Custom modes disappeared - bring back the old app

[secaz]

Absolutely nothing surprises me - have been using Arlo since the Pro series debuted.

Why am I still using Arlo?

It's simple economics.  I have a ton of cameras that I'm not inclined to replace (read as not independently wealthy) - was buying Arlo Pro refurbs for as low as $60 at one point that STILL WORK JUST FINE.  The hardware, that is.  The back end Arlo system?  Train wreck, completely, and the least secure systems available, I'm certain.  I've worked from home the whole time I've had Arlo and can tell you tales that would curl the hair on your toes as to how UNRELIABLE it is.

I recently upgraded to the new Feed experience (new to me, I held out a long time) and it was as bad as everyone had purported it to be.  Fortunately for me, my needs have changed, I can make do without all the features and flexibility the Library experience had offered.  I can't imagine how livid users are who have multiple base stations with many cameras like mine.  The custom modes saved a lot of time and aggravation and were essential for scheduling and assigning different trigger levels for each camera in each custom mode.

Anyone who has a lot of tress and landscaping where there are monsoon storms can tell you how great it is to have a bunch of different modes you could activate with one click.  I have three base stations and it was the best feature, the custom modes.  I've gone xeriscape here in AZ during the past couple years (mostly cactus and agave) and no longer have all the trees and landscaping flapping in the wind as I once had, so I can limp by with the three meager modes the Feed experience provides (tree branches swaying were a big battery drain).  With the new Feed experience, I still have to fiddle around when I need to disarm some cameras and not others.  Have to play with a mode and then remember to change the cameras back to motion sensing when done.  With so many cameras there's no really quick and easy way to see that or do that.  And just turning off the cameras I want to disable for a period is just as annoying.  With custom modes I just needed to tap to modes tab and see which modes were operational and just enable the mode I need.  And when it's windy and I need to reduce motion sensing, I need tor remember which cameras where I modified the trigger levels and change them back.  That's a challenge right there and I should not have to be bothered with having to remember.

Only positive thing I can say is about the new Feed experience is that with the way automations now work, there is no longer the 1 minute dead zone between 23:59 and 00:00 (11:59 pm and 12:00 am). At least I ASSUME, because I don't get a notification of any schedule change between 23:59 and 00:00, so I assume Away status doesn't change until next automation.  One night will have to wait until 23:59 and then wave a hand in front of a camera to see if it triggers.  With the old Library experience, if you used custom modes and the scheduling feature, you literally had 59 seconds to do whatever without any camera triggering at all period.  That's a LOT of time for evildoers to work their mischief and slink past cameras.

Arlo has poorly handled its business and support, and how it treats its customers.  Customers are disposable to Arlo.  I learned early on that support was a joke when asked by a tech to open up Internet Explorer on my computer.  When I replied I don't have it, I use Linux, I was asked to go ahead an install it.

Well, I should have know better than to contact support, lol, and from what I'm reading here and elsewhere?  It's only gotten worse.

It's a shame that a system that was a forerunner and showed such promise in its infancy has come the what it has.  where customers band together with pitchforks and torches and rail against the monster that is Arlo.

[StephenB]

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@secaz wrote:

Only positive thing I can say is about the new Feed experience is that with the way automations now work, there is no longer the 1 minute dead zone between 23:59 and 00:00 (11:59 pm and 12:00 am). At least I

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There never was a dead zone, because the schedule entry finished at the end of the minute (so went through to 00:00).

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@secaz wrote:

The custom modes saved a lot of time and aggravation and were essential for scheduling and assigning different trigger levels for each camera in each custom mode.

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Definitely a miss on Arlo's part. But they have acknowledged that, announced that they will be adding back custom modes (or a similar feature).  No idea when.

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@secaz wrote:

Only positive thing I can say is about the new Feed experience is that with the way automations now work, there is no longer the 1 minute dead zone between 23:59 and 00:00 (11:59 pm and 12:00 am). At least I ASSUME, because I don't get a notification of any schedule change between 23:59 and 00:00, so I assume Away status doesn't change until next automation.  One night will have to wait until 23:59 and then wave a hand in front of a camera to see if it triggers. 

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If your schedule is working, you should see when the mode is switched in the Feed (there is a record there).  This often doesn't happen exactly at the scheduled time.

If you aren't seeing that, then I suggest temporarily changing the schedule to switch modes at a convenient time.

