Arlo Gen 1 Video Door Bell capabilities have deteriorated

[PurpleSavage]

I am of the opinion that the firmware updates have deteriorated my doorbells capability since I purchased it.

Examples:

It doesn't capture as many cars that drive by overnight in the street.

When it did capture it would identify it as a car, now it's just motion or animal, I have a subscription.

It doesn't capture all people we deliver packages.

For example, I had to turn off vehicle notifications previously so I didn't receive too many notifications now I could probably turn it on.

I have tried multiple notifications zones and it hasn't changed its performance.

I have cleaned the lens. Rebooted everything that can be rebooted.

It was a great product when I first bought it because I was impressed with it's capability.  I survived the pixelation debacle.

Not sure I can assume noble intent right now, it seems I am being pushed to either by a new product or a continuous recording subscription if I want my to reach the past performance of the device.

[StephenB]

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@PurpleSavage wrote:

 I had not issues well beyond 16' picking up motion whether it was people walking by on the street or vehicles in the street which is well beyond 16'.  In fact it could pick a UPS driver in the summer driving by in their truck with their door open as a person.  

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Motion detection doesn't use the video at all.  It uses a passive infrared (PIR) sensor on the doorbell face.  (One thing you might do in addition to checking the threshold is make sure the doorbell face is clean).

Classification does use the video stream, and is done in the Arlo Cloud - not the doorbell.  The Cloud has no idea what triggered the motion (neither does the camera).  So the classification is completely independent from the motion detection.  In the UPS case, it is likely that the doorbell PIR sensor triggered on the truck, but the cloud found the person.  

Normally it would classify a person walking a dog as a person (at least my system does that).  

My own doorbell often triggers on vehicles (much further than 16 feet away), but it certainly doesn't trigger on all the vehicles that drive by.  It will sometimes trigger on people walking towards the door who are beyond the spec range (maybe 20-25 feet), but not always.

While I'm sure many people would want a longer range in their doorbell, I actually don't want that - as the camera has to be pointed towards a busy street and public sidewalk.  While my doorbell is hardwired, there are a quite a few folks who tried the AVD2001 just on battery, and found that the constant alerts resulted in unacceptable battery life.  

[StephenB]

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@danitap15 wrote:

Yes.  

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FYI, Arlo's spec for motion detection for your doorbell is 16 feet (5m)

• https://kb.arlo.com/000062617/How-far-away-can-Arlo-Cameras-and-Arlo-Video-Doorbells-detect-motion

While they can trigger from vehicles moving further away, it is not as reliable.

[ShayneS]

I have escalated your case & someone from support will be reaching out to you as soon as possible.

[danitap15]

I’m having the same exact problems.  My other Arlo Pro 4 is capturing vehicles go by on the street all day and night but the doorbell captures NONE of that!  This all started within the last week. I’ve changed all my camera settings, routine settings, etc. and nothing is working.  I can view live video just fine but the “trigger” to record is just not functioning properly. When was that last update? 

[PurpleSavage]

I have a Gen 1 Arlo Video Doorbell which which is may be a different model than mine

Link to firmware release notes -  last update for my model appears to be August 2024

https://community.arlo.com/t5/Firmware-Release-Notes/Arlo-Firmware-Release-Table/m-p/1920885#M791

I've had Arlo products since 2019, so 6 years of experience.  I bought the Arlo Video doorbell in November 2019. Up course I don't have the number of counts for notification or history I recognize that this can change if you modify the settings, however I have kept them consistent, even through the forced App update.

[PurpleSavage]

I appreciate your offer but please close the ticket.

I am not going to reboot the doorbell or base station, reboot my network, connect the doorbell directly to wifi, or reconnect it to the base station, or reset the device, or delete my schedules and routines, delete my activity zones

Hardware 1.2

Arlo Video Doorbell - Wired

AVD1001

1.20.1.0_3_3814168_06b57e7

August 08, 2024

[ShayneS]

@danitap15 

Is your doorbell capturing any motion at all?

[danitap15]

Yes but very infrequently.

[ShayneS]

@danitap15 

Is this motion beyond 15-20'?

[danitap15]

Yes.  

[StephenB]

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@danitap15 wrote:

Yes.  

---

FYI, Arlo's spec for motion detection for your doorbell is 16 feet (5m)

• https://kb.arlo.com/000062617/How-far-away-can-Arlo-Cameras-and-Arlo-Video-Doorbells-detect-motion

While they can trigger from vehicles moving further away, it is not as reliable.

[danitap15]

Didn’t realize that.  Never had a problem before - the doorbell camera was catching everything, then all of a sudden last week it went to catching barely nothing.  But thanks.  Don’t know why the sudden change, but at least now I know it was just over performing for all this time.  Guess I was lucky.

[StephenB]

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@danitap15 wrote:

 the doorbell camera was catching everything, then all of a sudden last week it went to catching barely nothing.  

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Check the motion sensitivity.  The default setting was always 80.  Quite a few folks found their setting somehow silently changed to 50.  (That happened with one of my cameras).

[PurpleSavage]

The "published" product spec.  I had not issues well beyond 16' picking up motion whether it was people walking by on the street or vehicles in the street which is well beyond 16'.  In fact it could pick a UPS driver in the summer driving by in their truck with their door open as a person.  That seems way less frequent now or non-existent.  It now randomly picks up people walking by in the street as people than previously, it no longer captures people walking a dog in the street as an animal.  All these data points raises a lot of questions for me.

[StephenB]

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@PurpleSavage wrote:

 I had not issues well beyond 16' picking up motion whether it was people walking by on the street or vehicles in the street which is well beyond 16'.  In fact it could pick a UPS driver in the summer driving by in their truck with their door open as a person.  

---

Motion detection doesn't use the video at all.  It uses a passive infrared (PIR) sensor on the doorbell face.  (One thing you might do in addition to checking the threshold is make sure the doorbell face is clean).

Classification does use the video stream, and is done in the Arlo Cloud - not the doorbell.  The Cloud has no idea what triggered the motion (neither does the camera).  So the classification is completely independent from the motion detection.  In the UPS case, it is likely that the doorbell PIR sensor triggered on the truck, but the cloud found the person.  

Normally it would classify a person walking a dog as a person (at least my system does that).  

My own doorbell often triggers on vehicles (much further than 16 feet away), but it certainly doesn't trigger on all the vehicles that drive by.  It will sometimes trigger on people walking towards the door who are beyond the spec range (maybe 20-25 feet), but not always.

While I'm sure many people would want a longer range in their doorbell, I actually don't want that - as the camera has to be pointed towards a busy street and public sidewalk.  While my doorbell is hardwired, there are a quite a few folks who tried the AVD2001 just on battery, and found that the constant alerts resulted in unacceptable battery life.