Geofencing not disarming when I arrive home after iOS app update 2.7.9

[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!

[RSC1]

Mine was working fine with two users and two different log ins.

I did see last night that my wife had background app refresh off and mine was set to Wi-Fi. When I set hers to Wi-Fi, a notice said she was in Home mode. Maybe it will work today.

[AncientGeek]

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@Dannybear wrote:
@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.

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Until this last update, I have used geofencing successfully with our two iPhones and two accounts.  It has definitely failed from time to time, but it seemed to work as long as we both had the Arlo app in the background on our phones.

The workaround sounds like it fixes geofencing at the expense of simultaneous access to the app, so only one person can be logged in at one time.  That would be a source of irritation for us and completely unworkable for any family using Arlo to monitor (for example) an aging parent where multiple siblings may be checking in from time to time and some siblings would possibly be ill suited to have admin rights.

[RickWNich]

And Arlo Suoport continues to remain silent on this issue!

[RSC1]

Maybe with you, because you’re hostile.

[Nephs03]

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@RSC1 wrote:
Maybe with you, because you’re hostile.

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I think @RickWNich has every right to be hostile.

He has used the money he has worked hard to earn to purchase a not inexpensive security system to basically not have it work as it is supposed to.

Frankly, I don't understand why your defending them so vigourously.

Are you actually an Arlo developer???

[RSC1]

No, I’m a compliance officer at a mortgage company. To me, geofencing is not make it or break it and I feel confident they’ll fix it.

In the meantime, it doesn’t make sense to make brash statements that the developers are not aware or concerned. You bet they read these forums. You bet they are uneasy and worried, because it’s there job to fix it and they probably have families.

I’m just a die hard realist and sympathetic to the developers plight. I’m also a Nikon photographer, and seen issues like this play out where a new technology is a bit broken when it’s released, but gets fixed.

If I were a developer, I would probably remain silent in a hostile environment and that doesn’t help anybody. I prefer to report what’s happening and patiently wait for the clues to assist them.

[PhilRUK]

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@AncientGeek wrote:

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@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.

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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.  

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This sounds great if it can be made to work, I'm prepared to give it a try but am skeptical because I thought you could only log into one device at a time with one set of credentials.  When I log in via a PC it will log me out of my iphone app for example.  Has anyone had any success with this?

I've raised a ticket with online chat.  They've recommended swapping logins with my wife's phone as part of the fault finding to see if it is the second account or the phone.  Based on everyone's comments it really sounds like the second account issue, this is a consistent theme, but I'll do what they ask nonetheless in the hope it feeds into the development team.

By the way I've seen people start arguing with each other on this thread, it's getting a bit unpleasant.  It's not surprising, people have shared their issues and then await a response which doesn't come, so they then fill the vacuum with sniping at each other, however I think we should focus on sharing our symptoms for fault finding and what we are trying to do to fix this.  I don't want a great solution to get lost in the noise of back-and-forth arguing.  I'll continue to share what I find when I pick up again with the online chat after I've tried what they suggest.

[svrarlo]

Arlo geofencing is broken as we speak.. If Ford automotive said, hey, the door locks work most of the time, and we are working on fixing them, you might be ok waiting as long as you don't put your kids in the car.
Arlo knows what release broke this, they should remove it from availability until resolved, and provide their paying customers a way to get back to the release that worked. Otherwise they straddle their customers with a non functioning security system, that may not be protecting anything because it is the wrong mode. Since they haven’t done the proper thing, I am looking to other companies that value their customers more. Who knows when Arlo will really get this problem fixed.? This week, month, year?

[RSC1]

Comments are so scattered, it’s hard to keep up. I granted my wife full access with location services always on. She arrived home first and tripped the light fandango. My motion alarms were going nuts, so I disarmed the system.

Last night, on a whim, and I’m on iOS, I checked “background app refresh” on both phones. Historically I had disabled it to conserve Dara and batteries. Mine was set to Wi-Fi and my wife’s was off.

I set hers to Wi-Fi and immediately a notification on her phone appeared stating that she was at home. I’m hopefull this does the trick.

Mine works without cellular background app refresh, but turning that on might be necessary to ensure a quick response, in the event that connecting to Wi-Fi is slow.

[AncientGeek]

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@PhilRUK wrote:

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This sounds great if it can be made to work, I'm prepared to give it a try but am skeptical because I thought you could only log into one device at a time with one set of credentials.  When I log in via a PC it will log me out of my iphone app for example.  Has anyone had any success with this?

I've raised a ticket with online chat.  They've recommended swapping logins with my wife's phone as part of the fault finding to see if it is the second account or the phone.  Based on everyone's comments it really sounds like the second account issue, this is a consistent theme, but I'll do what they ask nonetheless in the hope it feeds into the development team.

