Those who follow me on Twitter know how much I dig my Arlo webcams. In fact, the 4-pack was one of my top 2015 gadget purchases. Beyond the original, compelling selling points of being entirely wireless (from both network and power) and providing a generous free tier of network capabilities (vs Nestcam), the service has seen quite a few updates that further improve and refine the experience. However, none are bigger than the two features introduced last month.
Arlo’s biggest ding has been that the Netgear-produced network cameras have existed in something of a silo. Well, they just broke free via geofencing, in beta form, and IFTTT integration. The geofencing ties your phone’s position to your home motion detection rules while IFTTT, the virtual home automation hub, allows you to interoperate with tons of other gadgetry and online services. For example, my first recipe has the WeMo lightbulb on my deck turn on whenever the Arlo deck camera detects motion (followed by a rule that turns the light off after 10 minutes).
How is the battery life? I would like to use these outside on the eves of my house, but I don’t want change batteries every month.
These do look good. Do you need a subscription to use the modes and scheduling? I read that in an early review, but can’t find anything newer to verify it. The only differences I see are in the level of support and number of cameras. What do the support levels mean?
Love the geofencing though so far it’s very obvious that it’s in beta as I’ve found it to be inconsistent. Still, looking forward to improvements on this feature.
@Rick – they do have subscription tiers but it’s only for additional storage and cameras per hub. The free tier let’s you keep a rolling 7 days of recordings (up to 1 GB) and up to five cameras on a single hub. If you need more storage or more cameras, you’ll need a subscription. The scheduling and all the other features are standard.
I looked at these on their website, and they look cool. I know battery life is dependent on usage, but that is a key factor for such a purchase (but having the magnetic mount would help with easy removal, it sounds like, to swap batteries).
Also, what is the field of vision of these? I may have missed it, but I didn’t see anything about it, or whether it was adjustable.
Wes, I’m getting 3-6 months of battery life. It depends on recording quality, recording time, and amount of motion you detect. The camera spins up as motion is detected and starts recording a second or two later. You can specify how long those recordings last – mine range from 30-60 seconds, depending on location. In the winter, my battery life was less. Although it was brutally cold this year. Maybe next winter will be better. ;)
Rick, the free tier is substantially better now than when the Arlos were originally released. In fact, them changing up the plan is what got me on board.
Bricketh, changing the batteries is pretty easy if you can reach the camera. The common mount is attached to the wall by a single small screw and the camera magnetically attaches to the mount. It’s strong enough to survive heavy rains and wind, but pulls right off when you need to change the batteries.
I don’t know the actual field of vision, I’ve seen both 110 and 130 degrees listed – it seems pretty reasonable in practice. While you can’t pan or tilt the camera, you can crop the image down to smaller areas, but motion sensitivity isn’t similarly constrained given its IR method of detection.
Here’s some gratuitous Arlo clips for your entertainment:
https://twitter.com/davezatz/status/586853049550839810
https://twitter.com/davezatz/status/706166050627330048
https://twitter.com/davezatz/status/607498374263271424
https://twitter.com/davezatz/status/602450572613128192
https://twitter.com/davezatz/status/592626923425165312
Can I basically disable the camera based on geolocation? Like if I have a camera in my home, but I don’t want it to record if my wife or I am home, can I do that?
The Geofencing implementation seems pretty simplistic now (if you have multiple camera and scenarios in mind) and I can’t speak to its reliability, but what you describe is doable. In the settings you select the radius size for your home and I can also select one or both our phones to be the trigger for home/away and then “arm” or “disarm” the motion detection. Beyond geo, you can set different schedules and what not like only monitor indoor camera 1 during 9-5.
How flexible/easy is the cloud viewing? Can feeds be shared among different accounts?
Before being purchased by Nest, my brother and I got a DropCam for our elderly father and sharing the stream between our accounts was simple. But Nest has screwed that up to I have to be logged in as my brother now – sharing feeds is gone.
