Geofencing

[ronjill29]

I'm using geofencing with my wife and my iPhones.  When I leave home the system recognises that I have left and that my wife is still home.  However, the system will still alarm and send texts and emails to say that there has been movement.  Is there anyway that I can stop it alarming if one of us is at home??  Thanks

[Johnic]

Geofencing is so unreliable. Sometimes it works and most times it doesn't. 

Terrible that they can't get it sorted. 

[Johnic]

Found a workaround. Using IFTT smartthings and virtual switch to arm and disarm. Works great. It's just a shame I needed to resort to this. 

[wsscott]

Mine has been running now for over 3 weeks without a problem.  I'm running Firmware ver. 1.8.3.0_9926 and my Hardware is VMC3040r6.  I also suggest you be sure that if you have Arlo App installed on any device that stay's at home, such as an iPad, etc., that you be sure that Location Services and Background App Refresh for Arlo on those devices is OFF.  Otherwise if that device is ON its going to think that someone is "home" and won't arm.

[Linusl]

Have the same problem. Me and my wifes phones are both in the zone. I leave and it turns on. I can see that her phone is in the zone but it stills turns on the cameras.

So I tried this. I removed myself from the geo and just had her added. It still turns on the cameras when I leave even when im not added to that feature and her phone is activated and in the zone. She has the added account, full privs etc. All settings are set as it should. Still uses my location somehow. Just weird.

[rjhelmke]

Just installed the system and too cannot get the Geofencing to work. When I get to work I check the status and it says "disarmed". Oddly, if I restart my phone it then switches to "Armed". The phone is a Nexus 6P and does not have many apps installed on it, Android 7.1.2.

As a workaround I am using IFTTT and the android trigger that triggers when my phone connects to my home wifi then the Arlo action to disarm. Then use the IFTTT trigger to trigger when my phone disconnects from my wifi to Arm it. Will see if this is reliable. There is also an IFTTT location trigger which can probably be used also.

Netgear, please FIX THIS! I am a software engineer and will happy to get you whatever you need from me to debug this!

[ArloReallySucks]

I can not use IFTTT (and should not need to) because we use two phones

[quarkdoll]

Can we remove the "Solved" tag from this post - it's clearly not solved.

[rjhelmke]

No, clearly not solved. The IFTTT solution I posted works, but IFTTT is really slow so it does not disarm the system until I am actually in my home. Extending the detection range may help a bit. And, as others have posted, it only works with one phone. Netgear needs an API, I don't know why they don't offer one. There is a python script that will do some basic stuff so I might look into using that.

[usnek]

I use IFTTT in combination with Life360 app to do geofencing with multiple devices.

Life360 allows multiple users to register as a family.  Then IFTTT can setup a recipe with trigger of "When last family member leaves..." and/or "When first family member enter..."; Then "arm/disarm" Arlo.

Unfortunately, I can't choose other Arlo profile except Arm and Disarm, so it is still limited.....

[Tammi]

 I have had strange this happening for the past few days. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the app and now it is showing my device in the zone when it clearly is not. Not sure where to go with it all now....

[draku007]

Geo fencing was working okay for us (2x iPhone) till we moved to a new house. I'm in bit more rural area now with great cellural service but my arlo system 9/10 times doesn't detect me when I'm in the area or when I leave the house. I have to remember to stop and open the app so arlo can figoure out my location and adjust the status. Very annoying!!!

I also changed the radius to the large to give the system more time but that doens' treally do anything. If it doens't work it doesn't work regardless of the radius.

[Campwp]

This is crazy. Just switched from Canary to Arlo. Geofencing is a total disaster right now. No way I’ll be keeping $800 worth of cameras in this current state. Gonna keep rocking around with it for a few days and no solution they’re going back.

[JackBourne]

It's very simple, as of 2017, October 14, Geofencing mode DOES NOT WORK with two iPhone 6 with latest software. We own a brand new 2017 Arlo Pro base Station with 2 cameras. The Arlo software only sees one iPhone; impossible to add my wife's iPhone. Same iPhones, same OS. I just spent more than 30 minutes with a Philipino support representative, reseting the Home station, resynching the Cameras; result is the same; only one iPhone is visible in the geofencing list. Since my wife and I have different work schedules, we cannot use the geofencing mode with only one phone. So, for us the geofencing mode is USELESS! After spending 30 minutes of useless thinkering, the support representative admitted that this is a known issue and there is no date for a fix. So maybe our present hardware will never support geofencing for more than one iPhone. Our only options now are to return the system to BestBuy or use a Schedule or manually set the armed or disarmed options. This is very unfortunate since this camera system is probably one of the best on the market; it works quite well apart from the geofencing feature.

