Not capturing events if not on smart notification

[kenzoc]

As of August 28th my cameras no longer capture any recordings for events which are not apart of my smart notification settings. As an example, my cameras used to always record my dogs in the backyard and properly tag them as animals without notifying me, now I have found these events are not being recorded and is impacting all my cameras as of August 28th. If I do turn on smart notifications for animals they are now again recording but of course sending me a push notification which I don't want.

I work in technology and can tell you this is a back end issue or firmware issue (before you tell me to reset or whatever garbage suggestion Arlo support has). 

The complete lack of QA on this product is insane, fix it. 

[JamesC]

After further investigation, the development team has identified the cause behind some users continuing to see missing video clips when smart notifications for specific events are toggled off. We will be releasing a cloud side fix later this week to address these concerns.

We appreciate your patience and feedback while we work to resolve these issues. I will provide another update once we have more information available to share

[JamesC]

I realize there is a lot of confusion in this thread due to the recent changes we rolled out. I apologize for all the frustration this has caused. Currently, we've rolled back the changes but we're continuing to investigate reports from users about a few unexpected behaviors they are still experiencing.

1.) Video clip deletion when smart toggles are turned off. This results in recordings not arriving in the library or feed when the smart classification toggle is turned off (for example, Vehicles are turned off, resulting in no notification or recording). This change was rolled back but some users are reporting they are still experiencing this behavior. The development team is actively investigating these reports. The intent after we rolled back the changes is for all event recording to be saved to the library/feed regardless of your Smart Alert and Smart Detection toggles (unless the motion is outside of a defined Activity Zone in which case it will be discarded as expected).

2.) When all motion or all other motion is turned on but smart notification toggles are turned off, clips for these events are arriving as expected in the library/feed but they don't have a classification label, whereas previously they would still have a vehicle label even if vehicle notifications was turned off for example.

3.) In the latest version of the Arlo app, there is confusing verbiage in the Smart Notifications toggle area that states recordings will be suppressed when the toggles are turned off. This is the change that was rolled back and this is being updated in a new version of the app that will be released soon.

The development team is working hard to revert these changes to the previous expected behaviors, I will provide more information as soon as I can.

JamesC

[JamesC]

We’re reverting the recent changes to the Smart Notifications settings to their previous state, which only suppressed push notifications.

Thank you for the feedback you’ve shared in the community. We’ll provide further details about this feature as soon as we can.

JamesC

[angelahortega]

I opened a ticket on 09/03 when I stopped getting any recording but people with smart notifications on. I ended up having to turn on all the smart notification options. That’s the only way it will record, but it seems like it’s still slipping. With my camera on, I usually get about a 100 to 200 recordings now I’m not getting much. They told me they would escalate the ticket and that this was a known issue on the community. Whatever they did, they need to change back.

[ralfyguy1]

James, what y'all did was TAKING AWAY functionality for something WE pay for! You NEED to add an option be able to have the system run the way it used to. For a lot of subscribers you essentially rendered the whole thing useless, including me!

The most RIDICULOUS thing about this is that there was NO mention or warning WHATSOEVER! This is as UNPROFESSIONAL as it gets! Y'all drove a bunch of people nuts, wasting their time trying to fix their stuff, wasting hours of their time for NO reason! And "Support" ACTS like they don't know as usual and blames it on the user again as usual. UNREAL!

[kenzoc]

 my version has better grammar but still claiming things it apparently doesn't do anymore.

This is 100% a sneaky way to save storage cost. 

[BB2765]

I have a camera on a back door that was supposed to notify me  when my dogs wanted to come inside. I had person toggled off for smart notifications because I didn’t need an alert for the dogs if they had a person with them. I also had other motion turned on so I could be notified if a tree branch fell or something. When this fix rolled out, I got tons of motion notifications because now people were being lumped in as motion under my settings. How is that smart? And even though this camera isn’t for security purposes, I still wanted the recordings of people in my library- just in case. 

If anyone is truly ‘overwhelmed’ by the volume of unnecessary recordings in their feed, their solution is likely more related to camera sensitivity settings. Please roll back this release. 

