Arlo Ultra motion detection triggers out of activity zone

[Seth809]

One of my cameras is set up at the front gate of my property looking toward the road.  Its a county road so probably only one car per every few minutes.  The road is 60ft from my gate so i need to utilize the activity zone to capture only gate movement and movement on my land.  I have tried different size zones down to about a 2ft by 2ft box 100ft away from the road.  I have also adjusted the sensitivity down to 5%.  With both of these settings its still going off with cars driving by. 

I read on the Arlo website you have to either have a Smart Subscription or the camera must be wired to power for activity zones to work.  Since this camera system is only 1mo old, I show to still have the free Smart 12mo Subscription.  I meet one of the requriements for Activity Zones to work yet they dont.

[Naiyas]

@StephenB 

Thanks for the detailed write up.

That sounds like a reasonable assessment of how things should work between local and cloud activity zones with/without adaptor power. I'm in the position where it's clear that this outline isn't what I see when I disconnect adaptor power - I continue to get notifications for motion outside activity zones. BUT given I can connect adaptor power I don't actually suffer this issue at the moment.

I have also reconsidered the positions of my future expansion to enable me to get adaptor power to the cameras when I get them so I will avoid the current battery related issues there appears to be.

[n1976jmk]

@StephenB 

@JamesC 

@ShayneS 

@JessicaP 

good evening all, I know it may sound hard to believe but as of around 6pm this evening.  My two Ultra cameras started to work normal again stopped reporting motion detection on my lock screen and recordings into my library.

this is the second night in a row they started working normal again around 6pm.

Can you advise if there is so type of backend job causing it work during certain hours?

lets see what happens tomorrow.

 Thank you for your continued support! 

[n1976jmk]

@JamesC 

Hi James, unfortunately the activity zones are acting up again the last few days.

Could you please inform the powers that be so it can get resolved again?

i would greatly appreciate it!

r/

Jonathan 

[n11]

@n1976jmk

My experience has been that the false activity starts when the wind kicks up in the morning or early afternoon, and stops when the wind dies down.

I've had as many as 150 to 200 during the day and then none that night. Perhaps it's the wind or maybe it's the sun (or a combination). Whatever the cause it does seem to follow the same pattern.

[n1976jmk]

@n11 

that is an amazing observation.

it makes total sense too!!!!

thanks n11!!!

[Tech-D]

@StephenB   Thank you for the clarification.  How you explained makes more sense to me and my main concern with my battery depleting faster and the solar panel not able to keep up.

A strange issue I'm seeing as of late is a single Alert on the phone of Motion, going into the app I don't see any recordings for that time.  I don't have a local USB/SD Card to verify if a recording was made.

[Navigator243]

Not fixed
One camera is still picking up large vehicles way outside my activity zone and one camera only picks up every 4th or so activity in that zone. These camera are getting worse, just a few months ikd

[Superluminal]

Just installed my new Arlo Video Doorbell yesterday.  Went through the app, created all my settings, and immediately created activity zones because I live in a townhome with an active sidewalk in front and a flag on the front post, so didn't want any alerts to trigger off of motion in those areas of the camera's view.

Well, the Arlo Video Doorbell is completely ignoring those Activity Zones, and is triggering off of people walking on the sidewalk well outside any Zone, triggering it seems on the tip of the flag waving in the upper-right corner of the screen, and triggering on apparently just cars driving by in the background (again, nowhere near any of the Zones).

I see multiple threads on this subject on this website, this one here with 6 pages now being the latest one, and running for 3 months already.  As an engineer, I have to ask: what's the delay in getting this issue fixed?  I just got the Video Doorbell activated yesterday afternoon and already have had to delete 30+ videos for recordings made that, according to the Activity Zones I created, should never have triggered.

[lewpiper]

I currently have two Arlo Ultra cameras, one of which faces the street in front of my house. It is on this camera that there is a large amount of battery drain because EVERY car that passes is recorded.

It was my thought that I could combat this by using an Activity Zone which would allow the camera only to record say if someone stepped on the lawn of the property. However, I still continue to occasionally get notifications for cars and within the Arlo App (2.17) on iOS every car that passes is recorded as motion. 

Is there a way to say I only want motion recorded if it is in a certain area? This would help because the camera records 15-45 clips a day with the amount of traffic my street gets which kills the battery pretty quickly. It is my understanding that Activity Zones still record all motion, but upload the video and process it;  then decide if a notification should be sent to the Arlo App. Which only half solves my problem as I would prefer just no video be recorded at all if in a certain area of the frame. 

Thank you in advance for any suggestions. 

[rdegraci2020]

@Superluminal

Speaking as a developer,  the activity zone zones would be used to creating an inverted mask (blacked out area where pixels are set to black) for filtering out the area of non-interest, when doing movement detection. Usually this can be done by converting the video into individual image frames and then applying the inverted-mask on a frame by frame basis to "black out the pixels" of the area of non-interest and then applying motion detection and object identification to non-masked pixels in the resulting frames.  

As for why they are having technical difficulty, applying this algorithm, I don't know.