[quigger11]

Hang in there!

I have 2 iphone 6 and 2 5's on our system.  After reboot it seems to work for a day or two.  Eventually only my phone is recoginized and I get Arlo Alerts like 30 per hour when I am not home.  Compounding the frustration is that alerts are turned off, but they keep coming!!

Anyway, it is a fix that Arlo needs to make.  Should happen one day.  We need to pressure them to take the issue seriously.

[rjhelmke]

You are lucky if you can get one phone to work, I am on Android with a Nexus 6P and I cannot get it to work. I works randomly but most times it does not detect me leaving or arriving. For now I am using IFTTT and that seems to work ok. I know that solution is no good for multiple phones. It would be nice to not have to jump through hoops to get this to work. If Netgear is not going to fix it, remove the option from the app!

[jschweda]

I have this exact same problem.  I completely reset the system and then geofencing seems to work for maybe 2 days and then only my phone updates in or out of zone.  I have to go in to geofencing settings - enabled devices and then click done and save and then it will recognize my second device is either in or out of zone.  I have to do this every day when the second device enters or leaves the zone.  Very frustrating after spending hundreds on this system.

[JackBourne]

You're lucky; I was never able to get my wife's iPhone 6 to show in the list. I tried everything and spent several minutes with a support tech on the phone. They suggested I log with my account into her phone; her phone showed briefly in the list, not even one second, then disapeared. It's a bug and let's hope they fix it. Another bug with geofencing is that you cannot remove a device once it's in there; when I installed the system I added my iPad to the devices, now it's stuck there.

[quarkdoll]

It's disappointing how month after month people complain on this thread resulting in continued silence from Netgear.

One potential problem is, idiots (and I'm one of them) keep buying their crappy camera system without knowing its problems (geofencing, CVR, camera drop-off, ...) The Amazon pages' reviews, for example, paint a generally rosey picture of the system -- perhaps if everyone who complained on these forums took an extra moment to make a bad review on Amazon, Netgear might get around to fixing something.

[rynz]

+1 for geofencing not working with 2x iPhones. Come on Netgear sort it out as this has been an issue for months. Not good enough.

[wsscott]

Keeping my fingers crossed, but I've not had a problem with Geofencing.  Its been working fine for probably 5 months, since I got it.  I wonder if the issue relates to a problem with the cellphone being able to receive the GPS signal.   For the people having problems with Geofencing, is the phone out of their pocket, or jacket, or purse, or back pocket so that it has a view of the sky and can get a GPS signal.  Maybe something like that is going on.

[JackBourne]

Good for you. But how many phones do you have in the system? Are they ioS or Android?

Geofencing uses the position that your phone output; if your phone knows your position, then Arlo should know it too. You can check your position with Google map or any other apps that use location. Your phone uses GPS, cell towers and WiFi to get a fix on your position. So it knows where you are, even if you are inside your house.

Best,

Jack.

[wsscott]

We have 2 iPhone 5 phones, one running IOS 8 and the other IOS 10.  

[Rhyddin]

I've just bought my first Arlo camera, with plans to expand to the Pro 2 kit when it comes to the UK. However, this is an issue that has me questioning if this was/is a good call. The reviews are all good for Q, and the free cloud strage is a big plus, but only if it does the job!

I set the accounts and apps up yesterday for my iPhone 7+ and my wife's SE, both set up as triggers for geofencing. No acknowledgment of updates on the app at first but I realised that you have to quit, close and restart the app for any setting to take effect, it appears. All looked good. However, while I'm out and my wife is in, we are both being inundated with notifications of movement accompanied by pictures of my wife inside the house.

The confusion for me is the structure of the geofencing with Arlo and the need for the app on the phone(s) to do all the work. I have a NEST camera system, that I'm moving away from because of their monthly charges, and their geofencing is 100% reliable and uses a much simpler set-up: the phone app does nothing! The camera itself, however, is connected to the house WIFI and so recognises when our phones are on the same network, arming the camera when none of the paired phones are on the WIFI network. Much more logical and simple, surely? 

[wsscott]

Did you setup 2 separate accounts or just 1 account with the other person as an authorized user?  I think if you setup 2 accounts, ie. one for you and one for your wife, then you'll have a problem.  If you did that, then maybe when you leave the house your account has armed the camera because you left and if your wife is still at home it senses her presence, etc. and thus the notifications.  Same thing when she leaves and you are there.  I setup just 1 account for me, and added my wife's phone as an authorized user.  You go to arlo.netgear.com and sign in to your account, then go to Settings, and then go to Grant Access.  There you give your wife, or vice versa to be "Politically Correct", access to the account.  You only use the one account. I don't have anything under Shared Devices.  Seems to work ok for me.