I’ve been having problems with all five Arlo Pro cameras when in SmartThings mode. It’s constantly changing the name of the rule or mode back to the serial number, changes the second camera to a different camera and changes my record option to do nothing. In other words, instead of detecting motion or sound on front door camera and recording on that camera it changes to my boys room camera and selects the do nothing option. All five cameras do it and it always selects my boys room camera for the second option and do nothing is always selected. Anyone else having this problem? Any ideas on how to fix it so it doesn’t keep resetting everything? I wanted to put it on a schedule but the Arlo modes will not allow me to set my schedule from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. it wants my start time earlier than my end time. I only want them to record while we’re in bed. TIA!
I see this ONLY after the SHM has been triggered.
@Ncook
Firstly, since the Smartthings Mode is controlling the connection certain things in your Rules will change back to the way that Smartthings wants. The Do Nothing for each camera is normal as Smartthings is controlling that. The same thing for the record duration. Don’t worry about those two items.
Check your Arlo Rules for each camera and be sure that the camera that fires is the camera that records the video. If camera 1 detects motion then camera 1 will be set to do nothing. I suspect you have the rules set up so that one camera is telling another camera to record.
Arlo Scheduling sucks! You should be be able to do much more in Smartthings.
This is just a short reply, so if you need more help, let me know. As far as the changing names back to the serial number, don’t worry about it. Smartthings will not change the names from what you have set them up as.
Brian
What Brian said…
Personally, I find the SmartThings mode more than lacking. Setup my own modes and then installed ArloPilot:
That’s actually what is happening. I named the rules after the camera and it changes back to the serial number so I’m constantly having to rename. I have it set up if motion or sound on camera 1 then record on camera 1 and it changes to if notion or sound on camera 1 then do nothing on camera 2.
My SHM is always triggering bc i always have my front/back door camera active… maybe i need to disable SHM then…
@Ncook
Since I am not there to see what you are doing I am going to give you a simple exercise so that I can understand what you are doing and what you wish to do. Once you understand the principles of this exercise, you can do more complicated things.
Firstly, Do you have a Smartthings Mode in Arlo?
What models of Arlo cameras do you have and are they plugged in constantly?
Brian
@Ncook
Since your outdoor cameras are active all the time you can simply use Custom Modes and Custom Rules in Arlo to arm/disarm the cameras. For example, you could have a mode that left your outdoor cameras active and the indoor cameras inactive. When you are away you could use the Armed mode to activate all of your cameras. The advantage of doing this is twofold: you don’t have the additional delay caused by Smartthings communicating with Arlo and back, and you will not have the problems you are having now. You don’t need to use Smartthings at all to use your cameras. The disadvantage of doing it this way is that there are so many things in Smartthings that are superior to Arlo such as Smartthing’s scheduling, using one Smartthing Custom Rule to control banks of cameras and using other sensors to trigger the cameras.
So what I do for various reasons, is to use Smartthings Routines to activate or deactivate the cameras and Custom Smartthings Rules to trigger them on motion.
For example: I use the Smartthings Routine Goodbye to activate all my cameras. I use the Good Night Routine to activate my Outside cameras only and I use the I’m Back or the Good Morning Routine to deactivate all the cameras.
For my indoor cameras I add them to SHM so that I get an intrusion alert if they detect motion. For the outside cameras I use Smartthings Custom Rules to detect motion and only notify me if there is motion. Therefore I can control banks of cameras with one Smartthings Rule which is very difficult to do with Arlo. Arlo only allows one to have one camera record videos on motion at a time so to control a bank of several cameras, one would have to create a bunch of Custom Rules in Arlo to accomplish the same thing.
If you would like me to I can instruct you on how I use Custom Rules in Smartthings and the settings I have in the Arlo Smartthings Mode.
Brian
There are many ways to use arlo and smartthings, you will just have to find what works best for your use cases.
Personally, I leave the smartthings mode alone and just use custom modes in arlo to control recording. Smartthings still gets motion events that I use for automatons.
Sorry I honestly had no idea this was going to be so confusing. I thought I understood and then I finally setup all my routines on SmartThings last night and it’s a whole other world that I could have been using but hadn’t been. So my goal is to leave my outside cameras on at all times, I live in a really shady neighborhood and my car’s been broken into multiple times so it’s important that they are always active. The inside cameras I only wish to use at night or while the whole family is gone. During the day while I’m at work my mom is still there watching my kids so there’s no sense of the inside cameras being on. I have far from learned everything yet but I do know that if it all possible I’d prefer to use SmartThings because I know I can do more with it.
I have had Arlo & Smartthings for about a year now, and never had the “perfect” solution.
