Why did "Arlo Smart" make the Basic (Free) plan worse?

[TheColdOne]

I only recently got my camera back from an RMA request because the first one stopped turning on at all. When I hooked up this new camera I saw that is offered some weird $2.99 "smart" add-on. Well, I didn't need that since I was fine with the basic plan, but I saw that it included "motion zones". I thought that was weird too, since it was already included in basic.

Well, apparently during my hiatus from Arlo they decided to make the Arlo even less of a deal compared to competitors. The multiple zones (and better app UI) were the only reasons I chose Arlo over Wyze camera, but now they don't even have that.

If I want to continue using it as I did before I sent in the faulty unit, now it is $3/month rather than free. Because of this, it has me concerned about investing any more into the Arlo environment for home security. At least for now, I think I'll just get another Wyze camera to replace the Arlo.

Since I have cats, I have to have the "activity zones" set up to avoid dozens of notifications in a single day, so it is a must-have.

[jdubbs413]

You can still set up multiple activity zones with the basic plan as the long as the camera is plugged in.  The benefit to the $2.99 is you can limit your alerts to people if you choose and the multiple zones with battery cameras.  They didn't change anything to the basic plan.

[TheColdOne]

Maybe this is just a bug then, but it's ignoring the activity zones and just using the entire image for motion detection.

As well, the add-on specifically states that it includes "User-defined motion zones to reduce false notifications." (See screenshot)

Due to this new add-on (that I did not see when first signing up a couple months ago), the wording of it, and the fact that it is ignoring the activity zones, it seems like this is the case.

But again, maybe I am mistaken and there is another issue I am running into.

[TheColdOne]

Scratch that, there also seems to be another setting I don't remember needing to set up before under the mode settings (Everywhere vs custom zones).

I will see if this addresses it, but I could have sworn I just set up the Activity Zones before and it automatically used them for motion detection without having to alter the "Armed" specific settings.

There's a lot of new settings that weren't here before, LIke 'record until activity stops". Before, it was just in time chunks and I just set it to 30 seconds since that seemed fine.