Very slow notifications?

[bubdog]

I just got my Arlo system and after upgrading to Smart Elite my notifications are extremely slow. It can take 30s to 1min30sec for a notification to happen after there is some motion or a person on my cameras. This obviously makes features like live view, 2 way audio, e911, and alarm pretty useless as I don't know something is happening until it is way too late for any of those things to be useful.

I know the issue is not with my internet service, I have 150mbit up and down fiber. The cameras were alerting almost instantly before I upgraded to Smart Elite.

Is there an issue with the Arlo service at the moment? When will this be resolved? Are other people experiencing this?

[jguerdat]

Don't forget that push notifications are essentially instantaneous but the video has to be uploaded before it can be seen. That's why the email notifications come in later - it's after the video is completely uploaded.

[Boucher187]

Still looking for an answer to this one or a workaround.  I am almost at the point of dumping Arlo because the notifications used to be quick.

Now when UPS comes I get the notifications after they have left the house.  I used to get them instantaneously, and not 15-20 seconds later.  I am assuming this is ARLO sending all notifications to the Cloud Now as part of their Arlo Smart Service...  😞

[adcham]

Interesting to read this. Now that it's just become available in NZ I just loaded Arlo Smart on two of our cameras last night. Today I'm getting delays in push notifications and getting multiple notifications all arriving at the same time for the cameras with Arlo Smart on them- with the phone buzzing for each notification. Tried rebooting and no improvement.
The cameras without Arlo Smart work fine.
Also when filtering in the library on what objects triggered the camera it comes up with 'no recordings' i.e. filter on 'people' or 'animals' when it is clearly one of those. This just makes Arlo Smart not smart - and for an extra charge each month.

[pcuser12345]

same issue notifications pushed randomly instantly take 1 minutes to 20 notifications are extremely slow after camera trigger after video done recording

[01halo]

I don’t see anywhere to select push notification vs email- I get email notifications but they are definitely delayed.  I have a lot of cats & squirrels that I get animal notifications for that I have tried to turn off animal notifications but still get all of them

i am very disappointed in the system notifications- it really doesn’t do me much good if notifications are delayed- it means I can’t use the speaker to talk to whomever is at my door 

i was thinking of buying the doorbell but want to be assured that it will be immediate notifications 

[pcuser12345]

notifications are horrible it take up to randomly up to 1 minutes to 17 minutes after camera trigger. extremely slow notifications arlo netgear has fail to fix push notifications

[Boucher187]

Horrendous.  We need to speak up so this can be corrected.  I have a 100' driveway and camera at the bottom.  By time I get an alert the car drove all the way up the driveway and back down.

What is the point of alerts if the person is already gone before being notified????

[pcuser12345]

push notifications are totally bricked, work around use the email notifications to get instantly notifications

[pcuser12345]

work around is use email more reliable than push notifications push notifications sever are bricked it used to work now it gotten a lot slower take up 1 to 20 minutes randomly instantly notification

[Daximus]

It looks like there haven't been any updates to this in the past few months but it seems that I am having the same problems. Has there still been no fix? My push notifications tend to take upwards of 10 seconds on a very good day (it's actually very different event to event) and sometimes as long as 9-10 minutes. I'm also finding that it is quite common to get a "flood" of push notifications and email notifications all at once, and that is typically taking 5 to 10 minutes to be delivered. The issue is certainly not my internet as I have fiber and speed tests show it around 900 Mbps down and 960 Mbps up. This whole issue remains quite frustrating as I am paying for the "top-tier" plan but the system ceases to function properly.

[Daximus]

Woops! Didn't see the other pages on the thread. Has anyone been told that there is a fix in the works? Email notification "workaround" is a pain for me.

[pcuser12345]

they haven’t fix slow notifications, they update the app doesn’t say any fix notifications, netgear arlo has failed to fix slow notifications, all ways randomly instantly, push notifications 1 min between 20 minutes.

[Boucher187]

I still can not believe that we have been dealing with this since August 2018.  I am not on the paid plan and do not need my motions to be sent to the cloud and then sent back.  I imagine that is where the LOG LAG is for 30 seconds to try to identify motion and what it is.

I just want to get my instant notifications back.  How can we get this fixed.  UGH.

[pcuser12345]

no fixed until netgear engineer fix slow push notifications issues use live chat contact them.

[pcuser12345]

workaround use email notifications. push notifications are totally bricked

[Gravitar]

The problem exists because they do not do proper testing before a major release or incremental update. Jist look at the new 4K product. They releasedit filled with bugs.

They will only step up and fix the problem when the press gets involved as seen by the 4K problem

[pcuser12345]

netgear has a lot major bugs come with software. they don’t take it very seriously about software glitches. we used get instantly notifications since they added new Features detect. person, animal, other notifications package. cause root of the problem. there push notifications are in beta stage causes super slow notifications. instantly notification are broken for 2 decades.

[pcuser12345]

they already pulled it off the shelf from best buy they got major bug glitches ether hardware or frimware

[LandToSea]

This stock status report from last week sheds some light. I think we are on a sinking ship and I am returning my Arlo package to Costco before the return policy expires.

