The Eufy brand of consumer security product has some attractive features. The cameras pictured above, for instance, that absorb energy from the sun & don’t require that near-constant battery charge rotation that Arlo cameras do.

I like being able to insert a storage drive into the Home Base – too many companies use proprietary SaaS storage to bleed users, charging exorbitant rates for cloud-based video storage.

Eufy’s cross-camera tracking feature works well, combining the AI facial recognition across the cameras in your network.

Accotrding to reports, the Eufy digital door lock with camera & doorbell, pictured below, integrate well with the Eufy app, allowing you to remotely open your door when circumstance requires it.

What Eufy doesn’t do well though, is a killer for the effective use of the Eufy environment.

In any app-based surveillance system, Geofencing or Geolocation allows the system to automatically switch between modes based on the owner’s proximity. If they’re not home, then send alerts & alarms for motion-sensitive movement. If they’re home, switch the cameras off. 

Same with Robovac – when the Eufy system owner is not home, do your thing. When they are home, they do not want to hear you or trip over you – so park up now please.

For security system owners, this feature is extremely efficient. No more having to set the alarm (or forget to set it), nor push the alarm code into a panel every time they walk in the door – Geolocation / Geofencing looks after that. 

However, Eufy’s Geofencing  function simply doesn’t work. Their app is coded in such a way as to require permission from your phone to access your exact location at any time, then compare that to your home base location & decide whether or not you’re in zone. Both Android & iOS have shut this type of energy-sapping demand down in recent years. The initial coding of this system was clumsy, & now it just plain doesn’t work. 

The result is that thousands of Eufy systems don’t get switched on when they should be – thereby rendering the investment in security null & void. 

How to resolve this critical issue?

It’s easy, really. Throw that useless, inefficient codebase away. Stop looking too far into the issue. The Eufy infrastructure doesn’t actually need to know exactly where the controller phone is, that’s TMI. 

All the Eufy system needs to know is whether or not the controller phone is on the home WiFi network. Because if it is, then the owner is home & the Eufy security is not required. Of course, when it’s not on the home WiFi, the opposite applies – all systems are set to record. 

Now Eufy cameras aren’t directly hooked into your home WiFi network – they’re connected to their own, hidden, proprietary network that connects to the Home Base unit which uses ethernet to connect to your router then to the internet. So it’s not hard to send a signal from the Home Base through your router & out to your home WiFi, pinging the controller phone. Or the other way round – the Eufy Security app on the controller phone can be set to recognise your home WiFi. When its done that, ping the Home Base. 

This is a simple & effective solution to the abysmal failure of one of the most important features in an app-based security system. Eufy offers Geolocation – but their app has the feature in permanent Beta mode – which I don’t believe at all, there’s been no improvement or changes in the Geofencing feature over the last 2-3 years.

I believe that Eufy themselves are at a dead-end, they can’t figure this one out. Their user forums are littered with Geolocation  / Geofencing complaints & attempted (but failed) workarounds – no actual solutions.

Hopefully Eufy Systems will have this article brought to their attention, so that a genuine fix to the Eufy Geolocation problem can be made. Because without a functioning Geolocation feature, I (& many, many others) won’t be upgrading my Eufy security system, I’ll buy some other brand.