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!

[jnrm]

Does anyone know if ARLO is addressing the problem with Geofencing.  My wife and I pay for the service each month however, we can not seem to get the geofencing feature to work on a consistent basis.  My wife and I are both attached to the system and frequently it will detect we are both "out of zone" yet it's still disarmed.  Or when one of us comes "in zone" it will stay armed.  I have had conversations with the support but it is very difficult to deal with them.  They have actually given me incorrect information and promised me calls back that never were made.  Is this an infrequent issue or has anyone received credible information from the company on if this will be fixed.  I've tried deleting and reinstalling the IOS app, and changing settings.  Nothing works.  Any advice?  

[JamesC]

As we have previously shared, Arlo’s geofencing feature is working as expected for most customers. We understand that there is a limited subset of users who have more unique user environments for which the geofencing feature may not readily meet their needs.

We are very aware of how important the geofencing feature is and, in order to ensure that it meets the needs of as many of our valued Arlo users as possible, we appreciate that so many of you have generously shared the details of your unique user environment.

Over the past several weeks we have made multiple updates on our cloud server to help address the unique setups of various user environments and we have also been collecting additional feedback from select users who have shared the details of their user environment/setup.

In addition, we are in the process of preparing a survey to collect the details of our more advanced users. The information we gather will help our team to enhance and optimize the geofencing feature for a wider variety of unique user environments. We expect to share the survey in the coming weeks.

As always, we look forward to and appreciate your continued feedback.

Thank you,
Arlo Team

Note: We will provide updated information here as it becomes available. Marking solved to float the latest information to the top of the thread.

[BruceTh]

Hi James, it would great if you could share with us which settings enable geofencing to work so that we can get it working again.  How do you know geofencing is working for most customers?  Thanks, B

[Rusty6]

It would also be good to understand what is considered "Advanced".  I'm only trying to use geofencing for 2 users - not really advanced.  And it worked without issue prior to May. 

R

[madkiwi]

"Limited subset of users..." and the real howler "unique user environments".

Their own app shows where the user is (in or out of zone) but somehow cannot instruct the station to switch modes. The app software is completely Arlo and of course the base station only runs an OS and software of their own creation, but somehow it's the user's fault.

When it does switch modes, it does the wrong thing (like DIsarming everything when it should be Arming, and Disarming when it should be using a Schedule).

Here's my advanced totally unique situation- Pixel 3 un-booted running Android 9.0. As plain-Jane as can be. Was running the latest Arlo app, Geofencing mode disappeared so I reverted to the app from 7/30/18, which worked fine until 5/22.

[KoniniKid]

Here's my advanced & unique environment....

I have a router supplied by my ISP which handles DNS and DHCP. I have a single Arlo Hub plugged into my router which looks after 2 Arlo Pro 2 camers.

I have an Android, my wife has an iPhone and I have Geofencing setup so that the first one home disarms and the last out arms. 

That's it.............. As amazing as I think I can be that's not really advanced or unique. It's not like I'm running multiple hubs across different vlans etc.

All was working perfectly till the update. 

[Jeem]

For a long time JamesC used to make a lot of sense. This reply from him was prepared by the legal and marketing team. James appears to have been Ashley-O’d (BlackMirror S5E3).

I have 1 base station and 4 cams connected to my ISP router. Not an advanced setup. A setup THAT WORKED prior to the late May’19 cluster $$$$ of a release.

Focus on fixing the tech and less on dividing your customer based with FUD!

[Aaltox]

But when geo works but still keeps recording.
The phones turn up in the zone but it keeps detecting motion. We have to manually disarm to calm down the system.

[Dannybear]

Arlo wrote:
“We understand that there is a limited subset of users who have more unique user environments for which the geofencing feature may not readily meet their needs.”

It’s obvious they are referring to the iOS environment, I.e. anyone trying to use a iPhone. Remember they have already solved the issue for android only device users previously and now they’re starting on iOS device users.
Let’s hope something happens that will get us what we paid for.

[AncientGeek]

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@JamesC wrote:

As we have previously shared, Arlo’s geofencing feature is working as expected for most customers. We understand that there is a limited subset of users who have more unique user environments for which the geofencing feature may not readily meet their needs.

