So many of my problems with Arc started in mid-March - when I basically was stuck at home, especially a few weeks later when we had to quarantine to care for a family member who had been exposed.
A few months later, I did get things sorted out and things have been fine, but this past week, I’ve been mostly stationary, caring for another family member, and Arc is acting up.
Seems like if you stay in one place too long, Arc starts thinking that the variability in the GPS signal is a movement, so you get hundreds of points that sap Arc’s thinking processes.
It caught up (left screen live, Arc in front, a few night in a row), but these past few days I’ve been in motions and nary a hiccup from Arc.
So, as long as I keep moving, Arc will be happy. Go figure.
Hi @cschick! Sorry to hear about your family member I hope they’re recovering well!
For what you’re describing, yep, I see similar here during lockdown. It’s hard to say exactly what causes it - Arc itself isn’t doing anything different for those longer visits. But it’s also hard to pin down anything specific about what iOS or the phone is doing either. So it’s mostly a mystery.
My hunch is that iOS itself has various ML learning layers for location data, that learn to react differently throughout the day, at different locations, etc, and it’s something in those layers that’s getting confused. But without any visibility into those layers of iOS it’s all just a guess. All I can say for sure is that Arc itself isn’t doing anything different for longer visits.
There is however one thing that Arc does do for longer visits, that may be playing some part (though it doesn’t explain the breadth of the weirdness I’ve seen here). If the phone isn’t plugged in to power, and the Place ML model for the current place indicates a very low probability of you leaving at least the next few hours, then Arc will go into “deep sleep mode”. Deep sleep mode is essentially Arc turning itself off completely, but with a wakeup call scheduled with the Arc/LocoKit server, to be sent before the predicted leaving time, to restart the app.
Deep sleep mode is intended for people who don’t plug their phones in overnight. With deep sleep, instead of Arc using 0-1% of battery it uses 0%, because it’s literally not even running. So it gets that extra bit of battery saving for people who leave their phones for long durations not plugged in, while at home (or work).
It’s likely that our longer stays at home are triggering deep sleep more often. Which will mean there’ll be hours long periods of the days where Arc didn’t record anything at all. And then it relies on iOS accepting the silent push wakeup call from the Arc/LocoKit server and restarting the app at a sensible time (which iOS doesn’t always do).
But yeah, that doesn’t really explain the range of weirdness we’ve been seeing. There’s still something else going on. Lots of mysteries in this business
I hope they’re recovering well!