ULTRA: Activity OUTSIDE Activity Zone Triggers Recording.

[UltraSecurity]

Installed a brand new ULTRA 2 Camera system. I've been though many different configurations but nothing is working the way its suppose to work! I feel like this system is just not ready for Prime Time! So frustrating!
 
1. Why am I getting Notifications and Recordings when there is Motion Clearly OUTSIDE my Activity Zone !?!?
2. Is the Motion Sensitivity Level for Activity IN the Activity Zone, or OUTSIDE the Activity Zone or BOTH !?!?
3. In what order does Arlo Ultra process video/recordings/notifications...  Motion Detected > Record > Process > If Motion in Activity Zone then Notify and Post Video ??
 
What can I do besides waiting for all the software and hardware bugs to get fixed !?!?

[UltraSecurity]

Why would this activity zone notify me and post video when cars pass by on the street !?

[JamesC]

UltraSecurity,

On Arlo Ultra, all created zones are considered inclusion zones. This means, activity inside the created zone should result in an alert and a recording. This takes place on the cloud, so motion is detected, the cloud makes a determination based on your user settings and then decides if you get a notification/recording.

Could you provide a screenshot from your cameras perspective? That might help us better understand why you're experiencing an issue.

I missed the included screenshot...

We've had reports from some users that activity zones are less accurate when using irregular (non-square) shapes. This could be what you're experiencing here (the development team is investigating these reports).

You might try recreating the activity zone with that in mind to see if accuracy improves. Another solution could be to adjust the angle of the camera slightly more in accordance with the positioning tips shown here to avoid detection from the street: How do I position my Arlo Ultra camera to detect motion in specific areas?

JamesC

[crriserjr]

So I have been fighting this very same thing for a few months, including spending over an hour on the phone with tech support.  Everything worked fine when I originally installed, but when I took my camera down the first time to charge the battery, after putting it back in place, I could never get this to work right.

I just gave up.  Notifications were fine, but recording EVERYTHING when motion happened outside the zone, especially since the camera faced a street, would burn up my battery charge too quickly.

SOLUTION:  as the tech team noted above, changing the zone from the convoluted, follow the contour of the shape perfectly, zone, to one that was essentially a tall rectangle (less geometric) solved this for me immediately.  I even had to increase sensitivity again to trigger the recording faster.

Now, I think this stinks.  After all, the benefit of the Ultra is the higher number of "points" that you can use to shape your inclusion zone to make it more "exact".  Turns out it did the opposite and made it useless.

I still need to experiment with just how "crazy" you can make the shape and still have the camera function right, but for now, making the zone a rectangle worked well enough.  What I ended up doing is creating multiple, overlapping square/rectangle zones that covered my area that I wanted to trigger in.  That seems to have solved this for now.

[JamesC]

Late last night , a back end fix went out to address this issue. Please test activity zones again to see if you still experience the same behavior.

Thank you,

JamesC

[crriserjr]

JAMESC:  well tentatively I have to say that this seems to have done the job.  I spent the last 24 hours trying different shapes and getting as close to the street as I could with my “zone” to see if traffic would trigger.

Its pretty darn good.  There will occasionally be a recording of a car going by outside of the zone (well, only two in 24 hours) but I don’t get notifications of those because the system correctly ignores anything but something tagged as a PERSON (vs just MOTION).

In any event, if anyone is reading this, I believe this “fix” that you guys pushed to your own system worked.

THANK YOU.  I sincerely appreciate Arlo working on a solution for this.  It will save my battery life and help extend the usefullness of my system.

[UltraSecurity]

I sure hope this works !!

I've been struggling with this for MONTHS !!

If this actually does work, ARLO should reset their PREMIER SUBSCRIPTION for those affected by this, like me .... many months have been wasted on this feature. The entire system was basically useless, it triggered for me no matter how I configured the system and zone/s!!!

I'll keep everyone updated if works for me.

[crriserjr]

I understand.  That being said, I have tested this for the last two days and it works VERY well.  Almost perfectly.

I was even able to bump up the motion sensitivity to 80% to trigger as soon as someone walked into the zone and it still doesn't false trigger outside.  I even tested by running the edge right at the curb of the street and that worked (didn't pick up cars driving right outside the zone).

So yeah, I think it should be good now.

That being said, I did get two false positives.  The system correctly did not notify me as it wasn't a "person" but it did trigger a recording.  It appears that a tree was moving INSIDE the zone and triggered the motion ... it just happened a car was driving by.

