Arlo|Smart Home Security|Wireless HD Security Cameras
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hallinmas
Initiate
Initiate

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!

932 REPLIES 932
AncientGeek
Hero
Hero

@Talktotone wrote:
I may have worked out a temporary fix. I logged my wife’s app out of her secondary login and logged into her app as me the primary account holder. I have left myself logged into my phone again as the primary account holder. We left the premises together this morning and I was advised that Arlo had activated away mode. Coming home together I was advised that Arlo was now in home mode. Bit more testing required of us leaving at different times and come back at different times. However prior to me being signed into both phone and both phones being active this was not happening. Hope this helps some of you.

Historically, Arlo has only allowed one device to be “logged in” to the app at one time.  Any other devices will be logged out when any device logs into that same account.  Unless something has changed in this regard, I would think only the last device to login would actually be logged in with the situation you have described.

 

Related to this, I checked my home status this morning on my iPad, which is not tracked for geofencing and has access rights to my home Arlo system.  I changed the mode from Armed to Geofencing manually and the system stayed Armed.  I assumed this likely matches what others have said about the device with Access Rights not really having any effect on the geofencing mode.  However, when I grabbed my iPhone and changed the mode from geofencing to armed and back to geofencing, the system stayed armed.  Yesterday it would immediately flip back to home mode when I switched to geofencing which both devices were recognized as out of zone...and my iPhone is the owner of that system.

 

Also inexplicably, I was quickly logged out of my Arlo app after making this change on my iPad and before touching any of our other devices.  I am not logged in anywhere else and I’ve noticed this spontaneous “logout” very recently.  I logged back in on my iPad and was quickly logged out again.  I logged back in a third time and I stayed logged in.  I specifically have set up four different Arlo accounts so my wife and I can have access to Arlo from our iPhones and primary iPads without knocking the other devices offline.  (Noteably, Arlo is the only system that requires this crazy workaround)

 

Anyway, my home a Arlo system is now at least “sticking” to Away status in geofencing now when it would not do that yesterday on my Arlo Base, but switched quickly and properly on my five Arlo Q/Q Plus cameras at the same location, tracking the same two iPhones with the same ownership and granted rights.  All but one Alro Q have Armed as the Away mode and Schedule as the Home mode and that one camera worked just like the other Arlo Q Plus cameras in terms of recognizing my wife has left the zone yesterday.  

RSC1
Apprentice
Apprentice
Interesting. I am new to Arlo with the Ultra cameras. I tried to log into my wife’s phone using my credentials and it would not let me.

I gave her admin rights yesterday, but I was the first one home. Until she is the last to leave or first to return, I won’t know if it’s fixed.
Nephs03
Aspirant
Aspirant

@Arlo, are you seriously going to just ignore the 450+ posts of fed up users not having a function that they paid good money for?

Tell you what, give me a refund on all my equipment and I'll go buy a guard dog instead. 

Will be a lot more reliable...

RSC1
Apprentice
Apprentice
450 posts from a small handful of users is minimal in the overall scheme of things. Think of the thousands of users who aren’t concerned enough to come here and post. They’ll sort it out. Give them a breather. It’s a tough situation for a developer to be in. Just sayin.
Nephs03
Aspirant
Aspirant
Ah, ok, so that makes it fine to ignore the 450+, didn’t realise that.
dbrasco
Tutor
Tutor

@RSC1 wrote:
450 posts from a small handful of users is minimal in the overall scheme of things. Think of the thousands of users who aren’t concerned enough to come here and post. They’ll sort it out. Give them a breather. It’s a tough situation for a developer to be in. Just sayin.

I think everyone here would be happy if Arlo would acknowledge there is an issue.  We know there is.  They pass us FAQs on how to set up geofencing as an answer.  We are saying its not a training issue.  It's something that worked for years and no longer does.  Acknowldge that, tell us they believe us and that they are working on a fix, and we will be happy.

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Apprentice
Apprentice
I have real reason to believe they’re not ignoring it. At least there responses indicate otherwise. I’m sure it’s not an easy fix, or it would already be fixed.
RickWNich
Apprentice
Apprentice

Really?!1.

1. What percent of users dont use Geofencing?

2. 450 users is significant!

3. just sayin...


@RSC1 wrote:
450 posts from a small handful of users is minimal in the overall scheme of things. Think of the thousands of users who aren’t concerned enough to come here and post. They’ll sort it out. Give them a breather. It’s a tough situation for a developer to be in. Just sayin.


 

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Apprentice
Apprentice
Must be a hellacious lot of them, or they’d be overloading the forums and shutting them down....right? They’ve got this. Give them some breathing room. Help them by posting your results.
mamarcac
Apprentice
Apprentice

@RSC1 You are missing the point...the developers are the ones that caused the problem. This among a host of other issues on these forums.

 

The people here spent their money on a system that isn't delivering. Don't make excuses for the company.

RSC1
Apprentice
Apprentice
I excused at all. I’m being realistic. It’s not as easy as you might surmise
mamarcac
Apprentice
Apprentice

@RSC1 No one is surmising anything, we're presenting facts and asking for resolutions, info from Arlo, and timeframes. Again, this was brought on by Arlo, their developers, and inadequate testing before firmware releases. No one in this thread did this to our own systems.

 

Also, if you know so much, how about you volunteer to help Arlo fix their code? 🙂

RSC1
Apprentice
Apprentice
Maybe it has something to do with some fixes causing other issues. I can manually arm/disarm until they get it figured out.

I’m betting it’s the introduction of the Arlo Ultra and getting it to play nicely. Their testing probably indicated everything was working. Then there’s the real world.