We are very aware of how important the geofencing feature is and, in order to ensure that it meets the needs of as many of our valued Arlo users as possible, we appreciate that so many of you have generously shared the details of your unique user environment.

Over the past several weeks we have made multiple updates on our cloud server to help address the unique setups of various user environments and we have also been collecting additional feedback from select users who have shared the details of their user environment/setup.

In addition, we are in the process of preparing a survey to collect the details of our more advanced users. The information we gather will help our team to enhance and optimize the geofencing feature for a wider variety of unique user environments. We expect to share the survey in the coming weeks.

As always, we look forward to and appreciate your continued feedback.

Thank you,
Arlo Team

Note: We will provide updated information here as it becomes available. Marking solved to float the latest information to the top of the thread.

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I suggest you give a few systems to some of your most trusted staff.  Set them up with various configurations that might be similar to a typical family with two device tracked for geofencing, using modes other than the standard “Armed” and “Disarmed”...perhaps even a schedule.  Do the same thing for a few who could place cameras at more than one location they frequent from time to time, so you can test how that works.

You could even engage a few of your more knowledgeable customers who more effectively test the system to the edges of the specifications of the advertised or implied supported configurations.  I’m sure a few would be happy to help

If “Most” of your customers had three cameras and a fourth camera broke the system, would Arlo be happy that the system works for “most” users?  Especially, if it previously worked for “more” users and a recent software change decreased the number of customers for whom the system worked properly?  Of course, the right answer is that Arlo, should publish specifications that describe the minimum and maximum supported configurations in terms of both size and complexity and should rigorously test the system to the edges of that specification before any new firmware or software is released to the general customer population.

Also, Arlo clearly needs a third method of interaction.  The Community here is basically a chronological discussion with no curated space for clear statements of problems and solutions.  Support is a bit of a black hole where cases get submitted with a fair amount of effort by customers who are forced to walk through tedious scripts developed to remedy the simplest and most obvious customer mistakes before acknowledging there is a real problem, and then real problems take an interminable amount of time to get resolved and interactions can be months in duration with repeated, redundant data gathering by support reps and very little sharing of status back to the customer.

[AncientGeek]

Another example today.  I arrived at one of our locations.  My wife is away.  I have an original Arlo base station here with an Arlo Pro (possibly a Pro 2) and original Arlo wireless Camera connected to the base.  I also have one Arlo Q Plus here.   When I arrived my Q Plus in the back yard recorded a few videos and when I went around the other side of the house, the Pro picked me up and I saw the notification on my Apple Watch.  (Push notifications are turned off on the backyard camera)

So I checked my status on my iPad and saw the cameras were armed.  Makes sense.  I opened the Arlo app on my iPhone XS and immediately was notified that I was in Home Mode.  I had not force closed the app as far as I recall.  I never do unless I’m debugging an Arlo issue and I always restart it immediately.  So now I’m in Home mode, but while my Q-Plus shows Disarmed, my wireless Base shows getting status....permanently.  I tried force closing the app a few times to refresh the status on both my 11” iPad Pro and my iPhone XS.  No change. 

So so I went inside the house and noticed the LED indicator for internet access was turned off on the Arlo base.  I did a few diagnostics and found the Internet at this location is fine.  So I power cycled the Arlo base.  It came back up just fine and the Internet LED was now illuminated as it should be.  The mode for the wireless base now gets status successfully and it shows “Armed”.  So the Q Plus correctly shows “Disarmed” and the wireless Base incorrectly shows “Armed”.  I checked geofencing and it correctly shows my iPhone XS as being In Zone and imy Wife’s iPhone X as Out of Zone...both correct.  So the devices are correct recognized as to their zone status.  The app informed me that I’m in Home Mode after I opened it, but the wireless Base refuses to change to the Home Mode I have set up in geofencing...which is a Schedule that should be disarmed from 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM.  I force closed the app and restarted it to see if that would help and it did not.  So then I manually Disarmed the base and then placed it back in Geofencing mode.  This Disarmed the system and stayed Disarmed when I placed it back in Geofencing mode.  So I then manually set it back to Armed and back to Geofencing.  It stayed in Armed mode.  I repeated the process again for Disarmed with the same results.

