Arlo Ultra Activity Zone Does Not Function

[Goodoltom]

Hey there! 

I’ve looked at previous threads referring to what seems to be an issue for others around activity zones, but it seems that the suggestions don’t solve my issue. 

The Problem: Excessive alerts and notifcations despite activity zones. 

I’ve attached a photo of the Activity Zone along with a clip of a truck that’s clearly outside of the zone. In other posts, I’ve read that I need to use a different mode outside of the “Armed” mode which I’ve done. I’ve also turned off Vehicles and All Other Motion Smart Notifications which have resulted in the same issue. 

Looking for any other suggestions

[Boggs]

Well now my ultra cameras trigger but record 0s. I get a picture and that’s it. My old Arlo Pro still works but all 4 ultras quit taking video. Frustrating!!

[Pguich]

Agreed. Really frustrating. I get 300 notifications now, but just yesterday I had to walk up to the camera and do jumping jacks to get noticed. Today, it picks up every car that drives by in the upper left corner...

[Pguich]

Here's the picture as attachment

[Pguich]

I tried to reposition the camera, hoping that the street will be less prominent in the field of view, but the camera still successfully ignores the activity zone. Only way to avoid hundreds of movies is to reduce the motion sensitivity to close to zero... meaning it also won’t pick up anyone entering my property. Yay! Camera is now as useful as a fake plastic camera, hopefully deterring would-be burglars. Only 50 times more expensive.

I'm so regretting buying this... already left an honest review on the site where I purchased it. I’ll update my review when Arlo updates the functionality. 

Attachrd the Activity zone as drawn, the red circle is where the cars drive by that the camera ALWAYS feels the need to record. 

[JamesC]

Pguich,

The engineering team is currently investigating some issues users have reported with activity zones due to specific shapes not resulting in accurate motion detection. If possible, try recreating your zones using square/rectangular shapes and test again to see if you get better results. Alternatively, you could try angling the camera further down so the PIR avoids the street.

JamesC

[PhylumT]

“You could try angling the camera”

This isn’t a solution or a work around. Detection is pure garbage, and angling the camera to cover minimal area drives the use of this to the point of you might as well disconnect the camera. Looking at the picture his area is actually pretty small. Making it smaller means he may not see a person approaching, or capture important information such as a vehicle that pulls up or leaves providing invaluable information if a theft occurs.

My front camera will capture a person leaving my mailbox more likely than walking to it... my cameras will sometimes misidentify animals as people. Zoom will zoom on a person that sets it off then track to some leaf moving off to the side. Activity zones do not work, period. The camera should NOT record an animal if I say NO to animals once the camera determines its an animal, doing otherwise impacts battery length which is horrible in a high traffic area. The video is laughable to claim it’s 4k, and you can’t get any way to actually see a license plate. A number of times people were asked to provide pictures, videos etc and essentially told for a while they did something wrong in how they set it up when all along Arlo HAD to know what they were selling was far under the claims.

[Boggs]

I couldn’t adjust mine to spare battery and remain useful. It also inexplicably stopped recording when dark. Customer support couldn’t resolve. I took it back and set up a power over Ethernet system using blue iris software and a $240 i6-6600 pc recording 24/7. Works like a champ! 2K Sony starvis sensor cameras offer great low light capabilities.

[Pguich]

Hi James,

i appreciate the suggestion. I created one perfectly square activity zone, but the camera still seems to completely ignore it. Today, so far, my camera recorded close to 800 activities, of which only 8 were within the activity zone. 

The attached shows the activity zone, original/default size. Motion sensitivity is set to 50%, the minimum I need to actually capture all movements within my property. The picture is slightly zoomed as well. 

Do you have an ETA for when this will be fixed by the developers?

many thanks,

pascal

[Lmhno1]

My Arlo Ultra activity zone doesn’t work. I also turned off animal and vehicle detection. Yet cameras keep recording everything. Im on a subscription plan. I’m on batteries only, but surely for the price of this system I should be able to get activity zone?

[TomMac]

It is known and a fix is coming

[J-BC]

... and “WINTER IS COMING” as well... it just took like 7 seasons to HBO to let it come

Lets cross fingers it take Arlo less than that for the fix to be released. So far... the experience with Ultra is erasing the positive satisfaction I hold for years from the original Arlo

[J-BC]

“You could try angling the camera”
REALLY?

We heard something similar with the iPhone antena some years ago; when they tried to blame the user for holding the phone ob the wrong way.

We keep hearing the same mantra that engineering team is working on it... so fat months are gone and the camera still do. Ot deliver on the basic differentiator promise of their flagship product.

Terrible experience so far with Ultra

[Scottybm]

We have the 4 arlo pro 2 cameras and just upgraded to the Ultra. Have set up activity zones with the Ultra. It's plugged in and still catches motion outside of the activity zone. Seems this has been going on since January and still no fix.

Have attached a screenshot of the motion and zone.

Also will notice that the wifi connection to the Ultra sometimes drops to less then one bar then turns orange. Then out of no where it will go back to 2 bars. Bast station and camera are in the same spot as the Arlo Pro 2 was at.

