2 base stations if I open up the app at work (away mode/armed + out of zone) but I do see the ghost base station when I’m back in the zone. I'll double check because now I’m curious. So maybe the notification of being back in the zone is getting lost going to some dud base station reference ? Anyway hope a fix is found soon. With all the activity hopefully they’ll advise when a solution is found and starts working it’s way through the release process.

[RSC1]

Wi-Fi connecting made no difference and it doesn’t see my wife’s phone. I think it will, if I deselect, save, reselect, and save her device.

[roowho]

Both base station and Arlo Q arms when I leave. They do not disarm with geofence when home.  

Rebooted devices as well as deleted ios app to reinstall to no avail.

Even more frustrating that I can't workaround issue telling Siri that "I'm home".  

Instead, I have to manually select another mode then back to geofence to disarm.

As per other comments, this feature used to work flawlessly until 10 days or so ago. 

[AncientGeek]

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@Catfarts wrote:
Don’t think apple maps updates location to other apps. Actually sounds like Arlo is not successful getting the device to provide the updated location whereas apple maps is successful. Location data must be centralized or cached discretely to allow standardized api access across different apps. Maybe someone who develops iOS apps would know better though.

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Correct.  Services are provided through Application Program Interfaces which are developed by Apple (or other device manufacturers/ OS developers) and made available to applications programmers.  This has been true for decades of software development...certainly for my career starting in the 1970s.

Here is some specific information about the topic at hand...

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The Core Location framework lets you locate the current position of the device and use that information in your app. The framework reports the device’s location to your code and, depending on how you configure the service, also provides periodic updates as it receives new or improved data.

Two services can give you the user’s current location:

• The standard location service is a configurable, general-purpose solution for getting location data and tracking location changes for the specified level of accuracy.

• The significant-change location service delivers updates only when there has been a significant change in the device’s location, such as 500 meters or more.