Cameras are great but system is terrible. Takes forever to load a camera/notification issues

[mikeinaction]

Hello,

I need quite a bit of researching and I was hoping that all of the bad reviews are the Arlo were just user error. But I learned very quickly that they are not. They are real issues that don't seem to go away no matter what I do with the settings. 

It takes FOREVER to load a camera. Especially through homekit. If I get a notification that someones in my driveway and click on it, it will load for almost a minute before showing me the live video. God forbid I want to talk to the person. 

Second thing is that these notifications go off all the time when someone over 50ft away in the road but half the time don't go off when someones standing right in front of it. And yes I have changed the settings and set up zones. 

Hoping for some answers before I return. I would like for these to work out. 

Thank you,

Mike

[D3bi]

Hi Mike, i agree completely and I’d also like to know if there’s anything that can be done. The live feed takes forever to load and you can only view one camera at a time. I feel like my whole house could be emptied before i can connect to see what’s going on. The notifications on the recorded activities are delayed. And it only seems to record a very short clip even though there’s still movement going on. Very dissatisfied.

[D3bi]

I was hoping for some insight by Arlo or another user to at least try make the situation better. Any suggestions at all? Please tell me this is user error...

[demannu]

I feel your pain and unfortunately there is no way to fix it, arlo is trash and a complete gimmick product with 100s of 1000s disappointed customers. Best thing you can do from here is warn every person possible to not waste their hard earned money and their important time on a truly horrible and terribly over priced "security" product. 

You'll also find that the "community managers" will completely ignore threads such as this one as they know there is nothing they can do to help with these problems. 

Worst part is, its likely they could quite easily fix this by allowing people access to the RTSP protocol but they wont as this would take people away from their over priced subscription service designed to cripple the product YOU own so they profit off your misery. 

[st_shaw]

Currently for me, it's been taking over 40 seconds for a camera to load through the web app.  The iPhone app takes about 6 seconds, so that method is much faster.

Not sure if this is part of the issue, but targets need to move side-to-side to trigger the IR motion detection.  A person literally standing in front of the camera will not trigger it.  Cars on a road are moving side-to-side and are a stronger source of IR than a person, so they will detect at longer range.

[D3bi]

Thank you so much, D, for replying! It’s been frustrating as i had such high hopes. I had much better quality video and streaming with the free camera i had from my internet provider. It seems there are very inexpensive systems that provide a better platform so I’m super confused why Arlo would settle for this. It’s truly horrible! I will begin warning people asap!

[D3bi]

Hi St,
Thanks for the clarity. That does make sense now that you mention it. Unfortunately, that’s a terrible flaw in the system. I suppose i could put a sign up requesting all trespassers to move side to side as they enter our property. It seems that an intermediate level programmer could correct these issues if Arlo decided to truly remedy the problems. Fingers crossed that they do!

[st_shaw]

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@D3bi wrote:
Hi St,
Thanks for the clarity. That does make sense now that you mention it. Unfortunately, that’s a terrible flaw in the system. I suppose i could put a sign up requesting all trespassers to move side to side as they enter our property. It seems that an intermediate level programmer could correct these issues if Arlo decided to truly remedy the problems. Fingers crossed that they do!

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It's how passive IR sensors work, and would be the same for any manufacturer's camera with an IR sensor. Some cameras use pixel-changes to detect motion, but this approach has a high false alarm rate and is not compatible with battery-powered cameras. Arlo Smart attempts to solve this by using the IR to detect motion, then sending the clip to the cloud for complex pixel-based analysis that cannot be done on a battery-powered camera.