10:21 am ET February 6, 2019 (MarketWatch)

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Shares of Arlo Technologies Inc. are down more than 40% in morning trading Wednesday after the company issued a far weaker-than-expected outlook (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/arlo-technologies-stock-drops-more-than-20-on-poor-outlook-2019-02-...). "We have been patiently waiting for indications of a reacceleration of growth with new product releases, and better indications that the subscription service was compelling enough to drive a sizable base of paid subscribers," wrote Raymond James analyst Adam Tindle. "We will need to be more patient as a channel inventory cleanup and resulting contra-revenue means significant year-over-year revenue declines through 1H19." He said that investors may see Arlo in "a race against the clock" as the company is burning cash at a roughly $100 million annual run rate while having about $200 million in cash on hand. While he would like the company to focus on introducing new services that can drive subscriptions, Tindle said the company instead seems focused on user acquisition, which is "clearly costly." He rates the stock at market perform. Shares have dropped 69% over the past three months, while the S&P 500 has fallen 1%. Arlo split from its former parent Netgear Inc. (NTGR) in an August initial public offering (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/arlo-stock-soars-in-post-ipo-debut-as-investors-bet-subscription-re...).

[pcuser12345]

Case #: 40710887 i contact them send them message about the issue slow notifications, the haven’t fix the issue. they haven’t test there products, the notifications should push out instantly instead deley. still notifications are still broken. i test other camera they push out instantly, arlo netgear there push notifications push even slower AI notifications causes root of the problems, randomly stop working, work around use email notifications. even u subscribe or non subscribe deley notification are still same randomly 20 minutes & instantly pushes different camera or u don’t get notifications individual

[pcuser12345]

Same issue notifications are very 🐌 randomly work or doesn’t work at all it take 1 minutes to 10 minutes to receive notifications

[Grover517]

Was wondering why it was taking so long to get push notifications.  I already had issues with the "smart" process and delays up to 15 minutes are just unacceptable.  Yesterday, I got a push notification about a vehicle and person in my driveway (it was me leaving) and I was already over 10 minutes and 7 miles from home.  Other wierd happenings are (but not limited to);

1.  Back yard cameras were identifing motion from the trees on a windy day as a vehicle.

2.  Front door camera consistently identifies our porch rug as a package.

3.  Animal notifications even though I have them turned off in the settings.

4.  Multiple push and email notifications for the same incident.

5.  Not necessarily related to Arlo Smart but severe delays/dropouts in video communication even though I have 150/15 internet with less than 20ms ping rates, no latency and all cameras are within 20' of the base station. 

I took the advice and removed my cameras from Arlo Smart and they all now notify me within seconds so it's definately an issue on the back end with Arlo.  Think I will just cancel my subscription and go back to general notifications since the ones I get now are basically fyi and in no way can be considered reliable in regards to security.

[pcuser12345]

notifications still slow same issue, I deleted app & update, firmware base station firmware update & camera. notifications are still slow take 1 minutes to an hour. workaround use email notifications instant notifications. push notifications are still bricked.even I contacted customer service & Twitter about issue they haven't fix it

[Prolixium]

Stepping away from the frustration of this for a second.. 

I think most of us, at this point, do realize that the delays from Arlo's smart notifications are likely because the entire video clip needs to be sent to their cloud provider (looks like they use AWS as the front end, judging from public DNS records for arlo.netgear.com, and maybe the back-end as well) for processing.  I recall others have mentioned this earlier in the thread or in othe threads.  Also, longer video clips take longer to process.  Anecdotally, I've observed that during the day at peak times (early evening, when lots of folks are coming home from work) the delays for smart notifications are longer.  This makes me believe that Arlo might be hitting a limit on their processing of videos, which might be just because of the tier of compute from their cloud provider or their cloud provider is hitting some bottleneck.  The former is much more likely but just speculation.

If all of the above is correct, then Arlo should be able to make two corrective actions:

1) Update the apps and backend to allow for the customer to configure primary and secondary notification alerts for motion.  The first notification could be when a camera detects motion and starts recording.  This *should* be more-or-less instantaneous (e.g. what we get without smart notifications enabled at all).  The second notification could be similar to the smart notifications we get today that identify the type of motion and provide a photo of it.  I'm not sure how the UX would work but this should be highly configurable so customers can decide if they want to have both notifications, only the first one, or only the second (delayed) one.

2) If possible, raise the processing limits they have with their cloud provider.  This is going to cost them more money (and they may pass that onto us) but if this is indeed a bottleneck, it should help customers get smart notifications with a more consistent speed.

If someone from Arlo is watching this thread can you comment on this?

- Mark

[Grover517]

I am way past being frustrated over this and have simply settled into a stark reality.   

We just returned from an extended stay away from home and during that time, It really opened my eyes on a lot of things regarding how well Arlo actually works, or should I say doesn't work.

The reality is that almost from the beginning, the Arlo system as a whole has had a long list of issues that have lingered for month after month with only a few items actually fixed.  Toss in Arlo Smart and the list simply becomes ridiculous.   

I simply am not going to pay Arlo any longer for the "privledge" of being a software/firmware beta tester nor am I going to even consider a hardware upgrade.  As a decades long computer tech who loves to "tinker" with things like this, I usually have a boatload of patience.  But for the first time in a LONG time, I have met my match with Arlo and just don't have it in me any longer to play this game.  And what about the first time Arlo buyer that is not so technically inclined?  Are they going to continually pay a premium price for a system that is clearly not "plug and play"?  I see dozens upon dozens of online reviews of customers who bought Arlo only to return it within days. 

It's time to just go back to basics with Arlo.  I am simply tired of having to work around, live with, or otherwise reset/reconfigure the system in the hopes of getting anything to work reliably.

'

I have already cancelled my Arlo Smart subscription.