Arlo Geofencing does not work

[heisian]

I have geo-fencing enabled such that when I am within the radius, the system should be disarmed. When I get home, the app notifies me that I have entered the geo-fencing area, yet the cameras will still notify me that they detect motion. Broken.

[Stevewins]

Geofencing has stopped working properly lately. When I’m home it’s in disarmed state regardless of where I have the settings for home, which is not disarmeits a custom setting. All worked fine for many months until now. This system is unreliable to use as a serious security system component, it’s a very expensive novelty toy at best lately.

[Simon25]

Can geofencing be set up on two phones.

works well on my iphoneX, have set my wife up as a guest account but can’t set up geofencing on her android phone.

if using geofencing is schedule not an option, be handy to have both set up 

[Boomer_1]

You can use scheduling with geo-fencing. Just setup a schedule for which cameras or base station you want with times and days. geo-fencing will co-exist. It only arms when you are both NOT there. If you have a schedule - say for overnight - It will be armed when you are home overnight and if for some reason ou are gone overnight it would be armed via the geo-fencing. During the daytime or non-scheduled hours it would only be armed when you are not home and geo-fencing is controlling. To have your wife's phone connected correctly to work with geo-fencing you will need to go to settings/grant access and add here email. Once she accepts the invite it should become active for her phone. However we both have iPhones so I can't say for sure about the android phone, but it realy shoudn't matter.

[NZSpencer]

I have had issues with Geolocation for months and have seen no effort by Netgear to fix the issue. It just doesn't work. I can see my phone and my wife's phone out of zone and it will just not arm. Set to arm when away and disarm home.
This is woeful. I am actively advising people not to buy this product as it is expensive junk.

[bfolch02]

Sadly it seems Netgear has zero interest in fixing the Geofecing issue.  Based on the number emails they send me advertising new products, it seems they have all their money channeled toward new product development, and NONE toward product support!  Like I would buy another Netgear product now that I have seen how they support them?  RIGHT!!  I opened a support ticket over a year ago for this issue.  They would send me the canned email letting me know they were still looking into the issue.  For over a year??  Either the issue is VERY complex, or the person(s) looking into it is VERY incompetent!  I have stopped receiving updates on the ticket, and just tried to request a status, and it appears they just closed the ticket without resolving it.  If you are dumb enough to buy Netgear products, pray they do not require support!

[vbquick1]

Same issue, Android phone

[OmegaA]

My wife and I have IPhone 7 and 7 Plus. Geofencing works on my phone, but not hers. I gave her Admin access. Her account does. Not have special characters, but mine does. I allowed location services on both phones. Still no luck - once I am out of house, Arlo Pro keeps telling me that thieves are in the house until I switch off. I wonder how can I enable my wife’s phone? Should I delete the app and install it back on her phone?
Thanks

[Boomer_1]

When you say you gave your wife admin access, did you go into settings and grant here access where se has to click on a link to get added. If so then check on her phone and ensure that location services is active "always" on her phone for the arlo app.

Under Settings just scroll down until you find the Arlo app. The top box should be Location and make sure it is set to "Always". Also, she will need to be logged into the app (not actively looking at it) for this to work. In other words the app needs to be running. If these are both ok,  you might try toggling location services on her phone "all location services" off and back on again. Sometimes it gets confused. To see what it is checking, the next time you are out go into the app and go to "mode >Hub Name >Geofencing>Enabled Devices. This should tell you what state it thinks your devices are in.

[OmegaA]

Thanks. I just checked right now - our both phones are “in zone”. Another thing - I can edit Geofencing, Armed and Schedule, but my wife can only edit Schedule

[Boomer_1]

First, your wife will not be able to change Geo-fencing even if you give here admin rights. Only the account owner. She will be able to arm/disarm and change names and settings of cameras though. If you both show In-Zone, were you at home?If it shows you both In-Zone and you were gone neither of you are working. However, you need to be sure you are gone sufficent distance from your home base. The geo-fencing can sometimes not activate until you are a mile or so from home base, at least in my experience. If you are working and you get out of the geo-fencing area you should get a notification that you are now in away mode if you have notifications turned on. 

[Boomer_1]

If in fact you are not at home and you believe a reaonable distance from your house (at least a couple of miles) depeneding on cell signal etc. and you still show In-Zone, try just toggling Location Services off (for all services) and back on for both phones. If that does not solve it try logging out of your app and relogging back in on both phones. I would do this before you try and more involved activities such as reinstalling software etc. If it works - and you have push notifications turned on under geo-fencing, you should get a notice telling you that you are in "Away Mode" and your phones should both show up as Out-Of-Zone.

[hspallek]

Same problem: While it recognizes that the mobile devices are "in zone" it does not switch to "Home" mode.

Can you please fix this asap?

[phatjap1]

Same here. At some point it surprised me that it worked so well. Now, all of a sudden it never works. It's a waste of time. I wonder if Blink has this issue. Seriously considering it. Anyone have experience?

[LondonChris]

I’m having issues with Geofencing too. I went through a range of resets and tests during an online chat with the support team and can usually get the system to recognise I’m in zone after various resets/reinstalls etc but it always eventually falls back to not recognising when I’m leaving/entering the zone (even after hours of being several miles away and the map in the Arlo app showing my correct location).