Most folks are reporting their system’s behavior, trying to help. Welcome to the world of high technology.
AncientGeek
Hero
Hero

@RSC1 wrote:
Maybe it has something to do with some fixes causing other issues. I can manually arm/disarm until they get it figured out.

I’m betting it’s the introduction of the Arlo Ultra and getting it to play nicely. Their testing probably indicated everything was working. Then there’s the real world.

Most folks are reporting their system’s behavior, trying to help. Welcome to the world of high technology.

The introduction of the Ultra absolutely trashed this system last October.  And the Ultra didn’t work either at that time.  I was a total cluster.  It took months to repair the damage.  By comparison, this geofencing issue is no big deal.

RSC1
Apprentice
Apprentice
Agreed. I’m more interested in fixing the activity zones.
svrarlo
Tutor
Tutor
Geofencing is broken if you have two people sharing. Been broken for several weeks now. Worked fine for almost a year.
I really don’t appreciate Arlo not stepping up and admitting it is broken.
Making customers jump thru hoops, try this, try that, read this article, blah blah blah.. We (my wife & I ) have not changed anything, just installed the updates like a normal person is expected to do, and it no longer works, end of story. I just purchased an Wyze camera that does not do geofencing, and at this point it is more reliable than Arlo. So sad, I really liked Arlo.
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Apprentice
Apprentice
What makes you think they’re not admitting there are issues, if they’re asking us to do this and do that?

They have admitted and they are working on it. It’s a great system and they’ll figure it out.
Steve-M
Star
Star

@RSC1 wrote:
What makes you think they’re not admitting there are issues, if they’re asking us to do this and do that?

They have admitted and they are working on it. It’s a great system and they’ll figure it out.

Not according to this pages, which they maintain.  

https://status.arlo.com

All systems are operational and when you go through the past incidents, the geofencing issue they were experiencing was resolved on 1 June.

 

If they feel there is an issue they would like to advise the public about, that would be the place to do it.  Not, list all systems are a go.  This also tells potential customers that there are no software or hardware issues.

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Apprentice
Apprentice
It’s not a listed core service.
LiCi
Apprentice
Apprentice
Core service or not doesn’t matter. This is one of the “service” they provide and so they should be able to fix this problem.

Talktotone
Apprentice
Apprentice

@Talktotone wrote:
I may have worked out a temporary fix. I logged my wife’s app out of her secondary login and logged into her app as me the primary account holder. I have left myself logged into my phone again as the primary account holder. We left the premises together this morning and I was advised that Arlo had activated away mode. Coming home together I was advised that Arlo was now in home mode. Bit more testing required of us leaving at different times and come back at different times. However prior to me being signed into both phone and both phones being active this was not happening. Hope this helps some of you.

 

OK so yesteday I posted the above.

Today the geofencing has been working as expected. My current set up

  • Arlo Pro with 2 cameras (everything is running up to date firmware)
  • 2 x iphones ( 1 x XR and 1 x 8plus) Running up to date iOS and apps

both phones were logged into different accounts (primary XR and secondary 8+) However, geofencing would not recognise coming or going of phones.

So i logged the seconday account out of the 8+ and logged in as me the primary account holder. 

Both phones are active in geofencing. Last In and First out is now working. I left for work early today and was notified when the system armed in away mode when my wife left. She then came and went through the day and the system armed/disarmed as you would expect. She left and I have come home and the system disarmed.

Hope this helps some of you out there, but it looks like the issue is related to having geofencing looking at a secondary account. While you can't have 2 phones actively logged into the account at the same time, the app is obviously successfully reporting back to the base station that the phone is coming and going. Probably won't help those of you with multiple base stations or if you're not keen to share the primary login

 

Dannybear
Master
Master
@Talktotone
Kudos for the heads up.
The geofencing with shared users has never worked for iOS users as far as I can recall.
The workaround you have posted is what I myself have been using until last April when arlo broke it with a camera firmware update.
I have tried using geofencing again after the last base firmware update and again but even for a single iPhone it still breaks.
If users are able to get the workaround to work that’s great but be aware that any app or firmware update will likely break it again so you will have to do the workaround again.
Nephs03
Aspirant
Aspirant

@Talktotone 

Thanks for the for the workaround. A bit of a nonsense though that we have to find our own way of making the system work because Arlo's Quality and Assuarnce team cannot carry out thorough and complete testing before releasing to their long suffering users an app update. No quality and I definitly do not feel assured.

Let's see whether they fix the geofencing on the next release (yeah right) and what breaks (I'm going for the cameras  spontaneously catching fire)

michaelkenward
Sensei Sensei
Sensei

@Steve-M wrote:

@RSC1 wrote:
What makes you think they’re not admitting there are issues, if they’re asking us to do this and do that?

They have admitted and they are working on it. It’s a great system and they’ll figure it out.

Not according to this pages, which they maintain.  

https://status.arlo.com

All systems are operational and when you go through the past incidents, the geofencing issue they were experiencing was resolved on 1 June.

 

The status of the Arlo system has nothing to do with what happens at your end. It exists to tell users if there are problems on the Arlo server. It reports on issues that will affect every user, regardless of the health of their own systems.

 

Think of it as Arlo's equivalent of Google's report of the status of its cloud network.

 

Google Cloud Status Dashboard

 

This will tell you nothing about the health of your Chrome browser or anything else that you are using at your end.

 

 


Just another user
Arlo hardware: Q Plus, Pro 2 (X2), Pro 3 (X3), Pro 3 Floodlight, Security Light (X2), Ultra (X2), Doorbell, Chime
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Apprentice
Apprentice
Geofencing is t a deal breaker. I’ll be happy when they get it fixed.