Post midnight delay in recordings appearing in library with latest Android app

[kenzoc]

As of August 28th my cameras no longer capture any recordings for events which are not apart of my smart notification settings. As an example, my cameras used to always record my dogs in the backyard and properly tag them as animals without notifying me, now I have found these events are not being recorded and is impacting all my cameras as of August 28th. If I do turn on smart notifications for animals they are now again recording but of course sending me a push notification which I don't want.

I work in technology and can tell you this is a back end issue or firmware issue (before you tell me to reset or whatever garbage suggestion Arlo support has). 

The complete lack of QA on this product is insane, fix it. 

[JamesC]

The development team has completed a cloud release resolving the issues some users experienced with suppressed recordings from Smart Detection settings.

With this release, all recordings should be visible in the library/feed regardless of the selections made with Smart Detection toggles unless the event takes place outside of a user defined Activity Zone.

[JamesC]

After further investigation, the development team has identified the cause behind some users continuing to see missing video clips when smart notifications for specific events are toggled off. We will be releasing a cloud side fix later this week to address these concerns.

We appreciate your patience and feedback while we work to resolve these issues. I will provide another update once we have more information available to share

[JamesC]

I realize there is a lot of confusion in this thread due to the recent changes we rolled out. I apologize for all the frustration this has caused. Currently, we've rolled back the changes but we're continuing to investigate reports from users about a few unexpected behaviors they are still experiencing.

1.) Video clip deletion when smart toggles are turned off. This results in recordings not arriving in the library or feed when the smart classification toggle is turned off (for example, Vehicles are turned off, resulting in no notification or recording). This change was rolled back but some users are reporting they are still experiencing this behavior. The development team is actively investigating these reports. The intent after we rolled back the changes is for all event recording to be saved to the library/feed regardless of your Smart Alert and Smart Detection toggles (unless the motion is outside of a defined Activity Zone in which case it will be discarded as expected).

2.) When all motion or all other motion is turned on but smart notification toggles are turned off, clips for these events are arriving as expected in the library/feed but they don't have a classification label, whereas previously they would still have a vehicle label even if vehicle notifications was turned off for example.

3.) In the latest version of the Arlo app, there is confusing verbiage in the Smart Notifications toggle area that states recordings will be suppressed when the toggles are turned off. This is the change that was rolled back and this is being updated in a new version of the app that will be released soon.

The development team is working hard to revert these changes to the previous expected behaviors, I will provide more information as soon as I can.

JamesC

[MikeInMelbourne]

For the last couple of weeks I've been experiencing delays in being able to view my post midnight recordings in the Arlo app on Android.

They eventually appear in the app library 10 hours later at midnight UTC.

But meanwhile I can see them via a browser on my laptop, or individually when I click on a notification on my phone.

Is anyone else experiencing something like this? It seems to be an issue with the 1 August Android app update, as all was fine until then.

I reported it to support but they are not being helpful, and seem to believe it's an issue with configuration of my devices, not the app.

I can post more details if it helps.

Thanks

Michael

[BrookeN]

Please contact support. Within the app on your mobile device click on the silhouette on the top left ~ support center ~ the device that you are needing assistance with then choose the behavior you are seeing.

[MikeInMelbourne]

Thank you but, as mentioned above, I have already reported this ongoing issue to Arlo support, on 6 August.

Sadly, however, their case triaging process is so flawed that it has taken almost two weeks for the various support reps to take my report of an error with the Android app seriously. Meanwhile I was hoping that someone else on a non-US and non-European time zone might be noticing the same kind of issue.

At the moment, while this issue continues to persist, my cameras are essentially useless overnight, despite having worked fine in an unchanged configuration for the last couple of years.

[MikeInMelbourne]

This issue still persists, despite me sending full details, including app logs and screenshots, to support.

I'm 99% sure it's a time zone issue (ie programming error) with the latest version of the app, but it may only be noticeable by those of us who are on time zones that are significantly ahead of UTC, such as Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

I don't have an iPhone so can't check it on that, and if it only affects Android then that's a smaller affected group too.

Surely, though, others have noticed it - and if you have, please post a reply here.

I know it can take a while to get bugs fixed, eg with that timestamp issue back in April 2022, but if it's not fixed soon I'll definitely not be adding more cameras to my plan prior to a forthcoming holiday... and will have to begin looking at alternative approaches instead.

