Activity Zones - Different behaviour (Powered vs Battery)

[agentthumb]

I have noticed a discrepancy with the way the cameras behave when under battery power vs permanent power. 

This is with the exact same configuration of activity zones.

Under Battery Power (with Arlo smart subscription) - Preferred Behaviour

Under battery power, all motions across the entire frame trigger recording. And I only receive smart notifications for motions that take place in the activity zones I've defined. This is great and preferred because I still have recordings of everything that happens for reference, but get immediate notification if someone walks right up to the house etc.

Under Permanent Power (with Arlo smart subscription)

Under permanent power, the device only records when the motion is inside the activity zone. As such, I get a recording and a notification when something happens inside the zone, but then the camera doesn't record anything else that happens at all, which is obviously not good as you have no context when trying to establish what happened before and after your event. 

I have tried recreating the activity zones and got the same result. 

Has anyone else experienced similar issue?

[agentthumb]

I have noticed a discrepancy with the way the cameras behave when under battery power vs permanent power. 

This is with the exact same configuration of activity zones.

Under Battery Power (with Arlo smart subscription) - Preferred Behaviour

Under battery power, all motions across the entire frame trigger recording. And I only receive smart notifications for motions that take place in the activity zones I've defined. This is great and preferred because I still have recordings of everything that happens for reference, but get immediate notification if someone walks right up to the house etc.

Under Permanent Power (with Arlo smart subscription)

Under permanent power, the device only records when the motion is inside the activity zone. As such, I get a recording and a notification when something happens inside the zone, but then the camera doesn't record anything else that happens at all, which is obviously not good as you have no context when trying to establish what happened before and after your event. 

I have tried recreating the activity zones and got the same result. 

Has anyone else experienced a similar issue?

Case# 40681495

[ShayneS]

Hi @agentthumb

Have you tried to remove the camera from the active cameras list then re-add it? This process can be done under settings > Manage Arlo Smart. You can also try and remove the camera from Settings > My Devices then re-add it and test again.

[agentthumb]

Hey @ShayneS , appreciate the first step in any IT troubleshooting is to ask the client to reboot the device.

But when you look at this specific issue that I’ve described, it’s almost obvious what the problem is. I’m not saying I have identified the problem 100%, but I’d certainly suggest whoever is looking at the code to start here.

With Arlo smart, we know that:
- Arlo cameras on connected power use image based activity detection (on board the camera)
- Arlo cameras on battery uses PIR for motion detection
- on battery, the cameras record the full footage and sends it to the cloud, which then works out what’s in the activity zone, and sends out notifications if necessary.
- on connected power, all activities happening outside of the activity zones don’t trigger recording.
- we know on battery, the footage needs to be sent to the cloud to process activity because the power drain is too great, where as on connected power, the camera can process the activity zones onboard.

- therefore, we know the trigger for recording has two very different logic when on power vs battery

The evidence would strongly suggest to me the problem is in the logic of the image based motion detection code, that is active when the cameras are connected to power.

Rather than triggering a recording and then sending it to the cloud like when it’s battery powered, the logic simply ignores any activity when it’s outside the defined zones when connected to power.

I would suggest the correct behaviour when connected to power should be exactly the same as battery, but with the additional 3 seconds at the start of the footage:
- camera detects motion anywhere in frame, starts recording
- cloud determines what type of motion it is, and whether it crosses into any activity zone to trigger notification.
- the camera really doesn’t need to do anything with the activity zone information as the footage needs to be processed in the cloud anyway for object recognition.
- or if trying to reduce cost of cloud processing, the camera can record the footage, identify if the object entered into a defined activity zone, then let the cloud know if a notification needs to be triggered. The cloud would then decide what the object is, and fire the smart notification.

Also, this happens to all 4 cameras I have, so it’s not a single incident applicable to just one camera 🙂

[agentthumb]

Adding to my response above, when you have the activity zones configured while the device is connected to power, the activity detection utility confirms my finding. 

The LED only blinks when you move into the Activity Zones, nothing outside the zones triggers the LED flash.

[joeke3el]

Good post. I just discovered this yesterday before finding this today. Even though I've supressed alerts with activity zones, a flag waving in the field of view keeps triggering the battery operated camera to confirm with the cloud giving the battery a workout. I either have to move the flag or run power to the camera.