Not a single "smart" function appears to be working properly, still, after months.

[Jreyes1931]

I had to update my settings for smart alerts now that there is an option to opt in/out of “animal” alerts. I did the changes and opted only to get person alerts at my front door. Now I’m getting motion alerts every time a car passes by which is out of the activity zones that I set for a person. It was not doing this until the requirement to update the alert settings.

Please address so that we do not continue to get needless alerts for activity that is not part of the user’s preferrence.

[jgasparas]

It actually detects them as animals and I double checked I have notifications off for that camera and animals. And they are constantly in and out the dog door so all the notifications drive us nuts.

[jsturess]

Same problem here (Sweden)

[Mnkorn]

I am having this problem too. It actually started a few days ago then seemed to work properly and not send the notifications but is again. Causing my battery to drain faster as well.

[ArloProOwner]

12/10/18

Arlo Smart detections not so smart!

The Arlo Smart detections are not very smart at all in my case.  It thinks a vehicle is a person or an animal, and all visa versa, rarely is it correct.  I have 10 cameras and it's very aggravating.  I have all of the detections selected, person, animal, vehicle and other motion.  I don't dare deselect any of them, since it doesn't even do well when they are all selected.  Extremely frustrating.  It's especially frustrating when it missing a person coming right up to the camera and being active in front of it, and talking, and you can't depend on any of them to definitely pick it up on camera and record it.  Some of my cameras are plugged in and some are run on just the rechargeable battery.

[ShayneS]

Have you tried adjusting the camera position or the sensitivity & test again? these cameras will detect motion from side to side much easier than coming straight forward. I have provided an article that will help with this topic.  How do I optimize motion detection for my Arlo camera?

[dhiller0217]

I'd just like to share an illustration with you all, and HOPEFULLY TO SOMEONE WITHING ARLO'S TECH SUPPORT WHO CAN ACTUALLY MAKE ANY SMALL AMOUNT OF IMPROVEMENT TO THIS RIDICULOUS APP.  This is an illustration of me receiving 5 total alerts for both a person (4/ea) and general motion (1/ea), outside of my activity zones, on a camera which is not supposed to even notify me for general motion.  Galaxy S9.  Android 8.  Please stop making me feel like I've been ripped off.  No, I'm not going to reset my base station any re-sync my cameras yet again.  Thanks.

[light487]

I'm having an identical experience. I just want to only be sent an email when it detects a person. I'm happy for it to be recording everything, I just don't want 100+ email alerts everyday.

I paid, well technically I'm on the free trial but would happily pay for it if it worked. To be able to get Smart notifications along with a 30 day retention of video.

I have it set to only send notifications when it detects people, but I get everything.. even little birds hopping in the yard.

I don't even get the push notifications. I only ever get email notifications too. So not sure what's up.

PS. As I was writing this reply, I just got another email alert for a truck speeding past.

[tevatt]

SInce smart notifications started and include vehicle, people and animals, I get hundreds of alerts per day due to my dog. I tried turning off animals, with no luck. I turned off all alerts, but it forces me to keep at least one active. No matter which one is turned on, all movement triggers alerts. I tried inactivating smart alerts by inactivating a camera, but that seems to inactivate the camera altogether. I only want the alert inavtivated, not the camera. Does anyone know how to manage the smart alerts?

[EddieN68]

Like most people on here my phone is blowing up with notifications. It doesn't matter what model my phone is, it's not a phone issue. It also is not an app issue. I had the latest app and had the problem. I'm an IT guy so I tried all of the posted "fixes" and still had issues. I reverted back to the November app, still had issues, went back to the October app, still had the issues.

I was up to over 20 dings on my phone. It sounded like I hit it big on the slots..

I started reading what other users were posting about and when it started and saw a trend. It seems that this stems from having an account other than basic. I had premier. I canceled my premier service and guess what? The multiple alarms stopped. I didn't have to turn off backups. I didn't uninstall and reinstall. I just went back to the basic service. I believe it is a problem with the enhanced notifications that causes the issues.

There I just saved you $99 a month. You're welcome.

[Slesket]

Hi, my siren alarm went off twice this week in the middle of the night for the wrong motion detection. I have set the smart motion detection to exclusively "person" as to avoid having the alarm triggered because of an animal, however the alarm got triggered anyway in the middle of night which makes me now consider not enabling the siren anymore. Has anyone faced similar issues?
It seems the alarm gets triggered too fast for the system register it was not a person triggering it.

Cheers

[grillmaster77]

I have an Arlo pro mounted in a large tree facing the front walkway and porch. I have a problem where, when there is a heavy wind, the tree sways slightly and this triggers a bunch of motion notifications. The notifications are not as annoying as the drained battery though. I have tried: - setting up activity zones to try to cut out shrubs - reducing sensitivity, though sometimes it then will fail to detect a person - Smart notifications: I disabled "Animal" and "All Other" But it still is happening. If anything, this seems like a bug with the Smart Notifications. If I tell it to only report "Person Detection", why is that not working? Specific Questions: 1) how do I report a bug or have someone look into why Smart Notifications is not working? 2) any other suggestions? I realize that maybe you simply can't put an Arlo in a tree, but if you read the "Package Detection" placement guidelines (10' up, 20' away), I certainly can't mount it over the porch.