You can grant view rights or manage rights to any/all cams. My wife has her own account. You can also have it send email alerts with links to the video capture to any address without requiring an actual account I think. Not sure on your usage scenario, but these baby Arlos probably aren’t ideal for extended, live viewing given time to spin up and battery life considerations. I am planning on checking out the AC-powered Arlo Q as a baby monitor, it seems more suitable for that sort of scenario.
I am researching Arlo cameras too. Looks like the IOS app is a letdown, only 2 1/2 stars. I also read there is no voice recording either.
The battery-powered Arlos I own don’t do audio, so no audio recording is no surprise. The Arlo Q I believe does audio – if that isn’t recorded, it would indeed be a limitation.
Does your Arlo Q use PoE, or do you use a standard power adapter? I was thinking of getting one, but in lieu of a PoE-capable switch (I don’t have one), I was going to look into a PoE injector… I assume I can mix and match the 5 camera limit for basic service, based on what I have read.
I don’t have a Q… yet. Just 4 of the battery-powered Arlo “Wire-Free” cameras. Once upon a time, I did have PoE Logitech cameras. But my recollection was those formed a self-contained sort of network, unlike standard Powerline adapters. The Arlo Q communicates via WiFi whereas the Arlo Q Plus is pitched as business grade with additional PoE connectivity and a SD slot for backup recording capabilities. (I am a big fan of Powerline and own this 2-port kit to bring more reliable network connectivity into our guest bedroom, that hosts several devices out of the way.)
How easy is it to turn these off? For example, could I have these automatically powered off every Friday night through Saturday night? Or would I have to manually switch them off?
There’s no “off” button that I know of. But if you disable the motion detection during that time and don’t watch the video feed, it’ll consume far less power. The logic in constructing and implementing rules could definitely use some (more) work, but you would use the “Schedule” mode to call other custom modes for which ever cameras you want on/off.
For me, I leave everything on and manually “disarm” motion during the day on Thurs or Fri (when the lawn crew blows it up). I’m also testing a new rule given the 1-2 second spin up. So when the garage camera detects motion, not only does it record it also triggers the front door camera to start recording.
Is it possible to adjust the motion detector sensitivity on the cameras? At what range (distance) do the cameras detect motion in their field of view?
I’d love to put one of these outside my garage and use the motion sensor to trigger my wemo porch light, but if it’s going to detect wind blowing through the trees are the end of the driveway it won’t be terribly effective.
Motion detection can be adjusted on a 1-100 scale. It’s far, far better in performance/accuracy than what I got from my prior Foscam and D-link cameras — they had tons and tons of false positives, including ones triggered by shadows. It was maddening.
So I dialed down my deck sensitivity where the neighbor’s cats sometime hang out and the wind rustles the grill or couch covers, but the sensitivity is higher on my front door (where I caught one of the cats wandering by not so long ago). As to distance, I’m not sure what the official numbers are but the range probably depends on the relative size of the thing in motion in conjunction with your sensitivity. I had to adjust my garage camera to not catch pieces of cars driving by, for example.
Thanks, Dave – great to know. I have a feeling that these Arlo cameras will be landing on my doorstep soon. I was waiting for IFTTT integration, but knowing I can also adjust motion detection sensitivity pretty much seals the deal.
These sound neat, but a bit expensive. Anyone do any direct comparisons to the Blink offering which seems to offer a similar featureset for quite a bit less money?
FWIW, I first got into this about 2-3 years or so ago. I did some research and was tempted by the Nest cameras, which appeared to have a very slick UI and good PQ. But I read some not-so-great things about them consuming a lot of bandwidth since they were always sending a live stream over the internet to the Nest servers, and I didn’t like the monthly costs. I ended up getting a D-Link camera that has an SD card slot (I forget the exact format) which allows it to record everything locally. I also liked that I wouldn’t be sending my video streams over to another company’s servers.