[Caccoop1]

I even bought A new front doorbell and still no luck with it.  Setting my other cameras to factory settings helped some?

[DSallee]

I checked this morning and there were no overnight videos in my 'Feed' or under the 'Devices' tab.  I checked local storage and there were videos from both cameras.  Are there any logs that can be checked for errors?  Is there a way to sync the videos on local storage to your 'cloud'?  What might I check to see what would cause intermittent behavior?  It's not restricted to overnight.  There are many videos locally that are not on your server.

[jguerdat]

It appears that a recent change is only storing videos that match your Smart Notifications settings in the cloud somehow happened. You can't do anything about it other than to monitor your local storage and/or change your Smart settings so allow more videos to be stored.

[jguerdat]

A recent change seems to be deleting videos not matching your Smart Notifications settings. Try disabling those notifications or changing settings to allow other subjects to be notified.

[jguerdat]

My Smart Notifications are set to show all but I just had a doorbell notify me of motion but no recording. I checked local storage and saw the button of a cat disappear so the recording happened but was discarded. This is the first time that I know that it's happened. I thought I was "immune" since all Smart settings are enabled for all choices.

[Jeff-SJ]

🙂

I had a DND bypass alert (wake-up alert) last night for a racoon being labeled as a vehicle on a back yard camera.

1. There was no vehicle nearby

2. I don't have vehicle smart notifications set for that camera

Not only did we lose our overall video feeds, but smart notifications also don't work properly.

ARLO team: we are backsliding here

[lklynch]

Users have the ability filter their Library/feed to see what events they want.

Changing the behavior to limit recording when people rely on this is not an enhancement. An even occurred at my house after this “enhancement” and I don’t have any recordings of it because I didn’t have that type of notification set up. Absolute crap!!

This type of decision making has me regretting ever buying any Arlo products. I have 12 cameras plus the security system and subscription. If this change is not reverted, I will be canceling and dumping all of my Arlo products.

[Somervre]

So yesterday I had another hour forty five minute call with tech support on this.  It took an hour just to get to the L2 person I had previously been promised would be available.  So this guy checked with some colleagues and he finally realized that many people have been calling about this!!  He agreed that someone must have changed the app functionality without informing the support desk of changes.  He said that the issue is now escalated to engineering and that I should be hearing back soon.  He also said that once engineering had a chance to come back with a plan that Arlo would be most likely reimbursing me for a month of my subscription.  I reminded him that this thread exists and that no one seems to be connecting the dots or letting support know that we are all on here complaining about this.  He said that "someone else" is in charge of monitoring this feed and communicating with support about it.

[DudeMac17]

This is literally insane and maybe the dumbest intentional thing I’ve witnessed Arlo do. There should be “smart notifications” and “smart recordings” if this is what they’re trying to accomplish. It’s wild that i still use these things. Def lost years of my life from troubleshooting.

Please revert back to old way Arlo. This is outrageous. 

[Somervre]

James - what you are telling us is not what support is telling me:

"We are updating the Smart Notifications toggle to enhance your experience" - this isn't an enhancement, and if it was, where was the change control?  Documentation?  Release notes?  The latest version of Arlo app in the Apple store says nothing about this "enhancement".  Your own support folks know nothing about this.  

"Previously, this feature suppressed push notifications for selected smart detections" - I've had this app for years and that has never been the case.  If the smart notification toggle for animal is turned on, you get a push notification on your phone for "Animal detected on ...camera".  That is how it was designed to work and that is how it worked.

"...and customers reported feeling overwhelmed by every motion-triggered event appearing in their Library and Feed" - That doesn't even make sense.  First of all, the only thing overwhelming is when you get too many push notifications.  It makes using your phone difficult because you are always having to swipe away alerts when you are trying to do other things on your phone.  That's the whole point of being able to control that using Smart Notifications.  Second, if customers were actually overwhelmed when looking at their library full of recordings they could have adjusted what they saw using the "Filter" option in their library.  If they were recording too many videos they could have adjusted their camera sensitivity.

