Arlo Cams coming in few weeks

So overall I am happy with this integration. I think others should try it this way (forget about Arlo modes/schedules) and see if it meets your overall needs. I am leaving the cameras on for now (as I did with Arlo itself I think); I don’t see why to turn them off in routine (save a little battery?). My Arlo SmartThings mode is still missing rules since I tried to turn off notifications in each, but it is still working okay (door open with SHM/alarm armed triggered recordings on all Arlo cameras). I guess I will turn off Arlo notifications in Android app settings for now at least.

Going forward this will help me use my SHM arm stay/away more. I tried to set up a CoRE piston to run good night and good morning routines, but I can’t tell if it worked last night/this morning. Then next issue will be minimizing false alarms from Arlo motion sensors and inside GoControl motion sensors.

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SBDOBRESCU thanks, Yes It works either way, it’s seems to be a great integrations.
I only have a Windows Phone and the Smartthings App doesn’t support video playback of the recorded arlo cameras I have no option other than to use Arlo to record the video. I know there isn’t a Arlo Windows app either but the email notification sends me an email that I can click on and view in the Windows Phone.

My other concern with the video in Smartthings is that it clearly states that it is a premium feature of Smart Home Monitor and enjoy whilst it is in Beta. At what point will this stop working and you be asked to pay. With Arlo at least you have 1 week of recording always at no extra charge.

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Netgear Arlo should be under Things (rather than SmartApps). There are still a few random integrations that appear in the app as devices but show up on the SmartApps page (e.g., Life360). This is from an old set up of the Marketplace, and should will be changing soon.

Thanks for the patience!

I agree. And then there is the lenght of the clip, in ST you are limited to 120s. And when the premium comes out of beta, I have no problem paying 5 bucks per months for 30 days video history. This integration makes Arlo cams so much more useful.

I don’t see its usefulness, turn the cams on or off instead of motion on or off (would prefer both options) is my pain point. I need live streaming to remain available but motion off which for some reason this integration doesn’t offer.

Plus they could have offered some instructions and information on functionality instead of letting people waste their time figuring this out themselves. There is a lot of confusion in this thread and if they stated what is and isn’t available I could have decided it is worthless to me and not even set it up. Now I lost a mode in the Arlo app which will need to be recreated.

I would like the on/off feature with the Q’s but need motion on/off with the wireless as to keep live streaming more quickly available. Either way I’d like to know the reasons they did what they did. All have been uninstalled from ST and I’m back to using IFTTT, all because ST can’t give people options. Glad some love it, I think it’s a typical ST piece of …

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You can request enhancements on current integration on this thread. And keep in mind, that is not what ST can give people, but what Arlo allowed ST to handle. This is Arlo’s integration not STs product. I am impressed by how much control Arlo gave to ST members. Let’s not forget, that just couple of months ago all you had was the Arlo piece of…manager app. Arlo is moving in the right direction!

I set the Arlo app to Email notifications to a mailbox that doesn’t alert me and has filters to delete mail after a few days. Seems to work fine but it’s just a work around. It doesn’t address the multiple alert issue.

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Great idea and what I’ll do. Many thanks.

But I’m totally unhappy with this situation (the fact that we have to do this workaround). Not sure who dropped the ball on this one (I’m guessing the Arlo folks) but the mandatory dual notifications does not make sense. I’m fine if it’s set up as the default setting but at least allow us to change it if we don’t want it!!!

Yes, I wish there was a little more detail about the effects of the integration and some key hints.

However…

One of the strengths of ST is the community and getting answers from users is the MO for most things.

I only just got the Arlo’s and did not get into a full blown rules setup with their Mode feature, so it’s not killing anything for me. And I do very much like the way the ST folks have adding how to work with the cams on their end because it is how I had envisioned using them in my particular setup. I realize I can avoid one of the big negatives with the cameras (the lag time to view) by using other triggers besides their built in motion sensor.

Has anyone else seen what I call the “Overlap Cascade” problem with ST Arlo integration? In some cases, due to the way motion activation works with Arlo cameras, I want motion on one camera to activate recording on multiple cameras. This works reasonably well in the native Arlo app, but there’s an issue when trying to do this with ST integration.

Here’s the situation. If there’s motion detected by one camera, I want to activate recording by multiple cameras to cover routes of ingress/egress. This way I don’t just have a video of the back of someone’s head as they walk away. I have four Arlo cameras outside; Garage Door, Driveway, Front Door, and Kitchen Door.