By the way I've seen people start arguing with each other on this thread, it's getting a bit unpleasant.  It's not surprising, people have shared their issues and then await a response which doesn't come, so they then fill the vacuum with sniping at each other, however I think we should focus on sharing our symptoms for fault finding and what we are trying to do to fix this.  I don't want a great solution to get lost in the noise of back-and-forth arguing.  I'll continue to share what I find when I pick up again with the online chat after I've tried what they suggest.

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I’m pretty sure you will get logged out of any second device as soon as you login on another....just as you have experienced.  I believe the original poster said geofencing still worked even though one of the devices gets logged out.  I have not tried this because getting logged out is not ok for us.  I’ll deal with the geofencing issue rather than the logout issue.

Creating a ticket is the right thing to do.

To my knowledge the “Community” is supposed to be a forum for users to share knowledge, experiences, tips and tricks.  It is not “customer support” and we should not expect it to serve that function. 

I agree on a principle of users not squabbling with with each other.  It is better to share our own thoughts and opinions politely and not disparage the other community members unless they are engaged in truly unacceptable behavior warranting intervention by one of the moderators.

That said; I do feel Arlo is missing an opportunity by limiting effective customer engagement here and elsewhere.  “Radio silence” (or close to it) creates an information vacuum which gets filled with speculation and incorrect assumptions and assertions.  Anger comes next just like in real life.  Active communication and engagement is the best approach for customer satisfaction and that has never been a forte of the Arlo management team.

[RSC1]

Problem is, there were probably broken core features in the release where geofencing worked that didn’t affect you and me.

[Steve-M]

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@RSC1 wrote:
It’s not a listed core service.

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I see you are at least as smart as I am, because I’ve noticed that too, so where would you expect they post a “public notice” at to “advise” customer they are experiencing issues??  

What about the incident area?  As they have in the post.  Come on now, to prove you are at least thinking outside the box, where and would you suggest they do this...instead of shooting everyone suggestion or idea down...

[csse]

Can confirm it works with two devices with the "Ugly Fix" mentioned earlier (using same login on two phones).

So.. It seems the second login has some issues with the rights to change to away/home (even with administrative rights enabled ofc).

[RSC1]

Uh.....here? It seems to be getting a lot of activity here. I wound up here by simply googling it.

I’ve never seen a company publish incident statistics for such issues. When Nikon had problems with the D200, the net was buzzing with those who were upset, and rightfully so. They fixed it and it is a great camera. It took awhile though.

I’m not happy either without geofencing either. Although, I didn’t realize it was a feature when I bought into the Ultra. My push buttons were wireless and 4K video.

I’m the meantime, I’ve discovered that my background app refresh was set to Wi-Fi and my wife’s to off. I set hers to Wi-Fi and she immediately received at home notifications.

I hope she beats me home tonight to see whether that’s a fix.

[Frostbach]

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@csse wrote:

Can confirm it works with two devices with the "Ugly Fix" mentioned earlier (using same login on two phones).

So.. It seems the second login has some issues with the rights to change to away/home (even with administrative rights enabled ofc).

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This is essentially what I had posted several days ago after I played around with this for an hour on Monday:

https://community.arlo.com/t5/Arlo-Pro/Geofencing-not-disarming-when-I-arrive-home-after-iOS-app-upd...

In my case, and it seems like at least several others, the defining characteristic is the secondary account can't seem to change between away/home for some reason.

My own personal workaround was to log my wife into the main account and me into my wife's account for now because the system appears to work if the main account is last to leave/first to arrive.

I noticed while I was changing the logins that the geofencing notifications came through on the phone that was kicked out due to logging in on the other device, but I didn't pursue this at the time for two reasons:

1. Not being able to be on the app at the same time as my wife would cause issues
2. I'm not sure how sustainable the ghost login is. Seems like the session could be invalidated at any point and it might stop working.

[AncientGeek]

Also of note:  geofencing appears to work just fine with Arlo Q and Q Plus cameras.....at least it does for me.  Five cameras correctly deal with our two different logins and two iPhones, we me being the owner and my wife having access/admin rights.  Only my wireless base station has the problem.  All are set up the same way.

[madkiwi]

Even when I manually switch modes, then back to geofencing, or in the unlikely event that geofencing actually works our system has another issue.

When we're in zone Arlo is supposed to go by a schedule- until 11 pm only the exterior cameras are armed, from 11pm to 7am all cameras are armed.

When geofencing actually works while we are in zone it disarms all cameras. Has been that way for 3 weeks. It ignores the schedule.

The firmware update 2 nights ago on the base station was only to fix the time zone issue- which we were not experiencing. So much hope down the drain...