Thanks

Michael

[BrookeN]

I have made the development team know all the information you provided to me. They are currently looking into this. As soon as there is an update I will reach out to you. 

[MikeInMelbourne]

The following process, done a little before 10am local time, seemed to solve the issue:

1. Changed the time zone on my base station from UTC+10 to UTC+12
2. Stopped the Arlo app
3. Cleared the Arlo app cache
4. Restarted the Arlo app
5. Checked the library screen and my recordings for that day were now visible
6. Changed the time zone on my base station back to UTC+10 (my local time)
7. Closed and restarted the app and the post-midnight recordings were now still visible in the library
8. After midnight that night the library continued to behave as it should, with recordings appearing in the app immediately
9. The library in the app has continued to behave properly ever since, now several midnight later.

There's still a bug in the Arlo app, of course, but that workaround solved it for me. And perhaps not all of the steps above were necessary, but it's not my job to find the most efficient way to solve it!

[JP2daMC]

Hi there

I have 4 Arlo 4 cameras that I've had for 18 months. I have all the updates. I have contacted the Arlo chat support which unfortunately didn't help.

So here's the issue. I used to get videos in my feed for all types of motion - people, vehicle, animals etc. However, that suddenly stopped in the last 24 hours and I'm now only getting videos of people.

I have everything selected in my feed options for all cameras. I've checked both the app and the desktop version and they are the same. 

Today is very windy and normally I'd be getting something in my feed every minute until I turned sensitivity down. But sensitivity is up to 100%. I also had my cameras on my dogs who are constantly moving and I'm getting no notifications, so I know the issue isn't lack of movement. 

On the dashboard, I can see the motion detection lighting up regularly, but no videos are being sent to my feed. Even when people are recorded and those videos are still being sent to my feed, I don't get a number appearing in the top right of the video widget on the dashboard, even though videos appear underneath. 

I have smart notifications on which only sends me SMSs notifications only if people are recorded. However, this has been the same for 18 months, hasn't been changed still seems to be working. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

[StephenB]

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@JP2daMC wrote:

Hi there

I have 4 Arlo 4 cameras that I've had for 18 months. I have all the updates. I have contacted the Arlo chat support which unfortunately didn't help.

So here's the issue. I used to get videos in my feed for all types of motion - people, vehicle, animals etc. However, that suddenly stopped in the last 24 hours and I'm now only getting videos of people.

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 I'd start by turning off smart notifications, so you can figure out if you are getting notifications for the missing recordings or not.

Are you using activity zones?

[JP2daMC]

Thanks for the reply.

So if I turn on and off different options under smart notifications, that's all that will appear in my feed. For example, if I turn everything off in smart notifications, I get nothing in my feed, or if I turn people, animals and vehicles on, I get those notifications in my feed. 

The exception to this is 'all other motion'. Turning that setting on seems to send me blank notifications without a video preview and then they don't appear in the feed. 

Two of my cameras have activity zones and 2 don't.

[StephenB]

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@JP2daMC wrote:

So if I turn on and off different options under smart notifications, that's all that will appear in my feed. For example, if I turn everything off in smart notifications, I get nothing in my feed, or if I turn people, animals and vehicles on, I get those notifications in my feed. 

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Where are you turning these off?

[rakunn]

So I have four arlo ultra 2s and one door bell. The hub has a sd card in it, and I am subscribed to the cloud. On the 26th of August something weird started happening. All cameras record events to the cloud only if alerting for that event is turned on. I have turned off animal and vehicle alerts. The feeds used to show vehicle and animal events, even though the alert is off, but now it does not show them. The feed now only shows person events. I tried turning on the alerts for vehicle and animal events, once I did, all events were present in the feeds. I have no filter on my feeds. All events are being recorded to the sd card so it is recording. I have a lot of cats and birds in my neighbourhood so it will get really annoying if I get notified for every passing animal. Is anyone else experiencing this?

[chicane]

Hi All,

I have noticed on two of my often-triggered cameras that they have stopped recording videos for no apparent reason. This started sometime around Friday/Monday AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time).

I can see events occur through my window and the orange movement detection light shows on the widget/camera screen, however no event is published to the feed nor any notification is sent.