[endosonix]

So, Arlo Ultra activity zones do not function at all.  The software still flags activity from the entire camera view, regardless of the areas that are marked to be ignored.  I spoke to Arlo Customer Support and was told that this is a known issue that Arlo engineers are working on.  I think it is totally unacceptable for a manufacturer to sell a premium hardware product accompanied by software that should still be in beta testing - corporate greed at it's finest. 

[njfoses]

My understanding is that activity zones via a smart plan will still record to the librabry outside of the zone setup, you will just not be notified. Hate to say but i think this is working as intended.

[endosonix]

I appreciate your response, but you'll see multiple cases, here in the community, of the same issue.  The real problem here is that they released a product marketed as state of the art with very buggy software.  They also acknowledge directly that these issues exist, yet offer nothing other than "we're working on it". 

My central complaint is that they didn't solve these issues during beta testing of the hardware/software.  I worked for over a decade as a manufacturer of security hardware with proprietary software onboard for corporate customers and I can promise you we would have seen a mass exodus of those customers, had we released a product with issues like this.  And even moreso if we gave absolutely no roadmap to our customers on a fix for the issues.

I just want reliable security at my home and every day that I receive hundreds of false-positive alerts pushes me closer to returning the system.

[njfoses]

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@endosonix wrote:

I appreciate your response, but you'll see multiple cases, here in the community, of the same issue.  The real problem here is that they released a product marketed as state of the art with very buggy software.  They also acknowledge directly that these issues exist, yet offer nothing other than "we're working on it". 

My central complaint is that they didn't solve these issues during beta testing of the hardware/software.  I worked for over a decade as a manufacturer of security hardware with proprietary software onboard for corporate customers and I can promise you we would have seen a mass exodus of those customers, had we released a product with issues like this.  And even moreso if we gave absolutely no roadmap to our customers on a fix for the issues.

I just want reliable security at my home and every day that I receive hundreds of false-positive alerts pushes me closer to returning the system.

---

Read my response again. What i am saying is that i am not sure it is an actual issue. It may be working as designed.

[st_shaw]

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@njfoses wrote:

My understanding is that activity zones via a smart plan will still record to the librabry outside of the zone setup, you will just not be notified. Hate to say but i think this is working as intended.

---

This is definitely how it was designed to operate when Smart was first released. I don't know if the behavior has changed, because I'm not using zones now.

Regardless, it's important to aim battery-powered cameras away from unwanted activity as much as possible, rather than rely on zones, because activity detected outside the zone is still uploaded to the cloud for analysis and that will consume battery life.

[endosonix]

I understood your response. It is a known issue and I just spoke to technical support about an hour ago, and not only did they confirm that it’s a known issue with the video processing handled by Arlo’s back-end servers, but that their eng. team has been aware and working to correct it since March. You’re welcome to contact them yourself for confirmation. They also said that the same issue is occurring for owners of Arlo Pro 2 cameras, because of the issue with processing happening on the back-end. Video analytics is extremely complicated to perform by a server and without a really robust software platform, so I uniquely understand the Arlo team’s, as this is my professional background. I only wish they would provide more concrete answers as to their timeline to fix the problem. ~ Cheers

[endosonix]

I totally agree that constant activity, whether ignored by zoning or not, is an inherent challenge with battery powered cameras. I wish battery life was the issue for me. But when you have a cloud service that operates in a first in-first out scenario, 100’s of false-positive recordings in my cloud storage means that there’s a chance an actual valid recording could be lost. If that happened to be a recording needed for evidence of theft, for example, then the usefulness of the system has been diminished.

[J-BC]

Just read the simple message on the app for activity zones. It says we define the activity zone where we want to “receive or ignore” yet that thing send alerts for everything

Just since yesterday when I went to sleep, it recorded 81 events and sent over 12 notifications. Before 7:30AM. All of them from the camera with the zones defined

That is way far from the key feature promise.

Battery was not much of a concern for me, still I added a Solar panel, so is less of a concern even now. But been annoyed 12 times since midnight with False positives... that concerns and bug me... i do not want to be notified if a car pass out of the defined activity zone

[Mcgh10]

My activity zones aren’t working either.. I tried plugging into A/C and they worked only while being plugged into a/c power. As soon as I unplugged I got an error message on the app stating zones are disabled when not connected to a/c. I feel tricked by Arlo as it was never stated anywhere that they had to be connected to power to be used, I found that after purchasing and having issues and deep diving into google to see if anyone else found a fix. Complete abuse of advertising by Arlo. Very disappointed. Should have bought Ring cameras. May still return this piece of junk, but now I’ve already drilled into my home.

[RSC1]

On my living room camera, it worked as an inactivity zone. The area not delimited detected motion.

Now I have a backyard camera and motion is detected no matter what I do. I have inverted the delimited areas and motion is detected either way.

[Russ3ll]

Did you ever figure this out. I believe that everything on the lower 2/3s will be recorded in your library. The activity zones simply send or don’t send a notification. Again every event even outside your custom zones gets recorded in the library. The zones just define which ones should trigger a notification. I still get false alerts sometimes. I’m going to try positioning the street in the upper 1/3 of screen the best I can later.

[RSC1]

That explains it. I knew about the 2/3. I was under the impression that activity zones determined whether the cameras triggered.