Outdoor Motion Sensor

[ciaravella]

Hi,

I have purchased a three camera wireless Arlo system with Arlo Base Station. 

Wished I had researched this fully prior to buying as would possibly have gone for the arlo pro base station to try to minimise lag from the outdoor camera.

Each Camera is about 3-5m away from the base station I have changed the channel that ur original router is set to to try to avoid interference and moved the arlo as far from the router as possible. All cameras have full bar connection and out internet download is 30mbps and upload is about 15mbps, I have also angled the camera so that its not pointing directly down the drive, so I know that I have eliminated many of the potential issues.

However the outdoor camera appears to lag and so by the time it starts it actually misses the subject. I know I could have another camera to act as a trigger for the front door camera however I have been looking for external PIR sensors possibly from smart-things or using a relay and a 3rd party external sensor.

Is there a way around this of so what is the option (Apart from buying a camera as a motion detector)

[TomMac]

First, there is an adjustment for the sense level ( in the mode your using ).  Default is 80% but I find most of my cams work better at about 90-92 % ( higher is more detection )

A second thing is to make sure your not covering and area larger the the PIR range.... for people it is about 20ft with the Arlo. Also try and make sure the movement of subject is accross the field of view instead of straight on.

Third is a "trick " sort of to eliminate some appearance of lag.

Go to the pan/zoom feature and reduce the size of picture by about 15-20%.  Re-adjust the cam to cover the area you want. Since the PIR covers the entire FOV even if reduced, the trigger event actually happens out side of the viewable picture so it starts recording with the subject more in the view.

Last, sometimes you just have to move the camera to a better location.... I had one at my front door, but ended up moving it away from the door so the person coming in triggered the camera and I got a good face view as they left

[brh]

@ciaravella

If you have the Smartthings system, as long as you keep the Motion Sensors out of the elements, you can use the Smartthings motion sensors outside and place them in an location that the subject must pass by before getting to the range of the camera's motion sensors. I am doing that for a couple of my cameras to be sure that the camera starts recording earlier.

Brian