I have had somewhat solid performance from the Pro 4 in this location (Pro 5 has bugs - a separate issue). Testing with my iPhone nearby also shows great signal and no performance problems nor signal dropouts. 

Unifi wifi shows 100% wifi experience and an ample -60 dBm signal. There is ample upstream ISP bandwidth and no issues with other devices. The camera is connected to an external wired AP. 

As recommended by support I swapped some cameras around and the issue continued to be observed with high number of events in this location. 

I have discussed with Arlo Support however they said no issues on their side, however I doubt they even have visibility or properly monitor their cloud hosting platform.

Today, I notice the camera has started working again (currently 8AM AEST) detecting 7 events over the past hour, and one at 2:54am. I will continue to monitor today. 

Anyone else experiencing this issue?

[chicane]

While I was hopeful the issue had been resolved my primary cameras have stopped recording events again.

They were working earlier this morning, however the last detected event was 9:06am AEST - 11:07 pm (UTC)

Events are occurring, movement detected icon changes to orange yet no events or notifications. 

[JP2daMC]

Under smart notifications. Everything in the feed settings remains on. 

[DannyBearAgain]

Sounds like a intermittent signal interference issue if another camera behaves the same way in only that location. Do you have a base station close to the local wifi router, should be greater than 6ft to minimise interference between them.

[chicane]

No I don't have a base station involved - wifi direct (Pro 4 / Pro 5S).

Live view works flawlessly as it did before events stopped recording. Zero pixelation. 

Unifi reports 100% wifi experience and another device (not Arlo Camera) works completely fine near the camera location.

Can support check and report why movement would be detected yet no recording taken/uploaded to Arlo cloud? 

Seems more of a congestion issue on their side or the camera is somehow blocked from recording?

[chicane]

The Pro 4 I have in this location (Driveway) is running version 1.080.22.1_42_39af8c3 firmware (released August 15, 2024). I wonder if this is a bug? I've logged a case and pinged my L3 contact at Arlo for comment. 

[chicane]

Arlo are sending me replacements of both, maybe there is a bad firmware? I suspect they know more than they are telling me.. Let's see if this fixes the issue.

[StephenB]

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@JP2daMC wrote:

Under smart notifications. Everything in the feed settings remains on. 

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This appears to be an intentional change in behavior.

@JamesC - While there are certainly folks who've requested that turning off a smart notification should also block recording, IMO this should be optional.   Personally I don't trust the classifications enough to block the recordings.  Though I do have local recordings also, many customers don't have smarthubs.

[StephenB]

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@kenzoc wrote:

As of August 28th my cameras no longer capture any recordings for events which are not apart of my smart notification settings. As an example, my cameras used to always record my dogs in the backyard and properly tag them as animals without notifying me, now I have found these events are not being recorded and is impacting all my cameras as of August 28th. If I do turn on smart notifications for animals they are now again recording but of course sending me a push notification which I don't want.

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It looks like this was an intentional change on Arlo's part.

While some folks have requested this over the years, IMO they should have made blocking recording an option.  I've tagged @JamesC on another thread reporting this so he can log that suggestion.

[StephenB]

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@chicane wrote:

While I was hopeful the issue had been resolved my primary cameras have stopped recording events again.

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Are you disabling some of the smart notifications?

There is a behavior change that started very recently.  Originally turning off a smart notification category only blocked the notification - the recording still happened.  But now they are blocking both the notification and the recording.

[SK526456]

My cameras stopped recording videos on cloud, but they are still recording on the local storage, which cannot access….

arlo is suck I’m leaving, poor product Quality with such expensive prices

[chicane]

Thanks @StephenB, you are spot on. I was filtering smart notifications (only one category enabled). 

How did you know this? Do you work for Arlo? 

Since when did this change? is this a camera firmware, app, or server/cloud side change?

I wonder if this is a knee-jerk change to reduce the total storage cost to Arlo for cloud hosting.

[kenzoc]

Thanks for the reply, was this then mentioned in patch notes I have missed? The smart notification wording in the ui still implies it'll record all event but only notify me on the ones listed, which given how poor the ux is for Arlo is not surprising. 

Regardless if this was intentional I'm severely perturbed - all competitors add options to select what I want recorded and what I want to be notified about. If his was intentional I feel this is a tactic to reduce cost through extra storage..