Same is true for any invited guests who initially show in the correct zone and then may work by showing them out of zone a long time after leaving but then won’t update as they move in/out. I’ve been through all the options possible such as rebooting the base station, ensuring location services are always enabled, making sure we’re always logged into the Arlo app, reinstalling the Arlo app., removing any apostrophes and spaces from phone names, etc

I asked chat support if there were any known ongoing issues with Geofencing. They said “we have issue with it before however already resolved” but sadly that’s not the case for me.

[bfolch02]

I’m sure all geo-fencing issues are “resolved” because they seem to close them, resolved or not. I had a support case open for over a year,. They used to send me the canned email saying they were still working on it. Then, after noticing I hadn’t received an email update in a while, I tried to find the support case, but none could be found. I have little reason to believe Arlo/Netgear has any resources looking into this issue.

[Boomer_1]

There are a number of things that might cause this. Sounds like yu have done many of them. One thing you might check. Under there are Arlo app there is a specific setting for location services (at least on the iPhone). You need to tell allow this always. Once you set that you may need to restart the app.

[LondonChris]

Thanks for the suggestion. I've already made sure location services are always enabled for Arlo so that's not the problem unfortunately. I've restarted the app, reinstalled the app, tried using a different iphone, been through all the steps with Netgear support... I can get Geofencing to work for a limited time after doing all the various resets but so far I've not been able to have it keep working. It always reverts to saying I'm in zone when I'm not, or vice versa (or sometimes it just shows my location as "unavailable").

I'm sure Geofencing is a real headache for the company to deal with as there are many variables to ensure are all set up correctly, and some users might struggle with the technicalities of that, but it's disappointing that after going through all the steps possible it still doesn't work reliably.

[speedf1]

Over a year on, and I'm still having problems.

Clearly it works for some people, but not others.  Here's what I've learnt so far

- seems to be more reliable on iOS devices?

- seems to be O.K if you only use 1 device 

- Android power saving settings might be causing a problem?  (explaining why it seems to initially work, but not after a while)

- App doesn't always instantly reflect the status of the geofencing, although the Arlo system itself does.

Really disappointing that this system doesn't work 100% accurately for geofencing.  I've used plenty of other (similar) systems that don't have any problem at all with Geofencing.  Given that Netgear market this is a "security" system, I could not rely upon it enough to protect anything of value.  Very disappointing for such an expensive toy.

[OmegaA]

Already gave up geofencing - it does not work. If I knew about this problem before, I would definitely not buy Arlo.
It is like having a nice car.... without petrol: just one tiny, but important, problem poisons whole experience

[Boomer_1]

Folks, AND MOST SPECIFICALLY TO NETGEAR, this is an fyi as I noticed a recent change in my icon behavior on geo-fencing. I have 2 Arlo GO cameras as well as an Arlo Pro Home hub. Up until about a month or so ago they worked identical. I have geo-fencing turned on as well as a schedule for home. When I was home the icons for both the Arlo Pro hub and the Arlo GOs showed the following icons - Geo-fencing, Schedule, and Disarmed during non-schedule times. When I was away they would sow icons Geo-fencing, and Armed for both type cameras. In the last month or so that has changed, FOR THE ARLO PRO HOME HUB only. It still behaves normally when you are home and shows disarmed. However when I am gone and in Geo-fencing mode it shows Geo-fencing icon ONLY and does not show armed. The Arlo GO camera still shows Geo-fenciing and Armed. This would lead you to believe that Geo-fencing is not working on the Home Hub. However I found that is not the case. For one, I do get the message that I am in away mode and I do get alerts when something triggers motion at my home. I actually had some trigger it purposely. I also set my home mode to Armed to test it as well. It is working although you do not get the ARMED label, only the Geo-fencing one. The Arlo GOs still work as they should in that when I am away, my icons show Geo-fencing and ARMED.

Netgear this is very misleading and broken. This needs to be corrected.

[chocdb]

What an absolute joke Netgear and their geofencing is!... You know, I should have known better. Years ago I bought one of the first Netgear Storage Drives. It was an SC101. Same thing there. Great sales line but when it came to the product actually working, it was a complete failure!!!... I ended up just binning it because it was a piece of garbage. Looks like my Arlo Pro is headed in the same direction!!.. That will be the end of any purchases from Netgear, thats for sure!!....

[Hallelujah]

This hasn't been working for month's.. either fix it or remove the feature. My car achieves online geolocation within seconds ... shouldn't be rocket science for network company surely.

[GradCollege]

I have just checked my decive via the app on my phone and have realised it has not only has it been offline for 8 days and I was not notified but the geofencing element was stating I was still at home when I am actually at work in a different state or county as we call it in the UK.

This feature needs some serious work. I expect to not have to check the device is working each day. Specific features such as geofencing recongnising if I am in the zone or not should be simply enough to fix. Its a binary result I am either there or not!

Arlo should be looking into this as matter of urgency. It seems many of us are having the same issue with this very basic function. We all hope to rely on a function such as this working for the protection and saftey of our homes.

Why else would we pruchase devices enabled with such features!

Not Happy!

[bfolch02]

Hate to say it guys, but it seems pretty obvious this site is a placebo site that leads to no true action on Netgear/Arlo's part.  Posting complaints here is a waste of time.  I don't recall hearing from anyone from Arlo or Netgear in response to these posts.  We need to reach out to Arlo and/or Netgear directly.

[bfolch02]

Since they are not responding, or any other means you feel might get this issue the attention it deserves.