Now I decided to test to see if Schedule was a problem.  I once again manually placed it Armed mode and then edited my Geofencing mode to use Disarmed instead of Shcedule for the Home Mode setting.  I saved that and place the system back into Geofencing mode.  Now the system will automatically cycle back to Disarmed after being set to Armed and the set back to Geofencing.  So it appears Armed for Away mode and Disarmed for Home mode works.  Now I edit my Geofencing fencing setting again and replace Disarmed with Schedule again and save.  I then toggle manually from Armed mode to Geofencing mode and the system NOW correctly disarms when placed in Geofencing mode. 

Wow.  What a trip.  Now I’ll have to try this on my other systems with Schedule as a Home or Away modes etting in Geofencing.  My troubleshooting is exacerbated by the fact that the Arlo iOS app on my iPad frequently logs me out if I swap back and forth to Geofencing mode or try to edit Geofencing.  I log back in and it logs me out again.  Then I log back in and it lets me stay logged in.  My iPhone is logged in under a different account, so it isn’t that conflict and I have no other devices logged in under this acccount.  It only exhibits this behavior when I edit Geofencing settings and move back and forth.  Very odd.

[ToastyFlake]

I haven’t had any geofencing problems with iPhone for several weeks.

[RSC1]

Is yours the only device?

[Boomer_1]

James where have you been? There is nothing unique about this problem and particular configuration aanyone has. It has to do with the geo-fencing function only. While there are always a few isolated offshoots of these, this one is pretty consistent for the majority of the folks. It fails as follows:

The majority of the folks have at least the following:

1 master user and owner of the account.

At least one "granted user" for access to the geo-fence settings.

I am going to use the example of just 2 users for simplicity.

What occurs is the following:

Users leave their location one at a time or together. Once they leave the fence they will each get the message saying they have left the home geo-fence, BUT THEY NEVER GOT THE FINAL MESSAGE WHICH SAYS SYSTEM IS NOW IN AWAY MODE. After both have left the geo-fence, a check of their status with show that they are both "out-of-zone" but the system is NOT ARMED. Once you reenter the zone you will get the message that says that you are entering the home geo-fence, BUT NEVER GET THE MESSAGE THAT SAYS YOU ARE NOW IN HOME MODE. iPhone status will say that you are now "in-zone". If you didn't make any changes to the arming while you were away nothing changes.

However 2 states can occur.

State 1 -

If while you are away, and you happen to want you home protected (Thats why most of us by security cameras), and you go into mode and arm the cameras, the cameras will stay armed when you return. And you must manually disarm them.

State 2 - 

If while you are away nd need your home protected you can go to the mode screen and toggle the setting from ge-fence to schedule and back, and you will get the message that says you are now in away mode. This will arm the system. Once this occurs, when you return home the system will disarm it'self as one would expect.

I m not sure why your egineering staff can't find/fix this since they broke it. It is not intermittent and not a small set of users. This is a SEVERITY 1 problem. You should have had this fixed weeks ago. I imagine the rest of the folks saw how useless it was to try and get support from your company and just went on with their lives.  I tried to call in to support 3 times, the first time about amonth ago and they told me that engineering was aware of the problem as was working on it. I called in 3 weeks ago and asked to speak to someone in second tier support to provide them details of the problem. They told me someone would call me back. They never did. I called back in 4 days later and requested again to speak to second tier support and advised them that they did not call me back and I would like to speak with them to provide information on this problem. I requested a timeframe for when they would call me back. They said not later than 48 hours. That was 2 1/2 weeks ago. So don't assume that people are working because you haven't heard from anyone else.

You have absolutely the worst product support of any company I have ever tried to work with and no path to get it.  If you were interested in getting this problem corrected your engineers would stopp hding behind the wall of the forum and work with people and resolve this. Since they broke it, it can't be that hard to resolve it.

I am using 2 iPhone X's running IOS 12.3.1. I am not sure what others are using, but I doubt the engineers would be able to fix it if we were using flip phones.

[Boomer_1]

James I left out one other important  "trigger" to the problem. In my case, if I just delete my "granted account" so that the account owner is the only one using the geo-fence it works fine. I tried running this way for 5 days and so no failures. So it has something to do with the seconday accounts that are granted access. This all worked fine for the past  yer and a half until this update in May.