FWIW, if the schedule doesn't work, then the problem is usually that the enable list (right underneath the automation name) is not set correctly,

[secaz]

Respectfully beg to differ regarding the dead zone - I had fully tested that out with the old experience.  I happen to be a night owl who frequently goes out in the yard in the middle of the night with my dogs.  That's how I accidentally discovered this failing.  I could stand out there and wait until 11:59 then walk around for that minute between without triggering a single camera.  You could also WATCH this failing in the mobile app - if you watched the mode tab, at 23:59 it would switch to DISARMED and remain DISARMED until at 00:00 when it would switch back to ARMED (or whatever custom mode was set up in the schedule).  I did do a screen recording on my phone of this behavior, if I can find it will post it.

Perhaps it is a failing of mine in understanding how to properly use the old app with Library experience.  I was never able to span the 24 hour mark.  I would have to schedule a mode to run up to 23:59 and then have it continue at 00:00 - there was NO OPTION for SECONDS, only hours and minutes.  Could not set a mode scheduled to run from, oh, say, 21:00 to 07:00.  Would have to break it up into two, 21:00 to 23:59 and then 00:00 to 07:00.  If there was a way to span the 24 hour mark using the Library experience app without having to split up the mode, would love to hear how this was executed.

In regards to the schedule, yes - I do know I can go to the feed to see the mode change, or the routines tab and look for the tiny blue text indication, but why do I now have to do this?  I used to be able to go the the mode tab and clearly see the status of each base station.  Now I have to enable to mode on the dashboard, wait for the notification that the mode has changed, when I don't get the notification then I have to hunt down the status and on the feed tab where I annoyingly must scroll to the top to see recent events.   Fact is, I have little confidence in it so find myself constantly checking.  And the fact that I have to tinker with the modes to do what I need to do and chase them around to make sure I change them back AFTER I'm done tinkering, that's just really maddening.  As well as having to go elsewhere to change the sensitivity and change that back when I'm done.  Arlo says they will bring back custom modes, eh?  When pigs fly, but that is merely my experienced option, being the long time Arlo user as I have been...

And that's another really aggravating quirk.  Why doesn't the feed default to the MOST RECENT event?  Why do I have to SCROLL UP past many previous events to get to the most recent?  I don't watch every video - I rely on the thumbnails in the notifications to let me know if the event is benign or not.  And if I see a notification with something that's suspect, THEN I go to the feed, but then have to scroll up through a bunch of events just to get to the top so I may view the video associated with the most recent notification that piqued my interest.

And while on the topic of videos, who's brilliant idea was it to have videos AUTOPLAY?  And not be able to DISABLE this feature?  Not to mention the other quirky behaviors, like the little sideways dance it does when you tap a video.  I can no longer pause a video and go back to the very beginning WITHOUT the darn thing starting to play again.  Very often its the first second of the video that's important (to me anyway) so I like to pause and go back to beginning to zoom in, but noooooooooo... it starts playing again.  So now I have to download the video so I can use a sane app to manipulate the recording.

In my personal opinion, Arlo made the app so difficult and perplexing (to the average user at the very least) that to me, it seems like an out when the system doesn't work correctly for someone and something bad happens.  Oh, the user didn't understand how to use the interface, so it's not our fault.

How about the million times Arlo just plain didn't work?  And usually while people were AT WORK.  Can't count how many times Arlo failed.  My dogs always let me know who is here, they are far more reliable.  So many times someone had come knocking at the door when not a single one of the 6 cameras leading to my door was triggered.  Everything would look normal in the app, nothing wrong on this end, but Arlo backend was taking a nap.  I was like a joke.

And the things it would miss even WHEN working was even funnier.  Huge UPS truck parked out front - would miss that, and other large vehicles, but would trigger and record a lizard running across the driveway.

And the AI is hysterical.  Cactus are reported as people, boulders are reported as animals, bougainvillea flower petals blowing around in front of my doorbell cam are reported as animals.   And sure, I can always drop the sensitivity, which I do on the regular cameras (not without risk of at times missing something important), but if the doorbell cam is below 90 it won't detect and trigger on PEOPLE.  Have many videos of quail and road runners marching past my front door.  I do want to know about animals - we have many scary creatures here that come right up to the door, like bobcats and javalina and coyotes.

