Presence Arrival Sensor questions and Arlo Q as a possible substitute?

[Kwenda (Dick)]

Perhaps someone can assist with three questions for a newbie.

Smartthings Hub 2, Smartthings Classic app on Motorola G6 Plus, Android 8.0 Oreo.

1. The presence arrival sender/ sensor works just fine, but I notice that presence arrival sender does not change the ‘Smart Home Monitor’ setting. It will report as Disarmed, even when I am away according to the ‘My Home ‘ app page

2. The presence sender eats batteries fast.!! A brand new Duracell after a few days is shown as 75% on the Notification, Activity Feed page

3. I have also Arlo Pro and Arlo Q cameras, and the Geofencing arm / disarm used to work with an older phone running Android 6 Marshmallow perfectly.
   A phone with Android 8 Oreo has erratic Geofencing due I understand to the battery saver changes in Android 8 Oreo. The Arlo app was running in the back ground.?
   Does the Smartthings Geofencing app work reliably with Android 8 Oreo.??
   If it does, I can save some battery costs instead of using the presence arrival sensor.

Thanks for any assistance

[JDRoberts]

Two different variables with similar names are what’s causing your question one. See the following FAQ (this is a clickable link)

FAQ: Armed/Disarmed states vs Away/Home modes confusion

Hello, I’m brand new to SmartThings, and I’m trying to configure Smart Home Monitor to alert not just on door open/close sensors and motion sensors, but also on certain vibration sensors when it is in the Armed state. I can’t find a way to do that. I can use Custom to make a vibration alert based on Away/Home/Night “modes”, but these appear to be totally separate from the Armed/Disarmed states. Am I missing something?

[JDRoberts]

For your second question, there a couple of different things that might be going on. The first is to check whether in fact there’s a problem at all. See the following FAQ (this is a clickable link)

FAQ: How Sleepy Devices Report Battery Life (tier reporting)

Many battery-powered " sleepy" devices reports battery levels in tiers. The exact tiers will vary by device. For most contact sensors, the tier that is reported as “88%” really means “above 87% and below 100%” So as soon as battery level drops below 100%, even to 99%, it will likely be reported by SmartThings as 88%, although the exact buckets vary by DTH/Edge Driver. What you need to watch is the trend. If it drops 10% in one day. That was probably just a tier drop. You can even bounce back-and-forth by 10% because it’s right at the threshold of a tier. But if it’s dropping 10% every week, that’s a different problem. If you’ve had any device off-line for a while, it’s really common for it to come back in the next lower tier, which looks like a 10% drop but might’ve been a drop of ha…

[lmosenko]

Hi @Kwenda,

Welcome to SmartThings community.
If you are using a ST Presence sensor for your car or back pack and are a tinkerer or even a wonnabe tinkerer. Than you may want to investigate this option for your keyfob presence sensor battery issue.
Check out this thread:

Presence Sensor battery upgrade

Soooo, I’m supper annoyed with the presence sensor battery life… so this is what I’m doing. Since a CR2032 battery is 3v and ~240mah I figured I could take two AA batteries in series to get 3v and 1900mah capacity. HUGE difference! about 8x the capacity of a 2032 battery setup. I purchased a few battery cases with leads and project boxes. I’ve already made one for my motorcycle and popped it under the seat. So far, so good. I just want it to last more than 3 months! If the increase in compaticence is even a lowly 50% efficiency gain, which I am guessing it’s far more than that… the thing should last more than a year. If the efficiency is closer to 100% then I can probably expect 2 years out of this thing. I plan on making 2 more for my car and my wife’s car. What I do is set up …

For cellphone based presence detection, you may want to integrate with Life360 for Arming/Disarming your SmartThings Home and you Arlo cameras.

And as for Arming/Disarming your home, you should do this in the ST Classic ap routine settings.