"People-only" sensitivity settings -- still picking up animals

[SeanAndKaty]

Just signed up for Smart premier package and am now using this filtering option. I have cameras set to detect "People Only" but they still pick up cats and various other country critters. Very frustrating! How to improve this?  Is the only option to also adjust my motion sensitivity down a bit?

[StephenB]

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@SeanAndKaty wrote:

Just signed up for Smart premier package and am now using this filtering option. I have cameras set to detect "People Only" but they still pick up cats and various other country critters. Very frustrating! How to improve this?  Is the only option to also adjust my motion sensitivity down a bit?

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Do you mean that the notifications are classifying animals as people?  If so, you could use activity zones and turn down the motion sensitivity to reduce the false alerts.

If you mean that the system is still recording the animals - then it is designed to do that.  There is a filter you can use when browsing the library that hides the unwanted classifications.

[SeanAndKaty]

No, I'm saying that my Smart Notifications are set to detect people only -- yet I'm getting notifications when a cat walks through the camera's field of view. As for activity zones, these cameras aren't hard-wired so that's not an option at all anyway.

[StephenB]

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@SeanAndKaty wrote:

No, I'm saying that my Smart Notifications are set to detect people only -- yet I'm getting notifications when a cat walks through the camera's field of view.

Ok, But do those notifications say "Person detected ..." or "Animal detected ..."

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@SeanAndKaty wrote:

 As for activity zones, these cameras aren't hard-wired so that's not an option at all anyway.

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Actually it is, since you have a subscription.  Cloud Activity Zones work a bit differently from the hard-wired ones- whenever motion is detected, the video is streamed to the cloud.  Then the cloud detects if the motion is in the zone. If it's not, the recording (and notification) is dropped.

So the activity zones won't help battery life - buy you can use them to prune back unwanted notifications and recordings.

[JamesC]

SeanAndKaty,

Are you able to provide screenshots of the unwanted notifications you're receiving along with a screenshot of your Arlo Smart Notification settings?

JamesC

[SeanAndKaty]

I guess I could, but that would be an image of a cat behind my garage, and a screenshot showing only the “people” box checked on the Smart Notifications settings page for that camera. Would that really help anything?

[LandJS]

Though the video may be a cat, what did the notification say it was.  I have had smart call bees people, people animals and motion vehicles.  The only one I can really understand is that sometimes when a motion triggers the cam my car is in the pic because that cam includes part of my driveway.  The other two cases are not explainable.  The thing is that if a cat triggered the cam but smart determined it was a person then you would get a notification.  Just look in the library and see if it is called a person even though it was a cat.

[StephenB]

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@LandJS wrote:

Though the video may be a cat, what did the notification say it was.  I have had smart call bees people, people animals and motion vehicles.  ...

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I've asked for this twice already, hopefully @SeanAndKaty will understand that it's a key piece of this puzzle.

[SeanAndKaty]

OK, I'm catching on... I think I was confusing my "alerts" and "notifications" but I see what you mean. In the "cat" notification in question, I have the camera set to only detect people -- no animals, no "other motion" -- but the notification says "animal." So there's a bit of a discrepancy there, as it of course wasn't supposed to alert for an animal. I also have another "Driveway" camera set to detect only people and vehicles, but we got an alert the other night that said "animal" and it was indeed a cat (not even a big animal!). So at least I now have more info -- the cameras seem to be giving me notifications for things they're not supposed to, and even identifying them as the type of motion they're not set to pick up. Hopefully that's all a little clearer now.

[LandJS]

One other thing to look at before I'm no help.  Did you just check your settings to be sure they are where you set them.  I ask because there was a recent app update and that seems to turn all notifications back on and then of course you need to turn some back off.

[SeanAndKaty]

You've been help! Yes, I've checked the Smart Notification settings on all the cameras -- where you click the buttons for detection of People, Animals, Vehicles and Other Motion, and they're all set only to People, except for the driveway, where I also checked Vehicles.

[StephenB]

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@SeanAndKaty wrote:

You've been help! Yes, I've checked the Smart Notification settings on all the cameras -- where you click the buttons for detection of People, Animals, Vehicles and Other Motion, and they're all set only to People, except for the driveway, where I also checked Vehicles.

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Ok.  So of course you shouldn't be getting Animal notifications.

I'd try restarting the base station, and then try removing one of the cameras from the account, and then re-adding it.  Let us know if anything changes (in particular if the unwanted animal alerts stop from the camera you re-added).

If that doesn't change anything, then you'll probably need to contact Arlo support: https://www.arlo.com/en-us/support/contact.aspx

[LandJS]

It must be a virus lol.  For the last two weeks I couldn't get notifications for motion on cameras where it was turned on and now I'm getting them for cameras where it's turned off.  They are all in the library and properly labeled so obviously it is an issue with the programming for sending notifications.  Support wants to treat it like a hardware issue.  How hard is it to understand "it's in the library and properly labeled"

[Reallyconfused]

I have the same issue of getting alerts when I clearly should not, as per the selection in my "smart" plan.

Clearly no one at Arlo is doing anything about it other than asking if we have done all the usual things we all have learned to do when problems arise [which is often]

The number of times one of my cameras has gone off line by itself, requiring me to delete and re pair it should prevent ANY other problems from EVER occurring. But yet I still get alerts for cats and racoons and birds and bees etc. even when I have unselected animals in the app. And yes moderator, I have tried to un select it on my laptop portal also. No difference.

[SeanAndKaty]

We actually got this working pretty well. I was getting notifications in the middle of the night that would wake us up -- pretty annoying. After I started the Arlo Smart subscription, I realized that I wasn't understanding the difference between alerts and notifications. We now have our detection settings on most cameras to People only. We're getting no notifications waking us up now but when we check the library in the morning, there have been some recordings made of cats and raccoons. But fortunately no notifications. I'm not sure why the system is recording something that I'm not interested in seeing -- it DOES identify it as an "animal" alert, and it knows I don't have "animal" selected. So it's not a bother. All I'd suggest is to go through your settings thoroughly and make sure you look at every one for anything you might have overlooked. And you may well have already done that. Hope this is of some help. I was starting to really get frustrated with this system and we really rely on it for home security. But all seems to be working pretty well now... Best of luck; let me know if I can help at all....

[SeanAndKaty]

Yes, things have significantly improved, fortunately. See my previous post in this thread from a few minutes ago. Thanks!

[LandJS]

Just be aware that most times when the app updates it usually toggles them all back on so if they start again after a update you will need to un toggle them again.  Even without a update for the last three days I found mine all toggled back on and had to un toggle the ones I didn't want on.  So far today they've stayed put.