Anyhow, give it a shot.  I think you will be surprised.

[UltraSecurity]

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@crriserjr wrote:

I understand.  That being said, I have tested this for the last two days and it works VERY well.  Almost perfectly.

I was even able to bump up the motion sensitivity to 80% to trigger as soon as someone walked into the zone and it still doesn't false trigger outside.  I even tested by running the edge right at the curb of the street and that worked (didn't pick up cars driving right outside the zone).

So yeah, I think it should be good now.

That being said, I did get two false positives.  The system correctly did not notify me as it wasn't a "person" but it did trigger a recording.  It appears that a tree was moving INSIDE the zone and triggered the motion ... it just happened a car was driving by.

Anyhow, give it a shot.  I think you will be surprised.

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I really hope this works for me.... I set up a few zones, 1 with usually no activity, 1 with some activity and 1 with lots of activity. So far the system is correctly notifying/alerting me of activity (cars) that pass by on the road in one of my zones.

I'll monitor the system a few days before I am confident that Zones are correctly working.

ARLO: Is there somewhere in Alerts/Notifications that state a specific Zone was triggered? All I am getting now is "Arlo Smart just detected a vehicle on your Arlo Driveway." In my case "Driveway" is the name of the camera, NOT a zone. It would be really helpful to state the zone/zones that were triggered !!

Camera Name: Driveway

Zones: Road, Driveway, Lawn

Example: "Arlo Smart just detected a vehicle on your Arlo Driveway, Road zone."

Example: "Arlo Smart just detected a vehicle on your Arlo Driveway, Driveway zone."

Example: "Arlo Smart just detected a person on your Arlo Driveway, Lawn zone."

What is the point of Zones (which hopefully works now), without stating WHICH Zone was triggered!?

[crriserjr]

I am always fascinated how folks can come up with different ways of looking at things!

You idea on how activity zones should work is awesome.  I really wish they worked that way.

However they really don’t and I don’t think Arlo has ever suggested that they would.  My understanding of these zones are they are a simple binary “process”.  Essentially you are telling the system where to look for movement and concurrently through that process telling it what to ignore.

For instance with an indoor camera that looks toward the front of our commercial property, if we had one large zone, it would trigger every time someone walked by the outside window.  However by using multiple activity zones, I can highlight the door and the floor in front of the windows on either side of the door.   I don’t need to know which zone is activated because ANYTHING triggering is someplace it shouldn’t be during a time it shouldn’t be.

I think the only solution for what you are trying to do is multiple cameras pointed at the same spots.  Though I wish you luck on finding another solution.  I really do like your idea!

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[UltraSecurity]

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@crriserjr wrote:

I am always fascinated how folks can come up with different ways of looking at things!

You idea on how activity zones should work is awesome.  I really wish they worked that way.

However they really don’t and I don’t think Arlo has ever suggested that they would.  My understanding of these zones are they are a simple binary “process”.  Essentially you are telling the system where to look for movement and concurrently through that process telling it what to ignore.

For instance with an indoor camera that looks toward the front of our commercial property, if we had one large zone, it would trigger every time someone walked by the outside window.  However by using multiple activity zones, I can highlight the door and the floor in front of the windows on either side of the door.   I don’t need to know which zone is activated because ANYTHING triggering is someplace it shouldn’t be during a time it shouldn’t be.

I think the only solution for what you are trying to do is multiple cameras pointed at the same spots.  Though I wish you luck on finding another solution.  I really do like your idea!

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Eventually I'll end up with just 1 large zone, but for different setups and testing purposes, knowing which zone gets triggered is useful. Infact the ARLO site allows more then one zone. It also allows you to label zones, but when activity occurs in a specific zone the email/alert does not identify the zone, just the camera name..... why not just add the zone name after the camera name? In your case it may not matter, but if I wanted to know when a car drives by AND driveway activity, listing the zone name in the email/notification would help. I can quickly see if the system detects just a car passing by OR take a closer look if there is activity in the driveway.

I bet the update was Aug 16th at aprox 12pm EST.... because after that time everthing changed for me. Activity outside my zone did not alert me, hurray! I now setup 2 more zones to alert me when a car drives by and it is alerting me correctly!

So far so good!!

Happy now, but ARLO needs to reset the Premier subscription date to the fix.... I went through many months of this Zone issue which left my system useless. Are you listening ARLO !?