Major Argus 2 Issues

forcek20

I have major issues with the Argus 2 cameras. The PIR was great at first then after a few days it will barely pickup anything. I have contacted support and they only keep asking me if the blue status light is on. Yes, I know the camera is connected to WiFi with no signal issues. We have one mounted watching the front door, see the image below. We had a kid ring our doorbell today and the camera did not even pick him up! I have the sensitivity on high too! I spent over $400 on four cameras and feel like maybe I should have chosen some other company! Please see the image below, PIR won’t send an alert till someone steps down to the sidewalk! I need help ASAP! I love a lot of the features and setup of the cameras, I just feel like the PIR might not be sensitive enough! Reolink please help!
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forcek20

If you walk out of our front door and stand by it the PIR will not pick you up!

Crimp On

Could you please clarify a few points?

1. You say "at first...". Does that mean that the camera in this position DID recognize people coming to the door, but NOW it does not? In other words, the same camera in the same position behaved one way at first, and now behaves differently? If so, it might be worth cleaning the front of the camera. Perhaps the PIR sensor is dirty.

2. What is the distance from the camera (a) to the front door and (b) to the far end of the sidewalk?

3. You mention recording someone as they "step down" to the sidewalk. PIR sensors appear to have difficulty recognizing movement "toward" the camera and are more capable with movement "across" the picture. RLC cameras which have constant power record continuously, and when motion is detected they can record starting 5 seconds before the motion begins. Battery operated cameras, like the Argus (and Netgear's Arlo), do not begin recording until motion is detected. Thus, the camera might not detect motion as a person comes up the sidewalk, detect motion when they step up and move across the picture, and then begin recording as the person turns around and steps down back to the sidewalk. Scanning user forums, I see a lot of complaints that battery cameras "miss the event" because, for example, the UPS delivery person walks up, drops a package, walks off, and THEN the camera starts recording.

4. You have more than one Argus 2 camera. If you change to a different camera, does it also behave the same way?

(I thought installing security cameras was going to be quick and easy. It has been neither, but I'm glad I kept at it. Good Luck!)

forcek20

To clarify:

1. The very first day the camera was installed (3 days ago) the PIR would pickup and alert me if the wind blew and the bush at the bottom of the pictured moved.

2. The distance from the camera to the front door is roughly 10-15 feet, the distance to the end of the sidewalk would be more like 25-30 feet.

3. Please see the newest picture attached, when I walk out the door and hit the highlighted area, I may or may not get an alert. A neighborhood kid walked up slowly and rang our doorbell, walking through the same area, and I never received an alert or recoding. The way the camera is positioned, when you head out the door or walk up to it, you are crossing the camera. In other words this should be a prime target area for PIR. I also understand the lag time of a battery camera, but it should trigger an event at the very least regardless of catching the actual person or not. Even if it misses the event, at least I would know that the PIR is working correctly.

4. I have not tried switching cameras yet. This is next on my list. However, the garage camera performs in a similar way. It caught my wife pulling out of the garage yesterday but did not catch her pulling back in an hour later. Somedays it will pick up cars on the street and other times it will not.

I really like the features and setup of the Argus 2. It works perfect for the locations where I need to mount cameras. For me, I just wish the PIR were overly sensitive. Reolink has suggested that I move the camera more to the left. If I do this, I will not have coverage in the front yard a bit. This means I would have to buy another camera and I am not willing to do that if the PIR will not alert me to movement. Reolink advertises that "Our cameras, with wide angle and highly sensitive PIR motion sensor, offer almost no false alarms. No human movement can slip through without your notice. You will receive instant app push notifications, email alerts and sound alarms (siren) when motion events are detected." True, that I do not receive false alarms, untrue that "no human movement can slip through."
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forcek20

Update:

My wife just called asking if I got an alert from the garage camera or not. Please see the attached picture. A large car pulled all the way into our driveway (location where car stopped outlined in pic), stopped and backed out. No alert or recoding from the camera at all! It missed a CAR! Seriously, how can the PIR totally miss a LARGE CAR? I need Reolink support ASAP! At this point, I am not satisfied with my Argus 2 Cameras! Please provide some help Reolink!
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markspaw

I know my 2-cents worth here won't help you, but since the last firmware update on my camera's (RLC411WS) PIR and motion detection is all over the map. Reolink isn't very quick to fix issues.

forcek20

Thanks markspaw! I assume this may also be the issue here! At times they will catch a plant moving and cars on the road the. Other times they won’t even catch someone pulling in our driveway or someone coming up to the front door. I just hope Reolink can provide some good feedback!

forcek20

So I am working with Reolink support and was told that mounting an Argus 2 at 9 or 10 feet above the ground will cause poor PIR performance. The agent basically told me that the PIR sensor works best at 1.5 meters above the ground. For those of you not on the metric system, that’s 4.92 feet! Who mounts a “security camera” 4.92 feet off the ground? Anyone could grab it and rip it off. Please see the pic of the latest message with the support rep. Is this for real Reolink? I sure hope the agent mistyped or is misunderstood! Please help! I don’t want to return the cameras unless you tell me they are faulty! Let’s work something out to make this better for all sides!
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audrdem

Welcome to reolink

forcek20

Hi Carl,

Nobody from Reolink has ever asked to login to my system. This should be done through my current ticket. Can you please have them request this information through ticket #71018 if it would be beneficial for them to do so. The agent has asked me to change the angle of the cameras. This would move the cameras away from my target areas and leave blind spots of what I am trying to monitor. I have kindly requested that if Reolink wants me to move the angle to compensate for a weak PIR sensor, they send me an extra Argus Pro or Argus 2 to cover the blind spots created by moving the existing cameras.

Mark

I feel your pain forsek20. I'm having similar issues and contacted Reolink. They told me to move the camera mounted under an eave, about 2.5 high to something closer to 1.5m due to failure to detect objects.

As you said, who mounts a camera that low, easy to steel and that's what I told them. By the way that only helped somewhat, I'm often getting slight movement detected (on high sensitivity) which is great, but then this morning it missed a whole car leaving the garage where the car would have taken up 1/4 or more of the viewport of the camera, just unacceptable! The same car been caught entering and exiting the garage almost every time, but sometimes it just simply misses the most obvious things, like me walking right up to it one occasion during recent testing and only detecting me when I was 2 metres away (high sensitivity). Totally inconsistent, lets hope it doesn't miss a trespasser!

I'm seriously thinking of getting other cameras and selling the Reolinks for what I can. I was tossing up between Reolink Argus and Netgear Arlo, I'm seriously starting to regret my decision.

andy

I've got 3 argus 2s and have been disappointed with the range and consistency of the motion detection, side by side testing shows the same results. One min it can detect at 7m the next 2m, (never had anything close to 10m at 1.5 meters high). I wanted to know more about the hardware so had a quick tear down.

Argus 2 has a decent Excelitas LHI 968 PIR chip, no range specified in the data sheet but 100' horizontal and vertical field of view. The sensor fits through the housing into what looks like a custom made Fresnel lens, I didn't have time to disassemble.

So if the performance isn't related to the software detection / trigger / sensitivity. Another likely focus point issue could be the lens optics not being good enough or not meeting our specific environmental setups. I suspect there is a trade off between range vs field of view vs type of detection wanted. Would be great if we could customise the software settings more or even swap out different lens inserts for narrow long range or wide short range use cases..

data sheet: http://www.excelitas.com/downloads/LHi%20968%20PYD%201398%20-%20High-End%20Pyro.pdf

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