Thanks. That is what I thought.
So, to be clear, I should leave the Arlo Mode as “Disarmed” in order to run the Arlo Assistant app correct? I have no ST mode in Arlo anymore. I am thinking I may need to delete and re-add the cameras to ST in order for ST to be able to control them. Or, am I missing something?
If you set the Arlo Mode to Disarmed then you can’t use the cameras for motion and audio detection. It doesn’t have to be the Smartthings Mode created during setting up integration, but it does need to be something that allows both Motion and Audio detection and to have notification options turned off.
One more thing I should point out though is you can still trigger recordings if the cameras are Disarmed you just can’t use the cameras to detect motion or audio.
I have 5 Arlo Pro Cameras and never have seen a “Smartthings Mode” within the Arlo App or Arlo Web Portal. And coincidentally I cant get the custom modes I created to trigger from Smarthings or SMH mode changes. Do I need the Arlo connect Smartthings mode? Arlo pilot worked so hopefully I can make this app work as well. If I do need the “Smartthings Mode” how would I try to re create it?
Thanks!
Arlo is now blocking ANY external access to modes other than Armed or Disarmed.
In order to recreate the Smartthings mode, you have to delete your cameras from ST, and re add them through the marketplace>cameras>Netgear Arlo{whicever system you have}. Once you do that, the smartthings mode will be back in arlo.
Thanks for the quick response.
I have updated the Arlo Smartthings Mode Child app. There is a new value that will allow you to control how frequently you get notified. This should prevent some occasions where you may get hit with 5 or 6 notifications quickly during activity.
I think I have isolated what seems to be responsible for the cameras getting stuck in a bad state. It does appear to be a timeout that occurs in the Arlo Connect app. Simply put there is a step to copy the clip back to smartthings since it originated there. If that action is taking more then 20 seconds it appears to time out and leave the camera in a bad state until it is fixed. What is interesting is that this seems to still happen even with the IFTTT trigger recordings. That is why I added the option for the smartapp to loop the IFTTT action until it is recovered. Unfortunately i have seen occasions where my own cameras will hit that loop for minutes. That isn’t good.
OK so next thing I will work on is the ability to turn the cameras on and off based on mode criteria we have defined. This will be similar to the other mode management app, but will be for camera control instead of triggering actions. At the moment i am thinking it will be a seperate app, but i am trying to think of a way to keep it in the Arlo Smartthings Mode child app. We will see how it comes out.
Do I need to have a virtual switch in order to use Arlo Assistant?
I have added the repository (parent and child apps) and configured the setting in Arlo Assistant. My setting is that camera will record video when motion is detected and Smartthings is in Away mode. I tested yesterday and today, but no recordings are saved in the event of motion.
Sorry I am fairly new to this, although I have used Arlo Pilot before the workflow got broken.
The switch shouldn’t be needed. You should be able to use just mode.
I would suggest you check the camera devices to ensure they are not stuck with ClipStatus showing in “Initiated state”. If they are you can either go into the Arlo app and trigger a short recording manually, or setup the Camera Ready Check Smartapp to return it to a good state.
I am getting very frustrated. I have seen a huge spike of errors occurring since I added the enhancement to the Camera Ready check app to recheck after a set period to verify if the IFTTT option fixed it. I have also found that IFTTT is reporting errors as well. I am beginning to think that Arlo is just not reliable period. We just don’t see these issues when we are using their service. We just depend on them to capture what is happening based on motion.
It is also worth noting that I have been rapidly working on improving it. So the directions have changed a few times as we have been going along. You may want to check the documentation at Things that are smart.com for more details.
I updated the Camrea Ready Health Check child app. Simply put I added an option to turn off notifications. This will prevent us from getting bombarded by the errors as they occur throughout the day.
A new tip. If you are using the Arlo pro base station with External storage you may find that it goes offline frequently. You may want to turn off the external storage as that will help the base station recover faster and not have as many errors.
I have thought of an idea to further enhance mode definition in Smartthings, We will see when i get to it though.
I made a big change to the Alro Assistant Smartthings Mode Child app.
First if you update today or going forward you will likely want to at least open the child app and then click on save. There are a few things in the new child app that will only update after saving the settings again.
This big update brought us closer to true modes. Prior to today Arlo Assistant simply looked at smartthings values and used that to determine if the state criteria were met. With todays update that is changed up a bit and should be less resource intensive.
We now have true rule sets associated with modes. As of today each child app install can setup 5 rule sets for each child app. This will allow you to consolidate previous child apps into one when the mode criteria are the same between them. Each rule set has independent Camera, Light, Alarm, and Notification configuration values for maximum flexibility.
One question I do have is how many rule sets do people need. I started with 5 in the app. I could expand it to more, but because of what it does to ballooning the code out, i would rather know for sure what most of us would need.
@tweason
This last update provided a way to turn the cameras on and off based on mode. You may want to use this to accomplish what you were wanting in that reguard.
Will give it a try when I have time this weekend
@ Mavrrick58 I want to thank you for all the work you do. I having been using your ADT Tools 2 since the beginning and it makes the use of the ADT system so much more useful. I was really glad to see you take up the issue with Arlo after the death of ArloPilot. I was not a big user of the features of ArloPilot as all I wanted was to turn my inside cameras off when I was at home and arm them when I left. Today I installed and configured Arlo Assistant and I just have to say wow what a great program. I got my cameras setup in about 5 minutes and then tested my home and away modes and they work perfectly. I do use the external storage on my Arlo Pros so I am going to keep an eye on them for any errors. I hope to not see any since I am only using your app to turn on and off my inside cameras. Again I really appreciate all your work. Do you have a link for donations as this and ADT Tools both deserve it in my opinion?
Both apps have an about page that has a link for donations. That page doesn’t appear to work in the new app though.
Never thought to look at the About page. Will send Donation.
Ok I must be dense, because I cant seem to get this to function for the life of me. I deleted all of my cameras and re installed them to smartthings. I now have the smartthings mode available. I then wen through the mode setups and cant get them to switch over. I set up a mode for Away, Night, Home. Away and Night activate cameras and the home mode doesn’t activate any cameras. I set the modes so they correspond with smartthings mode and SHM mode changes. Yet the cameras don’t record in any of the modes and I don’t receive notifications in either mode. The main function I am looking for is to continue to have the ability for my family to press a routine on our actiontiles panel to trigger the mode change based on smartthings. I cant seem to accomplish this and am ready to smash my entire Arlo system and transition to something that wont block simple communication.
access to armed and disarmed would be what I’m looking for. I want a routine on my actiontiles panel to trigger armed or disarmed.
Right now, I am using IFTTT for that. I have both smartthings and arlo connected. I use home and away as triggers to arm/disarm. If you want a button on action tiles, create a virtual switch, and use that as the trigger in IFTTT. You could also use home and away to trigger the switch and just use action tiles as a backup in case your presence doesn’t trigger the right mode.
So, in the if this, choose smartthings, switch as the trigger. In the then that, choose arlo, and arm/disarm (requires a different rule for each condition)
Go to try this app over the weekend. I was not having much luck with it before, but there have been some changes.
I agree with @tweason that you may want to use a switch to indicate what “mode” is active. I would suggest you review the wiki site at Thingsthataresmart. Com.
Things to remember.
This does work as I have been using it exclusively for a while now. My mode criteria is the alarm status on the ADT Smartthings Alarm panel though.
If you are having issues feel free to post any errors you are getting from live logging the app and I will review and let you know what appears to be the issue.