"Based on your feedback" - Whose feedback???  Not ours!  Please point us all to the thread where people are actually asking for this.

", we are now expanding this functionality to also suppress recordings for these events"." - If you want to expand functionality then give users another toggle to decide whether or not to suppress recording.  Don't embed it into a setting for a push notification.  

We all know that this is a way for Arlo to spend less on cloud storage.  You have actually created a situation where we have to be overwhelmed.  For me to be able to get my recordings I now have to have ALL the smart notifications on...which means my phone is getting blown up with push notifications ALL DAY LONG (unless I mute notifications temporarily or completely turn them off from my iOS).

It sounds like there are many tech savvy folks on this thread.  I work in the IT industry as well.  Please come back to us with an honest answer and a plan for how we fix this.  Because you will lose MANY customers this way.

[FlipperHubba]

Same problem, I receive Motion Notifications, but there hasn't been a motion recording since sat Aug 31 2024

[Caccoop1]

Thank you, I tried your suggestion and it didn’t help.  It seems to be an issue with not sensing motion until someone is right in front of the camera, even though I have adjusted all the settings.

[StephenB]

---

@Curt2698 wrote:

I think its a bug on their end.

Actually it's an intentional (and IMO ill-advised) change.  @JamesC confirmed that on another discussion thread.

Obviously support should have known about it, so it is strange that they are wanting to make you jump through a lot of hoops.

[Bugger]

@JamesC  As with other members here I strongly disagree with this change.  There are so many use cases where users will want to have saved recordings for events but don’t necessarily want an immediate alert for them. We are paying for the subscription to save recordings. If this isn’t reverted, it will be a significant step backwards and have many users looking to other systems.  For reference my open case number is  44247763.

[DudeMac17]

 Couldn’t agree more @Somervre 

This is a new level of mistake, and that’s saying a lot considering what everyone on this board is already familiar w dealing with. 

I’ve had a brand new POE system in my closet for over a year that I’ve just been too lazy to wire up, but if this isn’t remedied by the end of the weekend, I’m out and will gladly never, ever, look back.

[fenton11]

If this is the way the system will work from now on then it shouldn’t be subscription based. It should be FREE!

[FlipperHubba]

# cameras all Arlo pro 4 with this issue

[Melram]

Why has my app started notifying me a vehicle is detected? When I turn the notification off then my camera doesn’t record vehicles. I want it to record, I just don’t want the phone notification. It’s worked for years but now with the new app it’s suddenly

changed. 

[dgoldg]

Lots of folks are having this issue. See this thread:

https://community.arlo.com/t5/Arlo-Pro-4/Not-capturing-events-if-not-on-smart-notification/m-p/24165...

Let Arlo Support know you're having this issue as well.

[SouthernArlo]

I have smart hub base station VMB4540R2 that has 4 essential spotlight first Gen cameras and a Pro 3 hooked to it.  3 of the cameras face the street and I get thousands of recordings a day. From vehicles / motion / people / animals.   The app has been set to only notify me for people and animals as you could imagine….   Starting I think Sept 3rd at 12:01 am.  But Same as the original poster,  All the cameras will not record a video unless the smart notification for that camera has that type of motion alert turned on.   I have turned on all notification types for all cameras and they all will record video and upload to the cloud.  But .. then I’m getting many unwanted notifications.   I turned off the vehicle and all other motion option on all cameras except on 1 to troubleshoot.   That 1 camera will give a notification and record the video and upload to the cloud.  I’m reading there was an update on Arlo’s back end WITHOUT notification to me.  This is in violation of the subscription that I pay for.  Change it back to the old version or I will be dumping the arlo subscription and buying a new system.   

[PlatinumZJ]

@JamesC where, exactly, do I go to leave feedback on this change? This is not acceptable. The filters work quite well for those who feel over overwhelmed by all the recordings. As I've said, I like to see what's going on in my neighborhood (especially for things like passing vehicles clipping my mailbox), but I DO NOT WANT NOTIFICATIONS FOR EVERY MOVEMENT. I feel like I'm wasting money on my subscription at this point.