The initial setup process was ugly. The primary UI for setting everything up was web-based. It had a lot of functionality but was buggy and usability was poor. The functionality in the iOS app was very limited and mainly let you watch live feeds. You had to use the web-based app to configure motion control and have it store/email you snapshots of movement. But over time they’ve improved the iOS app significantly, and it looks like you can now configure a lot of what it can do (probably still not everything) via the iOS app directly. I haven’t played around with it, so I’ll have to experiment and will try to report back.
The 1st camera I purchased was the DCS-942L. It has IR, on-board storage, is pretty small, is only 640×480, MJPG, and doesn’t pan/tilt. About 1-2 years ago I saw a deal on a 2-pack of the DCS-5029L and bought them. These allow you to pan/tilt, are 720p, MPEG-4, and still have the on-board storage feature, but they are *huge* in comparison to the 942L.
Had they never improved the iOS app, I would be tempted by these other offerings, but I have to say that the D-Link app is pretty decent now and the overall cost and local storage is nice.
Having said all that, I’m jealous of the wire-free aspect of these. Having mine plugged into a wall is fine indoors, but I’d like to have a couple mounted outdoors.
Edit: I just put the iOS app through its paces to see what I can/can’t configure through the app, and it appears to be pretty full-featured. One thing I was a bit disappointed by was that I couldn’t set up text messaging to send me photos/videos when movement is detected (I’m not sure if some of the newer cameras allow for that). I *can* configure it to send that sort of thing via email and I can set it up to alert me (via iOS notifications) when movement is detected. Tapping on that then launches the app in live-view mode.
The Arlo email alerts I get come with a still snapshot and a link to the clip it recorded. My former Foscams never truly left my control, which was nice, and the local email server would send 5 consecutive snap shots when motion was detected. There’s also more powerful third party software you can host at home, like Blue Iris. But I’m trading convenience for privacy I guess with Arlo. My D-Link camera (which is packed up in the basement) drove me crazy. Regarding Drop/Netcam, one of the reasons I abstained was the always-on recording. Not only is it a ridiculous use of bandwidth (less of an issue for me on FiOS), but for those privacy concerns. Although the main reason was the subscription I wasn’t interested in.
Looks like I posted too quickly. The D-Link app doesn’t appear to let you set up the motion detection alerts to be enabled/disabled on a schedule. So it’s either on or off (at an individual camera level). That will be OK when we go on vacation, but it would be a hassle to remember to turn on/off these alerts before I go to bed at night, or when I’m leaving the house for some limited amount of time during the day. That’s where the GeoFencing described in this blog post would be handy. Hopefully D-Link will add that.
I do see that D-Link has a separate iOS app now which appears to offer some IFTTT functionality, but I don’t have any other D-Link home automation products, so I can’t test that out.
Agreed with dropcam. 60 gig per month of upload per camera. That is crazy unnecessary.
Re: Arlo
I realize that its about battery life and bandwidth, but missing the first 2 seconds of motion can be a problem. I currently use blue iris, which is always recording, but only saves when motion is detected, and because its always recording, i can have it save 5 seconds before motion is detected.
That being said, I still think I’ll switch to Arlo at some point for ease of use and camera placement flexibility. Frankly, managing my blue iris is a pain, and requires and always on server. Price is a bit of a roadblock, simply because I already have a working system.
Yah, if the FedEx guy is real, real fast, I might miss him (tho I rarely do) with the wire-free Arlos and they aren’t a suitable replacement for Ring. But if a bad guy was trying to break into the house or I want a record of whatever sales guy is pestering my wife at the door, I’d get them. The Arlo Q model is always filming, so that’s a different story.
Nice, you might give Life360 a look to trigger your Arlo modes if you have several people with phones in the house. It let’s you easily handle triggers when the last person leaves home or when the first person gets home.
It isn’t bulletproof, but it is pretty nice all the same. I did a write up on integrating it with iSmartAlarm a while back at http://24-7-home-security.com/how-to-automatically-arm-your-security-system-when-everyone-leaves-home/