Suggestion: separate wireless motion detectors

[kreppart]

I just got my Arlo system and I'm still working out the kinks.  LIke many users I am missing some events while the camera is waking up.  Today it occurred to me that if I Arlo had a separate wireless motion detector I could put it exactly where I wanted to detect motion & could detect motion earlier and use that to trigger the cameras.  For example I could detect motion whenever someone passed through our front gate and use that to trigger the cameras to wake up & record.  This would make the system much more flexible, especially since I can't point a camera at the front gate or it will trigger every time a car or pedestrian passes.

[Schorschi · Accepted solution]

Agree. Been suggested by others. Check out the Arlo Idea Exchange and increment the Kudo counters of the ideas that you support.

When/if external sensors come, I just hope they won't count them towards the camera count limit imposed by the various subscription plans.

[NotThatGood]

But, if the motion sensor is somewhat close to the camera, wouldn't it still take ages for the cam to start recording? The cam would still need all those extra seconds before it would start recording. Or am I thinkig the wrong way? The whole point with a camera fails the way it works now 😞

[Schorschi]

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NotThatGood wrote:

But, if the motion sensor is somewhat close to the camera, wouldn't it still take ages for the cam to start recording? The cam would still need all those extra seconds before it would start recording. Or am I thinkig the wrong way? The whole point with a camera fails the way it works now 😞

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The thinking is, that you place and orient an external motion sensor such that it senses an intruder before s/he potentially enters the area covered by the camera that would be recording when the motion sensor was tripped. That way, because of the delayed response of the camera, recording could start before or at least at the time the intruder entered the frame of the camera, rather than much later when leaving the frame again, which is likely to occur if the monitoring camera relied solely on its own motion sensor.

I was going to refer you to a post of mine that I published a few days ago in which I demonstrate how two cameras located at opposite ends of a narrow pathway along a house are utilized in such a way that one acts as a sensor for the other and vice versa. But I see that you have already discovered it and will reply to your further question there.

[Kramed]

A dedicated motion detector would be great.  I'm currently using one of my cameras as a motion detector.  I don't see where I can set up a mode that tells the system to start recording on both cameras if one camera detects motion.  If there was a dedicated motion detector, it would be good to be able to record on two cameras

[Schorschi]

You need to create (at least) two rules in the same mode. Let's say camera A is the one to do the recording and camera B is an additional one solely used for its motion sensor. The rules you need to set up then are as follows:

1. If motion detected on camera A, record on camera A.
2. If motion detected on camera B, record on camera A.

Note that you must create a custom mode to put these rules into (apart from rules for any other cameras that you want to arm during this mode being active). You cannot do this with the default Armed mode, as you cannot add any rules to it.