Arlo|Smart Home Security|Wireless HD Security Cameras
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adambean
Luminary
Luminary
Hey all,

Camera has worked perfectly for a year. Did nothing to it and all of the sudden it's no longer accessible through the app, and the light is solid amber.

Removed from my devices and did a factory reset (held in paperclip for 10 seconds), and nothing changes. Solid amber, can't get it to turn blue when syncing nor will it read QR.

Have tried draining the battery, turning on and off the bottom switch, while charging and not. Can not get anywhere!

Help

Thanks
93 REPLIES 93
normen
Star
Star

I had this twice and it basically resolved itself after restarting the camera and - most importantly - keeping it on for a while between the restarts as well. Felt like some kind of "update on reboot" stuff was hanging or failing.

normen
Star
Star

Had this yet again and by now I'm assuming this is intended behavior. Consider that the Arlo brand has recently been sold and the new owner never made any money off the (discontinued) Arlo Baby devices. So I guess this is a way to push people to buy new cameras - with plausible deniability ("well it does work for some people!").

StephenB
Guru Guru
Guru

@normen wrote:

Consider that the Arlo brand has recently been sold and the new owner 


No, the Arlo brand was not sold.  Arlo was divested by Netgear in 2018 (3 years ago now).   The company was split, with some employees going to Arlo, and the rest remaining with Netgear.

 

"New owner" also implies the company is private - which it is not.  It's publicly traded, so it is owned by the stockholders.

 


@normen wrote:

 So I guess this is a way to push people to buy new cameras - with plausible deniability 


My old Pro 2 cameras (which also go back to before Arlo was divested) are still working normally.

 

FWIW, I am seeing several recent posts on recording issues with various older cameras.  So I do think that there is something for Arlo to investigate.  But I don't buy the conspiracy theory.  There have been two cases where Arlo has discontinued cameras and services - the old VueZone Cloud was dropped in 2018, and the all Arlo services were discontinued in China in September 2021.  In both cases Arlo announced this publicly.

 

normen
Star
Star

@StephenB wrote: 

No, the Arlo brand was not sold.  Arlo was divested by Netgear in 2018 (3 years ago now).   The company was split, with some employees going to Arlo, and the rest remaining with Netgear.

 

"New owner" also implies the company is private - which it is not.  It's publicly traded, so it is owned by the stockholders.

Well thats just terminology - the stock holders are the owners and "divesting" is just a fancy word for taking something apart and selling some parts or at least getting the money out of it you still can. And if we're talking about experiences with Arlo as a brand - after being "divested" the Arlo AppleTV app for example was simply discontinued, no replacement, existing bugs never fixed. So you can be pretty sure those developers are not in the company anymore - if the software was written in-house at all.

 

The only thing that hints at continued support for the Arlo Baby are the firmware updates that reach up to this year but then again - if you want to put in a killswitch then you need to update the software, right? And, actually, the stock holders *should* be upset when Arlo puts money into the Arlo Baby as, again, their stock never gained value from that specific camera.

StephenB
Guru Guru
Guru

@normen wrote:
Well thats just terminology

Obviously we disagree there.

 

On the real question (why the sudden spike in recording problems on the older cameras), it'd be good to get some response from Arlo on this.  @JamesC - is this something Arlo is investigating?

normen
Star
Star

Well I suppose any conspiracy theory that makes "Superuser StephenP" call out for "Community Manager JamesC" is a good conspiracy theory. Still I guess we'll never get any comments beyond "Did you try turning it off and then on again?".

StephenB
Guru Guru
Guru

@normen wrote:

Well I suppose any conspiracy theory that makes "Superuser StephenP" call out for "Community Manager JamesC" is a good conspiracy theory. 


No idea why @JamesC or @JessicaP didn't reply.  Though perhaps the US Thanksgiving weekend had something to do with it.

 

Are you seeing this issue?

JessicaP
Arlo Employee Retired

Hey normen,

 

Could you let us know the serial number of the Arlo Baby you're trying to add back on? Feel free to send me a private message if you don't want to provide your serial number publicly. 

normen
Star
Star

@JessicaP Sure, that would be 50E388SE6FBCA. Currently the device is connected and working, it sporadically falls into the aforementioned state until handled as outlined previously.

JessicaP
Arlo Employee Retired

Thanks for providing that. From looking at our system, it doesn't look like anything is wrong with your Arlo Baby as of this time.

 

If it does go back to the state that you mentioned though, feel free to let us know.

azlots
Aspirant
Aspirant

I continue to have this same problem. Does anyone have a solution for this?

 

JessicaP
Arlo Employee Retired

Hi azlots,

 

What troubleshooting steps have you done so far?

azlots
Aspirant
Aspirant

I have followed the troubleshooting steps provided by the guide on this website. I have reset the Arlo tried to connect it again several times with no success. I have spent too much time trying to resolve this issue. 