[Monkey_501]

If you to get support attention write on their facebook with issue. I did and they called the next day.  I now have a logged ticket on this. The lady who called was obviously aware of the issue but honestly i didnt get the best feeling this was going to get fixed anytime soon. And now we are being asked to wait weeks for a questionnaire that no doubt could be written in a day. 

Suggest we post on their public forums like facebook and twitter with the issue in hopes to save others this pain.

[Gtg493q]

Well said. Same exact issue for me. I don’t know why James considers this “closed” when it continues for me. I called helpdesk 1 month ago and they said they would follow up with me directly when fixed and no call, no email... all I saw was James’ closeout of the issue.... can someone please post the final resolution steps? E.g., is there a new update needed? Am I supposed to delete and reinstall? No instructions were provided for me to come back and resolve my issue. I find it weird that James said it is now working for “most”.... paying 300-400 USD for a system to protect my home and family is expensive- especially when it doesn’t work. Netgear should take this mor seriously and provide some individual outreach in an attempt to fix this.... otherwise in the long term, ratings of the product will show the falsities

[ToastyFlake]

Yes. I was replying to another comment that made it sound like all iOS users were still having the problem.

[JaredC]

Geofencing recognizes when we are in/out of zone but does not arm/disarm. It worked properly for over a year prior to this, and we’ve tried resetting everything including our devices etc. This system is worthless to us without Geofencing......

[Dannybear]

@ToastyFlake
I would like to know how it is working for you and not me.
Are you interested in sharing your configuration detail so I can make mine the same so I can get it operational for my system please.

[madkiwi]

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@Dannybear wrote:
Arlo wrote:
“We understand that there is a limited subset of users who have more unique user environments for which the geofencing feature may not readily meet their needs.”

It’s obvious they are referring to the iOS environment, I.e. anyone trying to use a iPhone. Remember they have already solved the issue for android only device users previously and now they’re starting on iOS device users.
Let’s hope something happens that will get us what we paid for.

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It is most certainly NOT fixed for Android users. I have a Pixel 3 and my wife has a Galaxy S10 and geofencing has been **bleep**ed since May 22nd.

Manually switching modes ends up in a disarmed status when we are home, it should be on a schedule (one camera is disarmed during the day, all cameras armed at night). This does not happen, we only get armed or disarmed.

[dhung]

Arlo broked Geofencing  since 20th May update, and still no fix on Geofencing with multi user/device setup.

keep an eye on this thread, it's still on going

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

[madkiwi]

But don't worry, Arlo says it's fixed for "most customers".

How they determined that is a mystery, a lot of very unhappy people on these forums say otherwise. They also won't tell us how many is "most". More than 90%? Less than 60%?

If they sold 50,000 of these systems and only 10% have a problem does that mean 5,000 customers can go pound sand? Or are they lying? Maybe most customers don't have the time to come to this forum and complain. Or they see people have reported the problem so they con't bother filing a case because they figure Arlo will fix it eventually?

If Arlo figures it isn't affecting "most" customers because "most" customers have not initiated support cases then their numbers would be lower than in reality. I for one have not submitted a support case because I don't think it will do any good. Their online chat is usually not working because so many customers are trying to report issues and I don't feel like spending 15 minutes waiting, then another 30 minutes being told to reboot the base station and reinstall the app.

But don't panic, Arlo isn't. They broke the system with a firmware update on the base stations 6 weeks ago (May 22nd) and it obviously isn''t a big deal.

[dhung]

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@madkiwi wrote:

........................

 I for one have not submitted a support case because I don't think it will do any good. Their online chat is usually not working because so many customers are trying to report issues and I don't feel like spending 15 minutes waiting, then another 30 minutes being told to reboot the base station and reinstall the app.

........................

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+1

Exactly the reson why I won't bother calling Arlo Support to lodge a fault, I got other better things to do...............

Pitty they make a good hardware device, zero to none trechnical support (outsource support to have CSR walking EU on a scripped list can not be consider as technical support), software/firmware update failed/break essential function on each major release.

[JaredC]

My environment is the same as it was for over a year before you rolled out your updates. You broke it.