Ultra 2 Sound Notifications Help VMS5440-2CCNAS

[MichyA]

Good Afternoon,

Cameras are great but keep on getting so many sound alerts from the wind which is draining the battery quickly. Also annoying to get so many alerts, that I basically have turned off the cameras and only able to use them when absolutely no wind.  I have Reolink cameras that do not do this - PS bought Arlo to replace Reolink cams.

I have turned off microphone and gotten less alerts, but, whats the use of having these cameras if I cant hear anything.

Also, the front yard camera can not see the 2 lane (rural) highway in front of our house, and we also get repeated sound alerts from cars going by.

I have also adjusted to audio to zero and still get many alerts.

My parents have this same setup - 4 cams - and they do not get the alerts like I do.

Can anyone help me to figure out how to solve this before I have to return them?

[dcfox1]

If you have "Audio Detected" in your rules which is right below the "motion detected" uncheck it and it would not activate on sounds lie wind and cars even though you can't see them. 

[MichyA]

I have under "audio" settings reduce wind noise, etc. all on.

Is there somewhere else that I'm not aware to change these settings? Newbie to this system.

Thank you!!

[dcfox1 · Accepted solution]

In the Mode-Rules, not the camera settings.  Here is a link for it. 

About Arlo Modes and Rules

[MichyA]

Thank you so much!! Changed to the settings like you said. We are calm winds right now and not much traffic. My luck!

[steveUK2]

me too but did you not buy it to capture sound?  my mic is set to its lowest setting and traffic from the next street keeps setting it off every minute.  I told arlo I needed a camera to record audio and to be able to capture on going verbal harrasment from my next door neighbors at no point did they mention the camera battery would not lost 1 day doing this.  I feel ripped off they wont even talk to me about it you just get told to turn off the audio.

[StephenB]

---

@steveUK2 wrote:

me too but did you not buy it to capture sound?

---

Capturing sound and triggering recordings when there is sound are two different things.

You can capture sound (with normal microphone levels), but not record when sound is detected.  My own system is set up that way (there is too much background noise to trigger recordings for the outdoor cameras).

---

@steveUK2 wrote:

I told arlo I needed a camera to record audio and to be able to capture on going verbal harrasment from my next door neighbors 

---

Would motion detection be adequate here?  It does assume that the neighbors are close enough to the cameras to trigger.

Does the harrassment happen within a predictable time window (late afternoon perhaps)  If so, you could schedule audio detection to be only turned on within that window.

Another option is to power one of the cameras, which of course will eliminate any battery drain.

---

@steveUK2 wrote:

 at no point did they mention the camera battery would not lost 1 day doing this. 

---

Well, the more you record the more quickly the battery drains.  No way around that.  FWIW, this is a user-user forum, and the advice to turn audio notification off is coming from other users - not Arlo.

[steveUK2]

not in the UK filming your neighbors property is allowed under the GDPR but it makes you the data controller so they could tie me up forever with data requests which I would need to comply with.  Arlo are blissfully aware of the laws governing data protection outside of the US, which is evident when you engage with them via chat and they needlessly get you to divulge sensitive data. 

I've had to turn off the sound trigger on that camera so this doesn't meet my expectations based on the information arlo gave me pre sale, I have left it with them to come up with a solution

[MichyA]

Try what dcfox1 said above. This seems to be helping me tremendously and still getting all audio recorded, just not recording wind noise and car noise going by now. Also, when I tried what dcfox1 said in "mode" setting, noticed that I had to turn off "all other sounds" also in settings (click on settings, then click on smart settings, and turn off "all other sounds"). I figured that (all other sounds) would be a good thing to have on to record like owls, etc, that were not viewable to camera, but in turn, this hurt my situation.

[MichyA]

dcfox1: Update: All seems to be working well, YAY!!  My mom was going to be driving by yesterday afternoon, so I asked to repeatably honk when going by. I did not get any recordings from it or any other car noises either since then. Light winds and no recordings yet either. I'll wait to see what happens when we get higher winds to make sure resolved to  accept solution.

Thank you so much for you expertise!! I only had a few more days left to return them and really did not want to. 

With so much gratitude,

Michelle

[StephenB]

---

@steveUK2 wrote:

not in the UK filming your neighbors property is allowed under the GDPR but it makes you the data controller so they could tie me up forever with data requests which I would need to comply with. 

---

I can't speak to the law (especially in other countries).  But I am wondering if the audio recording has the same problem (even if the camera isn't aimed at their property, it is picking up their audio).  I'm also wondering if there is a better way to try and deal with the underlying conflict.

Assuming that the audio portion is ok:  The camera uses PIR (passive IR) motion sensors to detect motion.  So if you want to record audio-only, you could put some opaque tape over the camera lens.  Then aim the camera so the PIR sensors will trigger on the neighbor's motion.

Another possibility is that you could add a camera that points to the neighbor's property, but is set to never record anything.  You could also mask that camera's lens, to make it clear that it isn't capturing their video.  You can then use that to trigger a recording from your existing camera (aimed to only cover your property).  Audio and video would come from the existing camera, the added one is only used for triggering.