topic Switch cameras over to another base station in Arlo Pro 2

Switch cameras over to another base station

Stan89 — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 20:35:57 GMT

I have a fairly larger home and yard to cover with cameras. I started out putting all cameras on one base station, but find that I needed to add another base station at the same location to provide better coverage and operation. (Which I’ve already added…)

Is there an easier way to switch some (about half) of my cameras over to the second base station by a drag and drop operation, or something else easier, than manually removing each camera individually from first base station and then having to resync each one to the second base station from scratch?

Many thanks and have a great day,

Stan…

Re: Switch cameras over to another base station

DannyBearAgain — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 00:29:35 GMT

This is always going to be the case with using multiple base stations.

If you can relocate the existing base to a more central location to suitably cover all your cameras the arlo app operation will be simpler.

You could try using a long Ethernet cable to established a workable base location then use a Ethernet wifi extender to replace the long cable.

The app needs to operate any custom modes separately to each base which means double the app button operation.

Re: Switch cameras over to another base station

Stan89 — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 00:42:50 GMT

Hi Danny,

Many thanks for taking the time of your response. What I am dealing with is not really so much an issue of connection range of the cameras to the base (while I do have a little bit of a problem here, but base station relocation will be the next problem I deal with...), but an issue of the base cannot handle properly the amount of cameras synced with it. What I seem to have found out is that after a certain amount of cameras are synced to one single base station, it will allow you to sync more cameras to this station, but the newly added cameras will not detect motion and respond properly. These cameras can be manually viewed OK and even do a manual recording, just no automatic detection.

At first I thought I may have had a defective camera or two, but I confirmed that they were good by bringing them to another location I have less cameras setup. At this second location they worked fine. I then brought these same cameras back to the first location and tried to sync them to the single base station and they would again not self detect properly.

I then took it a step further and setup a second base station at the this location and these cameras would operate fully fine. I then took them off of the second base and synced them back to the first base station at this location and they failed to detect again. So I synced them back again to the second base station and they worked fine again.

So it appears to be a camera limit that a single base station can function properly for detection.

What I was asking was if there was any easier way to just switch cameras back and forth between two base stations at the same location, but it appears there is no easier way other than going through the process of deleting it from one base station and then going through the steps of re-syncing it back on the other base station. Too bad, as I may be shuffling a lot of individual cameras back and forth between the two base stations before I get a proper distribution for what I need at this setup...

But, thanks again for your time and thoughts given, I really do appreciate all the help and willingness I see on this help board from a lot of really smart people...

Stan...

Re: Switch cameras over to another base station

DannyBearAgain — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 01:24:42 GMT

Thanks for the further clarification of your reasoning, Arlo says you can simultaneously stream up to 5 cameras per base station but it also has a 15 camera limit.

If you have activity zones or smart notifications applied to your cameras they would also be included as streaming as the video gets uploaded to cloud for the AI.

When your cameras are connected to a single base unit, how many cameras and what model cameras?

For the cameras that fail to detect motion, are these the most recently added cameras or is it random across all cameras.

Re: Switch cameras over to another base station

StephenB — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 11:58:00 GMT

@DannyBearAgain wrote:

Thanks for the further clarification of your reasoning, Arlo says you can simultaneously stream up to 5 cameras per base station but it also has a 15 camera limit.

The 15 camera limit is documented for the app. If you had no base stations at all, the limit would still apply. It's not clear what would happen if someone else was livestreaming from a friend account at the same time. That is, whether the limit is per app instance or not.

5 simultaneous streams per base is definitely spec'd, and can be a factor if you have more than 5 cameras paired with the base.

Of course the amount of simultaneous streaming can also be throttled by your internet uplink speed if you have a lot of cameras active at the same time.

Re: Switch cameras over to another base station

jguerdat — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 14:25:13 GMT

@DannyBearAgain wrote:

Thanks for the further clarification of your reasoning, Arlo says you can simultaneously stream up to 5 cameras per base station but it also has a 15 camera limit.

The 15 camera limit per base is not a hard limit - it's a suggestion based on hardware capability. You could add more but you may experience performance issues.

Re: Switch cameras over to another base station

StephenB — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 14:41:02 GMT

@jguerdat wrote:

@DannyBearAgain wrote:

Thanks for the further clarification of your reasoning, Arlo says you can simultaneously stream up to 5 cameras per base station but it also has a 15 camera limit.

The 15 camera limit per base is not a hard limit - it's a suggestion based on hardware capability. You could add more but you may experience performance issues.

Again, the 15 camera simultaneously viewed limit isn't specified as per base. See these fairly new KB articles.

This is different from how many cameras can be added to a base station, which I agree is not spec'd as a hard limit.

Re: Switch cameras over to another base station

jguerdat — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 15:14:11 GMT

@StephenB wrote:

Again, the 15 camera simultaneously viewed limit isn't specified as per base. See these fairly new KB articles.

https://kb.arlo.com/1108731/How-many-cameras-are-supported-on-my-Arlo-account

https://kb.arlo.com/1179521/How-many-Arlo-cameras-can-I-view-at-the-same-time

According to the second link, "You can stream up to a theoretical maximum of 15 Arlo cameras at the same time, but this is dependent on your system set up and your Arlo Secure plan." That seems to imply an ambiguous limit, not hard. The rest of the article then waffles on the same issue.

Re: Switch cameras over to another base station

Stan89 — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 17:31:25 GMT

Thanks guys for all your answers. With all this info you all gave me, I’ll have to reevaluate my issues and setup, and then see where I can go from there…

Many thanks again,

Stan…

Re: Switch cameras over to another base station

StephenB — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 18:15:02 GMT

@jguerdat wrote:

@StephenB wrote:

Again, the 15 camera simultaneously viewed limit isn't specified as per base. See these fairly new KB articles.

https://kb.arlo.com/1108731/How-many-cameras-are-supported-on-my-Arlo-account

https://kb.arlo.com/1179521/How-many-Arlo-cameras-can-I-view-at-the-same-time

According to the second link, "You can stream up to a theoretical maximum of 15 Arlo cameras at the same time, but this is dependent on your system set up and your Arlo Secure plan." That seems to imply an ambiguous limit, not hard.

Well, it says you might be able to stream up to 15 simultaneous cameras, but you won't be able to stream more than that.