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 ™.
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…