Notifications by zone

[Jerica]

Why on earth is it not possible to set up notifications by zone? I’d like notifications if someone is on my porch but only want recordings of activity on the street that I could refer to if needed, i.e. to give to the police in the event of a crime. I don’t want to be notified every time a car drives by, but it would have been nice to have had footage of the drunk driver who slammed into my car in the middle of the night. 

[DannyBearAgain]

The doorbell only has limited range for motion detection. How far is the street from the doorbell?

[Jerica]

Only about 12 feet. I’m in an old neighborhood so the houses are at the front of the lot. No front yard. It’ll notify me of people walking on the sidewalk all the way across the street. The zone won’t even shrink small enough to not alert me to people walking along the sidewalk on my side, it’s that close. 

[DannyBearAgain]

Usually when using a camera you can point it down away or position to the side but more difficult for the doorbell.

You should have a sensitivity setting that can be changed to modify the distance for detection which might be useful.

Another trick is to set the activity zone to the lower portion of the view to capture the people’s legs only as they walk up to the door.

Not sure how well it would work with smart people notifications if you’re using them.(If your using them already you probably had the recording of the crash in the library.)

You can also fit another camera to capture the street traffic but just have it record without any notifications.

[Jerica]

I have it set like that which is why it didn’t capture the street/hit and run. So it sounds like Arlo doesn’t allow notifications to differ by zone or even by type of activity (notify for people/record only for cars) and so my only option is to purchase another camera, point it at the exact same spot as my doorbell camera, and pay more per month. Since their developers should have no problem making these changes to their code to give more notification options, I’m guessing the lack of that functionality is on purpose…