[terry287]

I have an Arlo pro 2 in my front garden and have enabled smart detec and made a new activity zone and turned off detecting cars but it always picks up every car going past??

[amruch]

Since the most recent updates to the app (I am a smart premier subscriber), I have been getting many, MANY, false positive alerts, even after adjusting my motion detection and notification settings. I am notified there is an animal where there is nothing, then I am notified that there is a person after switching off animal notifications. I see in other parts of the forum that Arlo support says it is addressing these issues, but how is that possible when there is no way for us to report false positives? Am I missing something? This isn't an unsupervised learning problem, it's a supervised task -- so such false positive labeled data should be important for training your models.

[JarheadPhil85]

I've set up my Arlo Smart parameters to only detect people and animals, and NO vehicles. In spite of this, Arlo Smart detects every vehicle that comes into the field of view of the camera outside of the detection zone. If Arlo Smart was designed to make detection parameters specific, why is it still detecting vehicles?. I have even gone so far as reducing the detection zones and lowering the Motion Detection so that the cameras would be less sensitive to the movement of the vehicles. Is there a fix for this?. Has anyone else encountered this?. I'm starting to believe that Arlo Smart is not as "smart" as they would have us believe. Or, am I doing something wrong?. Thanks in advance for any help and advice.

[CameraPug]

It seems to be an issue with the ARLO smart notifications not working. I have been receiving alerts for all events even though I only have people selected. The sad part is this appears to be a known issue with some of the support reps but not all of them.

[amruch]

That's certainly frustrating. It would be one thing if the smart features were free, but since we are paying to distinguish between recognizing people, animals, etc. (a very helpful feature) it seems like it's not worth the price. I wouldn't mind the false negatives if we could report them and help better their model, but without forward progress, it may be worthwhile to cancel and wait until they improve. Canceling is kind of sanctioning them to improve, though, instead of rewarding them for improvement by staying a paying member and reporting false positives.

I wonder if they were attacked by adversarial examples  (https://blog.openai.com/adversarial-example-research/; https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.01546)?

Either way, their recognition model is pretty darn bad at the moment and certainly not worth the price while these errors persist. I hope a support rep replies to this. I may message Arlo directly due to my dissatisfaction. They're great cameras otherwise.

[ShayneS]

The Arlo development team is currently investigating this issue. We will provide an update as soon as we have more information to share with the community.

[Raoulduke]

I was about to buy a new arlo system in the next month after telling people for a while that the product is just ok most of the time. That was until, one day it stopped sending me notifications when the light changed outside or a leaf moved. However, one day It was suddenly wonderful, it only sent notifications when people stepped in front the camera or animals, and the best part it would say what the movement was. I praised it to people and said it finally did its job properly.

SURE it still recorded light changes during the day if I didn't turn my sensitivity way down to the 60% level, but it didn't bother me with the false trips, and the key the description of the movement. Now today , there was an update. No longer is it wonderful, it is back to borderline bad. Notifications are all "motion" again with no distinction as to person etc. No select notification sent just all of them including changes in daylight. There is a 911 badge that does nothing. A filter on the recording tab that says notifications and gives a long list to choose from.. ok I chose person and animal, and it filtered out all of the videos going back to before the update.

Ok fine, but now that ALL videos are motion without distinction based on AI, it filters out videos including people. And it still notifies on all movement with no distinction with the "Filter" ,on . I am fed up, and I am sure there are others who feel the same. Get your act together or you have lost me as a customer there are plenty of competitors out there to choose from.

[rivajean]

I am continuously disappointed that the “Smart” feature does not work most of the time. On the few days that it works I love my Arlo. Most days it does not work and I hate it. The UPS truck, the garbage truck, and my car in my driveway are detected as people. The other interesting and even more maddening thing it has been doing is alerting me that a person has been detected. By the time I open the video it is correctly labeled a vehicle. But I still get the erroneous alert. I’ve been taking screen shots of both so I can prove what is happening. Not that it seems to matter to anyone at Netgear.

[jguerdat]

Donate the videos so they can be reviewed.

[rivajean]

Thanks for your response. I have been donating them. All of them. Several a day.

[RBG312]

I am having the same issue. Even though I 1) deselected "Vehicle"; 2) created "Motion Detection Zones" which do not include streets; and 3) reduce motion sensitivity to 50% for all 4 of my Arlo Pro 2 cameras, each camera still detects vechicles and sends me an alert. I have opened two tickets about this issue. What is the solution? This is draining the battery at an unacceptable pace.