When I first linked Arlo to Smartthings, it worked as you set it up originally. You could customise the “Smarttings Mode” in Arlo to have one camera trigger another to record, and have different notifications for each camera. Then there was an update to either Arlo or Smarttings - I never found out which, and the symptoms you now have of the cameras being renamed, or notifications being changed started.
The solution then was to not use the Arlo “Smartthings Mode” but use custom modes. You can still use Arlo cameras as motion sensors in ST but ST cannot command Arlo to record. The disadvantage to this is you have to change modes manually.
The compromise would be to have a single custom Arlo mode that covers all your cameras inside and out and have ST turn the cameras on or off depending on the SHM state.
ArloPilot is/was a very good SmartApp that forced an Arlo mode change from Smartthings, but again an update (probably on Arlo) has stopped it working reliably - for me at least.
Hope this isn’t too confusing.
I use WebCore to turn the camera’s on and off individually. I do not use the motion sensors in the camera’s to trigger SHM, but do use it to trigger records.
Is webcore as confusing to add as the Arlopilot seemed to be? The camera’s not tripping SHM seems like the route I want to go. I don’t need SHM tripped unless someone is entering the house while I’m gone or we’re in bed. I guess I might just end up playing around with everything to see what works best for me.
@Ncook
Something has definitely happened with the Arlo/Smartthings integration. I suspect Arlo as they are screwing everything up lately. It no longer works as it did.
So, Do not set up any rules in Arlo in the Smartthings Mode. Smartthings is controlling everything now in that mode.
So, either use the Arlo Armed/Disarmed Modes or Smartthings Routines and Custom Rules but not both.
Arlo no longer saves the Rules in the Smartthings Mode ad in fact, whenever I use Smartthings all my Rules in Arlo disappear.
This is no big deal - just saying that it no longer works as it used to.
Brian
Thanks for the detailed explanation. Due to all the many ways to do this, I just left my cameras active at all times, and oh how that drains the batteries. I think I will give this a shot to not have the cams going 24/7.
I would love to get your assistance in setting up rules in Smartthhings and Arlo if you have the time. Thanks in advance
@Ncook
So I go into Things in Smartthings and individually select and set up each camera’s settings by clicking on the gear icon at the top right of the page.
Then I have a Custom Rule for each camera in Smartthings to give me more control such as turning on a lamp or siren based on movement detection by the camera and what Alarm State I want the camera to record on., and if I want to also select other cameras to record at the same time, etc.
I also have set up Custom Rules for many of my door and motion sensors to start the cameras I select to record. I even use the temperature being reported by some of these sensors to alert me if the temperature in a room goes above, say, 85 degrees, thus indicating that there might be a fire, and record video on the nearest cameras.
By all means experiment so that your setup is customized to you.
One other thing, since in the future we will have to upgrade to the new app, I am sticking as close as possible to Smartthings devices and smartapps so that my system doesn’t fall apart when that happens. So for now, I am not using Webcore, or ArloPilot until I see how they work in the new app.
Brian
@cchilds1976
What exactly do you need help with?
What models of Arlo cameras are you using?
What are you trying to accomplish?
Brian
The advantage for me to integrate Arlo into Smartthings was that I could add Aeon motion detectors to trigger recording because the Arlo cams have really weak motion detecting. Arlo and Smartthings just did not work well together. I think the Arlo was overwhelmed by the amount of communication with SmartThings. It would not record half the time. I switched off Smarttthings mode in Arlo and removed the cameras from Smartthings and now things are working as they should. Nice try but not ready for prime time.
In a nutshell, I would like to get my outside cameras on some type of schedule since they do run on batteries. It’s kind of a pain to climb the flimsy ladder, take them down, charge them, then put them back up. Some sort of schedule would extend the battery life a little longer. The thing is my personal schedule changes as far as when I work, when I’m home, etc. So it’s difficult to get a set schedule for my smart devices. Same thing goes for Armed/Disarmed status. I have yet to set Modes and Armed/Disarm situations. Someone is always home in my household. There are 2 adults and 5 kids at home with 2 of those kids being upper teens. We are all coming and going with work and school, so I am not quite sure how to set up the Arm/Disarm and Modes items which would include the cameras and the other smart devices. I guess what I am asking is if you had any suggestions? As for the cameras, I am using 4 Arlo Pro 2 Outdoor Cameras (battery powered) on each corner of the house, a Ring Pro Doorbell, and a Nest IQ indoor camera (this camera is plugged in.) Also, I forgot to mention regarding all the cameras is the million notifications that motion has been detected. I would like to reduced all those notifications. Hope I didn’t confuse you too bad.