[GaryHo527]

Firmware
Camera:1.070.50.4_223_df6cd69
SmartHub: 1.16.1.4_550_7655954

A thousand bugs bought a trash

Activities zone not working (wow, already recognized a issue here), researching from this community, firmware is much more update than your fixed one which release on 18/12/2019. Also tried a method to create a custom mode instead using ARMED mode but still fail.

Looking forward to hear from you.

[getthefunout]

So far I've noticed no difference in the amount of "false alarm" recordings. Still hundreds a day. Also now I'm getting frequent notifications for "other" motion despite that notification being disabled.

[n1976jmk]

Hey fun!

Yes, many of us are experiencing the same as you, you are sadly not alone.

Arlo is aware and working on it but there is no date/timeframe for a resolution.

But James or Shayne usually post when they fix it.

[rdegraci2020]

Looks like I am once again (as of 6/17/2020) getting IOS push notifications for 'motion', even though the smart notifications are set for People and Vehicles.

AC powered Ultra Camera = Yes
Activity Zone enabled = Yes
Trial Cloud Subscription = Yes
Smart Notifications = People Yes
Smart Notifications = Vehicle Yes
Smart Notifications = Animals No
Smart Notifications = Other Motion No

Expected behavior:

A) Motion, Vehicles, People, Animals outside of the activity zone should not result in a video saved in the cloud library.

B) Vehicles and people detected within the activity zone should result in the video saved to the cloud library and a notification sent to my phone, labeled 'vehicle' or 'person'.


Actual Behavior:

A) Any Motion, Vehicles, Animals, and People detected outside the activity zone are not identified as people or vehicles, animals but saved as videos, in the cloud library, labeled “motion”.   

B) Vehicles and people detected in the activity zone results in a video saved in the cloud library and a notification is sent to my phone.

New behavior 

C) An iOS push notification is being sent, labeled 'motion detected', when motion is detected.  😞

[Oldblade]

James 

I hope this helps I have put up a video of the issue I am having here is a link 

Please get this sorted the notifications are driving me crazy

https://youtu.be/bfUeElwdPnc

[SteveS_66]

Nice video. Yes, that's pretty much the issue we're all having unfortunately.

[mpc5473]

I have a new set up of two Arlo ultra cameras. Both have the street within the edges of their view. I have set up activity zones well short of the street. I have reduced motion sensitivity. However, the cameras continue to activate when a car drives by. Any help?

Thanks

[n1976jmk]

Hi MPC!

Just a couple questions, is your cameras using AC power and or do you have subscriptions for the cameras?

Thanks!

[ShayneS · Accepted solution]

Hello Community,

Arlo deployed a cloud update enhancing Activity Zone accuracy. This should improve the experience for users reporting symptoms of motion detection alerts and recordings occurring outside of their defined Activity Zones. We are continuing to monitor Activity Zone behavior and will provide additional enhancements in the coming weeks

[n11]

@ShayneS 

"Arlo deployed a cloud update enhancing Activity Zone accuracy."

It would be very helpful if you stated when that cloud update was made. It seems that there was another announcement like that in the last week or two and it didn't help with activity outside of activity zones. Is this a new update?

[n11]

@ShayneS 

Yesterday I posed this quote and question to @ShayneS

• "Arlo deployed a cloud update enhancing Activity Zone accuracy."
• It would be very helpful if you stated when that cloud update was made. It seems that there was another announcement like that in the last week or two and it didn't help with activity outside of activity zones. Is this a new update?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He hasn't had a chance to answer yet which is no problem, since very little time has passed. However, the answer really doesn't make any difference because here we are less than a day later and the problem continues with spurious recordings for motion outside of the activity zone (14 recordings in the last 75 minutes).

[JamesC]

A recent update was deployed to the Arlo cloud that should address the accuracy of Activity Zones. This should improve accuracy by more reliably sending notifications only when motion occurs within defined zones. More work is being done to improve the behavior of Arlo Smart notifications and to fix the Activity Zones error that some users are seeing when not using an AC adapter (battery only). Stay tuned for future updates.

JamesC

[Oldblade]

James same Issue with updated Firmware

see video on Youtube

https://youtu.be/K-B_NLu0SLk

[Onegr8dane]

My App was updated on June 30. 2020 and recently the firmware in my cameras was updated to 1.070.50.4_223_df6...

This has NOT helped the situation. My cameras still ignore the activity zone(s). One that I have in my carport reports EVERY time the city bus, or similarly large truck passes  in the street 30-40 feet away. Yet it will not report a person walking across the field of view only 15 feet away. The cameras are just about worthless for the purpose of security the way they act now. 

Arlo must be able to do better.

[Sevakesmailian]

Its been a mess!!! I don’t understand how a company this big (arlo/netgear) can have so many problems! You charge premium prices for your stuff but cant deliver... I just want to sell my arlo ultras and go to a company that actually works! I could care less for 4k when you have no recording or choppy voice or you cant connect to your camera... Arlo can’t even give us secure homekit but wants us to use the trash app they have & pay for services that u cant use!! Im starting to really hate Arlo