[Frostbach]

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@madkiwi wrote:

Even when I manually switch modes, then back to geofencing, or in the unlikely event that geofencing actually works our system has another issue.

When we're in zone Arlo is supposed to go by a schedule- until 11 pm only the exterior cameras are armed, from 11pm to 7am all cameras are armed.

When geofencing actually works while we are in zone it disarms all cameras. Has been that way for 3 weeks. It ignores the schedule.

The firmware update 2 nights ago on the base station was only to fix the time zone issue- which we were not experiencing. So much hope down the drain...

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Strange. My geofencing is set up the same way. The schedule on the home mode has been working for me without any issues. Does the schedule work properly if you manually change to it?

One thing I could maybe think of to try if you haven't already:

1.) Edit the geofencing settings on the main account device.

2.) Change the home mode to something else. Make sure to hit Save.

3.) Re-edit the geofencing settings again. Change home mode back to schedule. Make sure to hit Save again.

[madkiwi]

If I manually switch to the schedule it works fine. Then switching back to Geofencing it disarms all cameras again, even though the alert tells me it is set to Home mode (which should be Schedule).

I tried editing the Geofencing setting, set it to disarm when in zone, saved, re-edited to be Schedule and now it appears to be only disarming the inside cameras. We'll see if it works on leaving and returning.

Ironically my 2nd home is only armed/disarmed on geofencing, I don't even have schedules set up there and currently one camera is armed, one is disarmed. Both the wife and I are out of zone anyway, so that's odd.

[RSC1]

It’s frustrating. My wife just got home and the cameras went nuts. So...Background App Refresh setting doesn’t seem to be it. All of my firmware/software is up to date.

[RickWNich]

Its so refreshing to see how Arlo Support comes to the aid and assistance of their customers... Says no one! 

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@RSC1 wrote:
It’s frustrating. My wife just got home and the cameras went nuts. So...Background App Refresh setting doesn’t seem to be it. All of my firmware/software is up to date.

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[RSC1]

I’m sure they’ll come through. Actually that are assisting, at least me they are.

[AncientGeek]

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@Frostbach wrote:

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@madkiwi wrote:

Even when I manually switch modes, then back to geofencing, or in the unlikely event that geofencing actually works our system has another issue.

When we're in zone Arlo is supposed to go by a schedule- until 11 pm only the exterior cameras are armed, from 11pm to 7am all cameras are armed.

When geofencing actually works while we are in zone it disarms all cameras. Has been that way for 3 weeks. It ignores the schedule.

The firmware update 2 nights ago on the base station was only to fix the time zone issue- which we were not experiencing. So much hope down the drain...

---

Strange. My geofencing is set up the same way. The schedule on the home mode has been working for me without any issues. Does the schedule work properly if you manually change to it?

One thing I could maybe think of to try if you haven't already:

1.) Edit the geofencing settings on the main account device.

2.) Change the home mode to something else. Make sure to hit Save.

3.) Re-edit the geofencing settings again. Change home mode back to schedule. Make sure to hit Save again.

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I decided to try something like this today when we were both out.  At one location, both of our devices showed Out of Zone, but the system on two different base stations stayed in Home mode.  I played around with forcing the app closed and reopening it on my iPad (the acccoint that owns the system) and my iPhone (one of the tracked geofencing devices).  The I powered the devices off, one at a time, checking the status in between.  The tracked devices continued to show out of zone, but at this location, the base stations stayed in Home mode.  My other two locations and many bases/Q/Q-Plus cameras all are in Away mode.  So then I removed the check mark from my two tracked iPhones and saved the settings.  The base mode went to Armed.  I then went back in and added the check mark back to both iPhones.  Both iPhones then showed “unknown” for home/away status on the base that I changed, but still showed Out of Zone on my other systems, including the second base at the same location.  I played around for quite a while starting and closing the app.  I removed the check marks for my tracked devices on the second base station at the same location, saved, and once again, the iPhone statuses changed to “unknown”, while remaining “Out of Zone” on my other devices at other locations. I tried a few more things on my iPad and iPhone and eventually, I iPhone once again changed to “Out of Zone” status, but my wife’s did not.  I know her phone is on, but I’m not sure if she has Arlo running.  She should...either way, her iPhone X shows up as Out of Zone on my other systems.

very odd.

[Linusl]

Been weeks since geo worked properly now. Wonder what arlo did that they to mess this up and when they will fix it.

Got an email from support saying they have solved the issue for most users. Im was not one of them.

ArloQ works fine with geo and modes home / away but not arlo pro. Still does not change to correct mode when I get home.

Spent a lot on arlo but starting to look around for other now. Any suggestions?

https://youtu.be/ZTpXhpkXrJQ

[RSC1]

You can bet they’re working on it. This is extremely complex. Geofencing in and of itself is derided by developers. It’s picky.