Thoughts about Arlo Smart

[bhoolbela92]

I watched the live stream this morning and decided to go ahead and sign up for the free trial. Setup was straightforward and simple. There is, however, one big issue I have noticed. The lag between detected motion and an alert coming through used to be just a few seconds. Now it’s averaging about 20 seconds. I assume the video is streamed to their servers, analyzed, then the notification is issued if the algorithm detects motion that matches the zone area and/or person detection I’ve selected. I’m sure that takes time, but I wasn’t expecting quite that much lag.

I am still testing the new features with my 5 cameras (some original Arlo, some Pro). Maybe since it’s the first couple of days and there’s a lot of signups and new activity, they may be dealing with higher bandwidth and server load. Regardless of the reason, a few seconds of lag is OK, but 20 seconds seems unusable. A quick package thief will snatch a box from your door and be gone in 20 seconds. You might have them on video, but too late for siren or voice.

[LandJS]

That is what you will find and it will vary dependent of connection speed.  I canceled my plan once and the notifications were almost instant but then you lose the purpose of smart.  I have trees around so that could be 100 notifications for motion per day and that can be irritating.  I do think the smart plan has much room for improvement both in correct identification and in speed of identification.  By today's standards both suck.  So for now it's a choice between smart and many unwanted notifications.  There are some DVR's and NVR's today that can do it right at the local storage and I wish the Arlo hub would but the cloud is their business so I doubt it.  So it depends on their improving it but nobody will completely get rid of lag to and from the cloud.  I will go DVR/NVR when these break down, just hope they increase the cams width by then or I will have to double the number of cams.  I have most of mine at 180 and will need 2 at each point with cams that don't.  The cost wouldn't be more, just the need for more.