Motion Detection Delay - Arlo Pro

[adamsup]

Received our Arlo Pro about a week ago and the response time to kick on recording is poor at best.  We have had several UPS packages delivered during that time period and the package magically shows up at our doorstep; there's no sign of a delivery person carrying it to our doorstep (not even a recording of them walking away!).  We have the motion sensitivy from the phone app set to 100.  It does record if you very slowly walk into frame and walk away.  If you run up to the front door step and run away then it does not start the recording in time.  Also, it does not record anyone walking by on the sidewalk in the attached picture.  Sometimes it records when we pull into our drive but sometimes not.  I tried reviewing archived questions and haven't found a solution yet.

This is very frustrating considering the cost of this system.  Please let me know if you have any suggestions and attached is an image of one of the packages that just appeared this morning on my doorstep (who knows who delivered it).   You can see the box on the front door step with blue Amazon packaging tape on it.  If we can't find a solution then we'll be forced to return our 3 camera Arlo Pro system.

Thank you

[jguerdat]

The Pro camera actually has better motion detection than the original.  However, it depends on the camera positioning to take advantage of this.  Post screenshots for suggestions.

[ronsmith7144]

My irritations are there is no way to establish a motion sensing boundary, and it detects motion in the road of almost every car driving by, but people walking up to my front door, it misses.  

I had a package delivery, a Jehovah Witness and a Vivant Doorbell salesmen all come to my front door two days ago, and not one of them were captured walking on my sidewalk, or up to my front door.  Yet the cars driving down the road repeatedly got picked up. 

Yes, my cameras are set up in locations where someone walking should be picked up.  I'm going to look for better locations though and see what happens.  

[steve_t]

Cars and especially trucks have such a large thermal fingerprint that a PIR sensor will easily detect them. Smaller objects like people are hard to pick up. Also, try to position the camera(s) so that the subject is moving across the field of view. PIR motion sensors work much better this way rather than the subject moving towards or away from the sensor.

Or you could be like me and double down so there is one camera facing the subject and one at 90 degrees to it. Both are set to record on motion but also both trigger the other camera to record as well

[jguerdat]

Positioning is key.  Without screenshots it's hard to make suggestions. It sounds like the cameras are pointed to see too much rather than just focusing on the area of real interest. 

On a side note, I've successfully used a small piece of plastic electrical tape to mask the PIR sensor on the original wireless cameras to prevent cars and trains (!) from tripping unwanted recordings.

[Crab]

Got my system of Arlo pro with 3 cameras yesterday. Indoor test came out with so good results, I couldn't wait for the mornig to set them up outdoors around the yard. Now with the cameras on the right staregic points, which I had been calculating for a couple of weeks, follows the BIG disappointment. None of my 3 cameras picks up any motion. After repositioning according to information from this forum, I get notifications... Some times. And mostly those videos are too late. No useful footage can be captured. I will try to play around with some settings AGAIN and see if there is anything to do.
There wae that sticker in the box that says "You may not see Arlo but Arlo sees you". Such an irony: have sat up cameras right before the bypassers noses and Arlo still strugles to see them. My wife goes crazy about the money I spent on those.

[steve_t]

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Crab wrote:
Got my system of Arlo pro with 3 cameras yesterday. 

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What is your motion sensitivity set to for each camera?

[Crab]

I have sat all the cameras on maximal sensitivity. I tried to work around the motion detection with enabling sound detection, but then, depending from the sensitivity of sound detection, it detects either slighest breze of wind or nothing. A little odd, that one camera is up on the corner (apr 3.5m) and picks up movement pretty good, however the other camera is like 2m from the ground on and don't detect all of the bypassing cars. On that second camera I have turned on even audio detection on max. Summary from 10 times cars passing, i got 6 notifications. Not to mension leaving cars, just those comming.
The third camera goes offline all the time and had dropped battery to 54% in a half of a day. I assume it will be flat over the night now. The distance is ok. Will check that later.
Would love to add an IR beam like 15m before the camera on the driveway to trigger it. I love the quality of the image, android app is great, range is good, well all about this system is good (with understanding of the technical possibilities) except the range of motion detection.
Adding an image of my driveway.