Arlo Baby - no access without internet?

[ChicoQuente]

Last night we learned of what appears to be a large flaw with Arlo Baby and I want to confirm whether it is a known defect or if something is just not set up right on my end.

Before deciding on an Arlo Baby camera as our baby monitor we took some precautions for power outages. We purchased UPS backup systems to keep all of our network gear in our home online in the event of a power outage so that we would put our daughter at risk. Last night when there was a power outage that occurred in the middle of the night the damaged hydro pole also took our cable internet offline. Fortunately when this incident occurred at 4:50am I had just got up with my daughter 10 minutes earlier so I was aware the power had gone out. I fed her and got her put back down in her crib and grabbed the Fire tablet that we use to monitor her from our bedroom. While our entire network was online and every device still connected and accessible to each other I was extremely disappointed to find I could not access my daughter's camera on the tablet. The app logged out immediately upon opening and because the actual internet connection was down on the wifi it would not login again. Clearly the feed has to go out live on the internet and return back to use which seems insane to me. At 5am I was not happy to find out that now instead of going back to sleep I had no choice but to go sit in a chair in my daughter's room while she slept so I could ensure she was safe.

We purchased this product thinking it was a versatile and great option for keeping our daughter safe but now it seems this was a giant waste of money. If I had not been up at that time to know this had occurred we never would have known we weren't going to hear if our daughter needed us. I can not believe a product that is supposed to be a baby monitor would be so unreliable and put babies at risk. If we had known this was an issue we never would have purchased this shoddy product. For the money we have spent on the camera and the UPS systems to keep our network running we could have had a much much higher end monitor that we could have trusted. We are now forced to spend yet more money so that we can get a reliable monitor and replace this junk camera. Our daughter just turned 3 months old so we hardly got ANY use out of this product before realizing it is useless to us. And of course we are well past a return window on it as well. I am very disappointed in this. I am glad I found this out now before my daughter was put in harm's way, and in time to take back the recomendations I just made to 2 friends that are expecting this year. I would feel awful recomending a product that potentially puts their child at risk.

Why on earth does this product need an active internet connection to function? A local network should easily be able to connect the 2 products so that a parent can trust their child is protected at all times. What a joke.

[IHateMyNeighbor]

I COMPLETELY AGREE. Ive got Arlo Ultra and arlo security lights. right now my ISP is down. I cannot access ANYTHING. For all the money i have put into this system my mind is blown that i cant access my system. I mean my routers are working just fine. Why do i need internet? Sure, i have a micro sd card inserted in my base station. But what good is that? I should be able to manage my system and monitor it from the same wifi network regardless of internet connection. Over 1000 bucks into my setup and then this crap. Its unheard of!

[BSdozer]

Has Arlo fixed this yet?

Arlo says:

"Our Passion: Your Peace of Mind"

I have no peace of mind when internet goes down and my Arlo baby could coninue working on my home network but is not able to for some reason.. this is not acceptable.

Arlo, please identify to your customers how you are planing to fixing this. We trusted in your product and it has some serious flaws. Thanks,

Brad

[IHateMyNeighbor]

No, as a matter of fact. I explained this verbally to tech support.. Their response? Post it here... if other people agree with you then the majority will rule and they will consider it... whats it gonna take? A competitor.. loss of sales... its not like Arlo is a video game or the next hot new toy.. and this is what they want to devote their time talking about..

[ChicoQuente]

Personally we moved on from our Arlo Baby and are happy we did. The product and service is inferior by not functioning without internet access. Terrible design and they've shown no interest in fixing the problem. I feel like the product itself has been abandoned by Arlo and that's why they ditched the standalone monitor screen they were going to produce.

We upgraded (in every aspect ) to the Nanit Pro. It's a premium product no doubt but much higher quality and better service. As long as the wifi is on we can view our monitor which is exactly the way it should be. I'm happy we moved on even if it did cost us a lot of money in the long run.