Camera positioning setting - option to disable shaded area

[Malificent]

Can we have an option to be able to enable/disable the shaded top third area in the camera positioning setting so that it will pick up motion?

It’s completely unacceptable to pay $700 for a base camera system only to have them become completely useless with a programmed in dead zone that can not be disabled as I’ve seen in other post this is an ongoing issue for the last 2yrs which arlo clearly has no intent to resolve. Needless to say I will not be using arlo cameras anymore at my home.

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

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@Malificent wrote:
Can we have an option to be able to enable/disable the shaded top third area in the camera positioning setting so that it will pick up motion?

It’s completely unacceptable to pay $700 for a base camera system only to have them become completely useless with a programmed in dead zone 

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It's not a "programmed in dead zone".  The PIR sensors aren't just aren't as reliable or sensitive in that region  But they still should respond to some motion there.

You could test this by putting an activity zone in the shaded area, and then see if you get any motion recordings.

In any event, I don't think this is something that can be addressed in the software.

[Malificent]

As far as I can tell it is programmed to ignore all motion in the shadowed zone. I have tested it with and without activity zones and with adjusting the motion sensitive. As soon as any object moves into the shadowed zone it is completely ignored and as I’ve heard from other users this “feature” was sent out over a firmware update about 2yrs ago

[StephenB]

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@Malificent wrote:
 I’ve heard from other users this “feature” was sent out over a firmware update about 2yrs ago

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They added the shading to the camera positioning screen about 2 years ago.  But that just called attention to the issue.  The underlying cause is physical (the placement of the PIR sensors).  Those sensors aren't capturing pixels, they just give total amount of IR that reaches them.  So it is not possible to program them to ignore IR at the top of the field of view.

FWIW, I do see some motion detection at the top of the field of view - one camera in particular often detects vehicles there.