JessicaP
Arlo Employee Retired

Try following this article to troubleshoot the problem you're experiencing: What do I do when Arlo does not discover my device during setup?

normen
Star
Star

@JessicaP wrote:

Thanks for providing that. From looking at our system, it doesn't look like anything is wrong with your Arlo Baby as of this time.

 

If it does go back to the state that you mentioned though, feel free to let us know.


Hello @JessicaP - currently my cam is in that state again

 

Maybe you can check again if you can see anything in your logs, the serial is still 50E388SE6FBCA

 

Thanks.

normen
Star
Star

Just so this thread doesn't end up like the others... I was contacted via PM by JessicaP about her transferring my email to "the technicians". Nothing came of that until now, as expected.

shawnao
Tutor
Tutor

I'm having the exact same problem, I've found multiple posts with people reporting the exact same problem. Has anyone figured out how to resolve? 

 

I've done the following

- Power reset (as soon as I power back on amber light comes back on)

- Factory reset (doesn't seem to work amber light never turns off)

- Removed device from my account 

- Drained the battery (as soon as I power back on, amber light)

 

It doesn't seem to matter what I do it is stuck with the solid amber light. I own 3 of these camera's which I have acquired over the last 1-2 years, this is the first time having this problem. 

 

The only solution I've read in the community forums to stop the amber light involve a baseball bat, please help! 

normen
Star
Star

@shawnao wrote:

I'm having the exact same problem, I've found multiple posts with people reporting the exact same problem. Has anyone figured out how to resolve? 

 

I've done the following

- Power reset (as soon as I power back on amber light comes back on)

- Factory reset (doesn't seem to work amber light never turns off)

- Removed device from my account 

- Drained the battery (as soon as I power back on, amber light)

 

It doesn't seem to matter what I do it is stuck with the solid amber light. I own 3 of these camera's which I have acquired over the last 1-2 years, this is the first time having this problem. 

 

The only solution I've read in the community forums to stop the amber light involve a baseball bat, please help! 


As I said above, don't forget to wait when rebooting the cam. It was usually after a while of unsuccessfully trying to fix the cam and leaving it connected in frustration that it miraculously revived itself. Don't use the bat - given the mass of these reports the ball is clearly in Arlos court.

shawnao
Tutor
Tutor
Thanks for replying good to know this thread is still alive. So I can’t even get the camera to reboot is the problem, even when holding in reset nothing happens the amber light persists. I’ve even tried just turning it off for a couple days, as soon as it hits a power source again amber light. Is there another way to reboot?
normen
Star
Star

@shawnao wrote:
Thanks for replying good to know this thread is still alive. So I can’t even get the camera to reboot is the problem, even when holding in reset nothing happens the amber light persists. I’ve even tried just turning it off for a couple days, as soon as it hits a power source again amber light. Is there another way to reboot?

Mhm, turn it off with the switch at the bottom (no power cable connected). Make sure the cam is charged fully. Turn it on and bear with the orange light for at least a few hours. If you're lucky it will turn on and go to "blue" at some point. Then you can reset it if needed - for me it was actually in the same state as before, despite my attempts to reset it and it worked again in Home and the Arlo app.

shawnao
Tutor
Tutor

hmm I wonder if the problem on my side is that under the recommendation from Arlo user guide I have removed the camera from my account and apps. There is no way for me to reconnect it because of the amber light. I hope removing it didn't send it into purgatory but it definitely seems just totally stuck on AMBER solid light. I guess a recommendation for other people having this problem is not to delete it from your account and wait to see if it comes back online on its own. 

normen
Star
Star

@shawnao wrote:

hmm I wonder if the problem on my side is that under the recommendation from Arlo user guide I have removed the camera from my account and apps. There is no way for me to reconnect it because of the amber light. I hope removing it didn't send it into purgatory but it definitely seems just totally stuck on AMBER solid light. I guess a recommendation for other people having this problem is not to delete it from your account and wait to see if it comes back online on its own. 


In my experience thats not a problem as the camera simply isn't booting up to a point where it could "delete itself" at all. It doesn't even try to connect to my WiFi when the amber light is on. When and if it boots to a blue light you can simply reset it if you deleted it in your app already.

 

As said I had this play out a few times now. Right now I am keeping it in "amber state" though so the Arlo support team can help me (lol).

shawnao
Tutor
Tutor

let me (us since there seems to be many people experiencing this problem) know if they ever do help you figure out how to fix it. 

normen
Star
Star

@shawnao wrote:

let me (us since there seems to be many people experiencing this problem) know if they ever do help you figure out how to fix it. 


Not really until now. No contact from any developer, JessicaP asking me questions that have been answered already, looks a lot like delaying tactics.