Chat about HomeKit with Greg Falgiano, Director of Product Management, 8/09 10 a.m. PST

[JamesC]

This week Arlo released Apple HomeKit integration for Arlo Pro and Pro 2 cameras. Please join Greg Falgiano, director of product management for software services at 10AM PT this Fri 8/09/19 as he shares the highlights of this update and takes your questions about HomeKit integration.

Greg will be live in this Arlo Community discussion thread from 10AM PT to 11AM on Friday 8/09/19. We will leave this thread open until the end of the day for you to post questions if you can’t make it during the live chat. Greg will come back and respond to the questions you leave outside the time of our scheduled chat.

Greg Falgiano is the Director of Product Management for Software Services at Arlo Technologies where he is responsible for the company’s Arlo Smart services business, program management and key partnerships. Prior to Arlo he worked in the consumer electronics and IP phone industries. Throughout his career, he has held roles in Product Management, Channel Marketing, Marketing Communications and Business Development.

We look forward to having you join the conversation!

Thank you!

[DGArkie]

Thanks for your time here today. It appears to me that Arlo is as confused and frustrated withe the "Uncertified Accessory" issue as we, the end user community are.

[Arlo-Greg]

@jbendezu thanks for your questions. I ended up covering some of them in previous posts, but for iOS 13, yes we will be making some updates for compatability.

[Retired_Member]

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@Arlo-Greg wrote:

@jbendezu thanks for your questions. I ended up covering some of them in previous posts, but for iOS 13, yes we will be making some updates for compatability.

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Do ya'll utilize TestFlight for app testing / beta?

[Arlo-Greg]

Hey @Jtodd77  notifications need to be enabled in the Home app specifically. You may also need a Home Hub, as Apple calls, it to enable "remote access." HomeKit is mainly a local network system.

[Retired_Member]

I’ve also already tried contacting support and they basically have absolutely no idea about this error at all.

[Maxxchiki]

I agree the KB article is not written properly. 

In addition to your point, on step #6 they state to restart your base station but then link another article to reset your base station. 

Which is it? Restart or reset?

[Arlo-Greg]

@illuminous thanks for your feedback. Although HomeKit Secure video will do some edge processing, we don't have any data on speed increases vs. our notification delivery. Also, Arlo Smart currently has more detection types to offer.

We are working on speeding up our notifications. We look to have a balance of quick notifications, but also being able to have the system review more of the clip to detect other object types.

[Arlo-Greg]

Hi @IAMSAMMICH I believe HomeKit only allows one stream at a time from each camera. You can use the Arlo app at the same time as HomeKit if that helps for your family's use case.

[sean7512]

@Arlo-Greg One more (although not HomeKit related), with Flash being unsupported in 2020, is the web app going to be updated to HTML5?

[Arlo-Greg]

Hi @Maxxchiki it should be "restart." Please try that first and if it doesn't work, please reach out to our support team.

[Maxxchiki]

@Arlo-Greg Thank you will try and if not I will follow up with the support team. 

[Arlo-Greg · Accepted solution]

Thanks for participating today everyone! Great feedback on HomeKit features and it looks like a lot of the community members have had a chance to dive in deep on the feature set. It's also great to see community members sharing solutions. We really appreciate that!

I'm signing off for today, but I'll be back online to respond to more questions over the next few days.

Greg Falgiano,

Director of Product Management, Software Services

[jonesaus]

Those instructions don’t work, I don’t have the option to remove the base station

[ThuTrinh]

The old firmware supported homekit,If on the cloud request upgrade new firmware for product. Does it support the homekit after upgrading?

[Lordofthegins]

Hey, thanks for answering our questions. I can’t find any documentation around HomeKit implementation. I’m wondering if the home.app can set states (eg disarm, away etc)

[snordstrand]

I am afraid that the HomeKit intregration simply does not work. The "Uncertified Accessory" error prevents the base station from connecting to the HomeKit. Time after time. Unfortunately, I took your advice regarding this error in your Support article # 000062294 which was posted earlier today. It suggested removing the base station and,  by definition, all the cameras to fix the problem. The fix did not work and will require that I climb a ladder in multiple locations to add the cameras back in the morning. Same old error continues. Very disappointing. 

[JamesC]

@jonesaus, @snordstrand, @ThuTrinh 

If you're still having issues with HomeKit after referring to the support articles, please contact the Arlo Support Team to further investigate the issue. You will find several options for contacting support in the provided link.

@Lordofthegins

Take a look at Gregs statement on this here:

"For arming/disarming, we looked into this with the Apple team and the option isn't available for camera "device types." This applies to all cameras on the HomeKit ecosystem, not just Arlo. We passed the feedback on to Apple as we have heard this request from a few customers. We have to wait until it is officially supported before we can implement the feature though."

JamesC

[Arlo-Greg]

@sean7512 currently, HomeKit doesn't support camera recording, so we don't have a way to trigger the camera to record with HomeKit. If that feature becomes available from Apple, we would like to implement it.

In the meantime, we do offer this capability through other partner integrations such as SmartThings and IFTTT.

[Arlo-Greg]

@IAMSAMMICH we would be happy to have you as a beta tester for future Arlo products. Glad you are interested in expanding the range of Arlo products in your home. I'll ask our Beta manager to reach out to you.

[Arlo-Greg]

@Retired_Member  try the HomeKit settings in the base station menu, not the main settings menu.

[Arlo-Greg]

@Retired_Member  yes we do use TestFlight.

[Arlo-Greg]

@sean7512 yes, we are aware that we will need to transition to a new technology for the web client. Though we can't comment on which technology we will pick at this time.

[Arlo-Greg]

@Lordofthegins we don't have an option to enable arming/disarming for our device type in HomeKit (camera). I included some more info in a previous post.