Continuous Geo-fencing and phone recognition

[AF1]

I'm having issues with Arlo in geofencing mode not recognizing my wife or myself when we return to our home. Spoke to the support staff and they said we have to log into the arlo app everytime we enter or leave our geo fence in order for the app to recognize us being home or away. If this is the case, then NetGear is away behind the curve in using location services because my Nest has no issues knowing when I or my wife are home and when we are away; the Nest will automatically turn on the ac/heat as we enter our neighborhood and will go into Eco mode as we leave the neighborhood. So I'd like to recommend NetGear and Arlo update their Geo-fencing capabilities to being able to run in the background of the app so that I don't have to log into the app everytime I enter or leave my house. The system should arm and disarm automatically without needing to open the app each time. 

[brh]

Do your phones have any special characters in either the name or the password?

For example, it should be Brian phone not Brian's phone.

Same for the password. 

Brian

[AF1]

Nothing special like an apostrophe or comma. The password does has a period

[brh]

Try deleting the period and see if that helps.

[brh]

From all that I can find Support is correct, both phones must have the app running and be logged in. If this true, it sure is a poor way to utilize geofencing.

In my Smartthings app it doesn't matter at all. I get notifications and the system arms/disarms based on both phones being present or away. It works great although sometimes there is quite a delay if the cloud is acting up.Even though it works, I never use it for arming/disarming the system automatically. I would never depend on any cloud based product to automatically arm/disarm my home system.

I do wonder sometimes if the engineers that design these systems actually use them and would would trust their lives and their family's lives on the reliability and usefulness of thier design.

I love my Arlos, but there is still a lot to be corrected in their design for me to trust it.

That is why I use a professional, 24/7 monitored system and pay their monthly fees - and its geofencing works properly too regardless i I am logged into the system or not and if I have the app open or not.

No rant here, just saying...

Brian

[AF1]

thanks for the follow-up. I'm pretty surprised myself since my Nest seems to be able to know when to kick on automatically when I'm home and then go into eco mode when I'm away, all without having to open the Nest app on my phone. The technology is out there but NetGear doesn't seem to use it to its full capacity

[jguerdat]

It's not clear to me how you're operating GF. The app simply has to stay logged in - that is, don't specificlly log out. When it's backgrounded, it will still work. A fly in the ointment may be due to the OS causing the app to be forced into sleep. If so, use the phone settings to allow Arlo to not optimize battery usage.