For example, I’ve set up the following rules:

  • When motion on the Driveway > activate recording on the Driveway and the Garage Door
  • When motion on the Front Door > activate recording on the Front Door and Driveway
  • When motion on the Kitchen Door > activate recording on the Kitchen Door and Front Door

Doing this in Arlo requires setting up multiple rules within a custom mode and seems to work reasonably well. In the ST integration however, while it’s possible to mimic this with Custom rules in the Smart Home Monitor, you end up with an “Overlap Cascade”.

If motion is detected on say the Kitchen Door, ST will send motion alerts, and kick off recording, on the Kitchen Door and Front Door, but because the Front Door was part of another Custom rule in ST, it also gets kicked off, and sends an alert, and kicks off recording. In the example above, motion at the Kitchen Door cascades into push Alerts for all three custom rules and kicks off recording at the Kitchen Door, Front Door, Driveway, and Garage Door. This is an Overlap Cascade ™. :grinning:

So… motion at a single location kicks off a chain of multiple alerts and recordings. The recordings all happen at once in Arlo, and there is only one set, so some of the entries in the ST Smart Home Monitor past events have invalid video links in them. No bueno…

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What people need to understand is, it’s not a matter of comfortable of using ST side alone or not. There are a few things simply can’t be done on ST side alone. For one, as you mentioned, from ST side you can’t control the motion sensor sensivity, which is important because if I can’t adjust it during different time of the day, I’d either get hundreds of false triggers during the day (especially before sunset) or get 0 triggers at night. This makes the integration simply useless to me.

@Lhaffinatu,

You can create custom monitoring rules in SHM to do just what you are wanting. Choose the trigger devices and then choose which cameras. Then you just create another rule for the next circumstance that you want to trap on. Try it out. It’s pretty cool.

Twack

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I understand. Definetly not allowing ST to control the motion sensor was an oversight on Arlo’s part, which I hope will be corrected with future enhancements, along with picture taking. There were a few things that ST did correct before the launch, but obviously motion fine tuning is not one that was on their radar, perhaps.

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Not sure, but you may be able to replicate what you really want in something like CoRE. Since there you can have one uber rule that has nested “or” conditions. Something like the three rules you have listed. Not saying this will work, just know CoRE has what are called “groups” in their IF statements so you might be able to nest those together to get what you want.

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Can you control motion sensitivity on arlo via ifttt?

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No, right now, I only use IFTTT to interface my ST stuff with arlo, like if my ST motion sensor senses a motion then use arlo to take a video clip. All arlo motion sensitivities are programmed in various modes and schedule them on arlo side.

Using IFTTT to interface between ST and arlo works ok, but the latency is too long, often the video starts after the visitor (or intruder) already past the POV of the camera :frowning:

More an FYI and of course this makes sense but I just wanted to test it to see what happens mainly to see the implications of rule conflicts between the two apps (ST and the arlo).

So I altered the default rule on the Arlo side to actually record for 30 sec if motion is detected (so changed the default “do nothing” to record). As well as to not do any notifications.

Then I also set up a SHM custom rule to when my front gate is open, start recording video for 60 sec and send notifications.

Ran some tests triggering one first then the other. The results were…

IF the Arlo app rule (within the ST custom mode on their app) is triggered first, then the SHM rule will not record video (that makes sense since the cam is currently busy doing the other rule). And the recorded video on the Arlo site is 30 sec (it’s rule duration).

IF the SHM rule is triggered first, then the Arlo one is not run. Oddly tho, I got notifications from both ST and Arlo even tho on the Arlo side it does not have notifications listed (in SHM I do have push notifications). Also the video on the Arlo site (and within SHM of course) is for the correct, 60 sec, duration.

May not be useful info for anyone, but it is worth noting that there can be rule overlap and conflicts in which case video is not recorded if you change the “do nothing” on the Arlo side of things.

Is this correct? In smart home monitor I have it set to record on all 5 external cameras when I’m Armed (away) mode. These 5 cameras are dotted around the externals of the house. The patio camera picked up motion and I received videos from all cameras. Surely this isn’t right?

@mattih52002
What were you expecting?

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So…this may actually be something that it should be doing (maybe not for you, but others). Cams are often set up to cover an entire area and when one is triggered you want views from others to capture an event where someone is moving from one area to another.

However, I totally get your thought and it probably requires you to set up a more complex logic rule whereby motion captured in one area and then another and then another is then recorded on those areas where the motion is detected.

I think we all need to remember that these devices are basically computers and computers are inherently stupid.

The human mind is much more brilliant (sometimes :wink: ) and thus we need to create very specific rules to manage the devices.