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.
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 
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?
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 
) and thus we need to create very specific rules to manage the devices.
Only one problem with the custom monitoring rules in SHM, at least with Open/Close sensors as I don’t have Arlo yet, is that once configured as custom, they do not appear in the Right Now list of devices.
I wouldn’t have expected all my cameras to record. 4 other cameras are unnecessarily recording no activity. I’d have thought the ability for other cameras to record was optional. What if I had x cameras inside and outside. If motion detects on an outside camera, would I really want my cameras inside to record??
If this is expected behaviour then fine but is there a work around?
I’d have expected the camera that detects motion to record but at the same time have something configurable so that I can instruct Smartthings/Arlo to record on other cameras too.
I had this same issue with a flood of recordings for motion coming from one camera. You pretty much need to create a custom rule for each (or sets) camera to get them to behave the way they do in Arlo.
SHM treats the cameras just like they are regular motion sensors for intrusion alerts, so if you set them all to record in the standard SHM setup, all of them record for ANY intrusion.
With a custom rule you can set something more precise, like if motion is detected on the Garage Arlo camera motion sensor, only record on the Garage Arlo camera.
Also, if you have cameras outside that get a lot of false positives (like people walking by or a squirrel party), don’t set it up as a motion sensor for intrusion alerts 
You can do it all in SHM custom rules now. Choose which camera’s motion you want to trigger recording on what cameras. You just create a separate rule for each scenario that you want. Like:
- Motion on porch when mode is away > notify me and record on porch and driveway for 1 minute.
- Motion on porch in all modes except away > record on porch for 30 seconds.
- Motion on back porch or back door open while in away > notify me, alert with lights and record all cameras for 2 minutes.
Nothing needs to change in the SmartThings mode in Arlo app to do all of the above.
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Cool. I’ve modified it now and it works the way I want it to, thanks. When alerting with a light, is it possible to have the light switch off after x amount of time or when motion stops?
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You can set up the light in Smart Lighting to turn on with motion detected on the camera and then off after x minutes off after motion.
Twack
I did this yesterday without the “Then Off after x minutes”.
This doesn’t actually turn off the camera, it simply activates the recording with the sensitivity and recording length set in the custom “SmartThings” Arlo mode.
- Use the Smart Lighting App.
- Each camera is a “Light”.
- Each camera is also a “Motion Sensor”.
- I set each camera to “Turn On” when the camera sees motion.
- I also set them to only “Turn On” when a specific mode is active.
I miss understood your initial request. I thought you were talking about a real light. For a camera, if you turn it off like a light it shuts down the motion detection too.
I was talking about an actual light 
Thanks
Thanks that’s useful to know
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