“Smart” Notifications are Actually Stupid

[MNArloUser]

I have my setting set to only alert on People, yet I get numerous notifications daily on “motion” and “animals” yet neither are selected to give me notifications.  Additionally, the motion it reads is outside of the activity zone (on the road), so it shouldn’t even be triggering on this.  

I’ve found Arlo equipment to be a joke, honestly.  Had this for over a year.  These issues aside it constantly stutters, and stops recording.  Some times it won’t even pick up someone coming to the door.  I have gigabit WiFi and my router & Arlo base station are literally 15 feet from the camera.  Extremely poor quality. 

 

 

 

[StephenB]

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@MNArloUser wrote:

I have my setting set to only alert on People, yet I get numerous notifications daily on “motion” and “animals” yet neither are selected to give me notifications.  

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Just to clarify - the smart notifications only filter web push notifications (not email).  And they do not supress recordings, they only supress the push notifications.

Are you getting notifications, or just seeing recordings int he Feed?  If you are getting notifications, are you using email?

[MNArloUser]

Correct.  I am getting push notifications to my iPhone telling me of those recordings.  This is not found on my base station, these are in the cloud & notify me on every instance.  I’m not seeing email notifications at all.   The Arlo Ultra 2 cam that I have does not do this, but does still have the other issues I noted (stuttering, stop recording, missing events all together).

[MNArloUser · Accepted solution]

The forum is asking me to mark a reply as the answer.  So here is the answer to this issue:

Do not buy Arlo equipment.  They advertise a lot of features that intermittently work.  

[mpaquette70]

Saw your post and I share in your frustration with these "Smart" notifications.  I am pasting some feedback I received when trying to determine why cars trigger a notification when they are clearly outside of my defined activity zone.

• 'll wager this only typically happens during the day when the sun's very strong IR reflects off the passing car. The zone can't determine that happens so it's seen as a trigger. Reducing the motion sensitivity can help - I happen to use 45 but YMMV.

  The doorbell will trigger whether motion is inside or outside the zone.  That's done with a passive infrared (PIR) sensor, and has nothing to do with the camera image itself.  Then the cloud determines whether the motion is in or out of zone.  If out of zone, it will supress the recording and notification.

  Sometimes the cloud will misbehave when there is just slight motion in the field of view.  Just something to keep in mind.

[MNArloUser]

Thanks for the response & feedback.  A couple points on that:

 - The notifications happen both day & night, and this camera actually faces north, so the camera never sees the sun.  

 - I should only be getting notifications for people.  These notifications are classified as “animals” and “motion”.  I don’t mind that these record & go to my base station, but I shouldn’t be getting push notifications for them.  

To me, it seems these are 2 separate independent issues. 

Additionally, there are more issues that it constantly stutters while recording, stops recording completely after a few seconds, or doesn’t detect people coming to my door at all.  

Many layers to the defects with these Arlo products.   

[micatlkw]

I have the same problem. A slight difference is I enabled the alert for animals only. But I got all the alerts for people and motions. I contacted technical support, and their "solution" was, as usual, to remove and pair the camera again, which never resolved any issue. Just a waste of time. The Arlo support team is very reluctant to escalate software bugs internally. 

I agree the best solution is not to buy Arlo cameras until they have better product, service and support