Arlo is what it is - love it or hate it.  Can't count the number of times when I REALLY needed Arlo to work and it failed me, miserably.  It is NOT a security system, this much is certain.  It's very helpful for me to be able to look and see what is going on outside at night or before I walk out my door.  I have no confidence that it will be working when I most need it to work, so therefore I never rely on it.  I rely on my dogs.  So many times they have alerted me to things going on where Arlo didn't trigger, yet when I wold go do a live feed on cameras there would be the trigger where my dogs had alerted but Arlo had slept through for one reason or another.

[StephenB]

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@secaz wrote:

In regards to the schedule, yes - I do know I can go to the feed to see the mode change, or the routines tab and look for the tiny blue text indication, but why do I now have to do this?  I used to be able to go the the mode tab and clearly see the status of each base station. 

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You can see the current mode on the dashboard screen.

As far as "having to do this", I never said you had to. You said you didn't know if the schedule was working, so I just gave you a way to check that.

Certainly Arlo missed the mark in several areas - custom modes are certainly needed, geofencing "arrive" simply can't be made to work properly, and automations are in general are too complicated.  I'm not trying to defend their design choices - I am only interested in helping folks who are struggling with the new UI to get something that works for them (when possible).

[secaz]

Respectfully, I never said that you, specifically, said I "had to" - mine was merely a generalist assessment.

And the issue with scheduling that was part of the old Library experience (and still IS for any old timers who continue to use the Library experience), although no longer an issue in the Feed experience (perhaps it is not, but I would have to test that out before committing) , it does illustrate the failings which have plagued Arlo since Netgear cut the cord in 2018 and set a not yet mature Arlo free to stumble through infancy as its own entity. 

Were users who used the Library experience with custom modes and scheduling aware of its other failing?  Such as the system would disarm itself?  There's an upside to being a night owl, for me, that's when Arlo would often fail and I'd happen to notice.  There was a long while when modes and schedules were plagued.  When a scheduled change was to occur, Arlo would decide it would rather disarm itself than initiate the next scheduled mode, skipping that mode to then activate the next more at the appointed time (which means unless you were checking the app constantly, you would never be aware that whole blocks of hours were disarmed instead of armed).  I'll wager this is why Arlo now has the huge icons on the dashboard to indicate status (although I don't have enough experience, yet, with the Feed version, to deem this reliable reporting of status).  Fact is, failing to prevent such huge failings is the culture of Arlo.

I am struggling with the new UI, in case I have failed to communicate as much.  I spend much time fiddling with the new interface which is overtly and unnecessarily complicated and convoluted, and wondering exactly who, in general, was their target audience.  In the early years, and pretty much up until this monstrosity which is the Feed experience, the Library experience was set it, forget it, rarely have to look at it.

And who can defend the new aberration introduced by he latest app version 5.4.0_29783 released 10 Jan 25?  Now when I do a live camera stream and zoom in, the field of view pans around regardless the fact that I am trying to zoom in on one particular object and keep it still?  And it keeps wanting to move about even though I am trying like hell to keep the field of view immobile so I can try to see what I'm looking at?  You can guess how quickly I rolled back to the previous version.

It is annoyances like this, which happen with all too frequent occurrence and down through the years, is why I could NEVER RECOMMEND Arlo to anyone.  Do not waste the money.  And even if for all appearances the system "seems" to be working as advertised, very often it simply is not.  I have always worked from home, so I have eight years of experience in the trenches with this train wreck of a "security" system and the numerous times when it did not work and I was there to bear witness.

If Arlo held any concern for its customers, to the same degree as they do money, then we would have a solid, dependable system and support that isn't useless and insulting.

I would like to know why Arlo never BETA TESTS new versions with actual live customers who volunteer - clearly they do not, for if they did then 99% of the complaints users have after every release would never come into being.  Arlo uses its paying customers to do their testing for them (read as when the app goes live).  That's merely my opinion, although working in the technology sector myself, it's clear to me that they fail to do extensive testing before foisting new versions upon paying customers.  Arlo just plain doesn't care about us, their paying customers.  They have clearly demonstrated across the years to the detriment of everyone.

Again, with all the cameras I have, it's the least costly option, for me, to just limp along with Arlo.  Sad but true statement.  They are the devil I know, at any rate.

All of the above is merely my opinion, written by someone who lives in a country where speech was supposed to be free.

[StephenB]

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@secaz wrote:

I am struggling with the new UI, in case I have failed to communicate as much. 

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If you are interested in getting more tailored advice here, then I suggest posting the details of your schedule on a new discussion thread.