Arlo Essential 2 camera connected to base station but does not record

[bkurta]

I recently purchased a Arlo Essential 2nd gen camera 2k. I connected it to our base station which has 2 other arlo pro cameras connected aswell. there is a 128gb usb stick plugged in but yet the essential 2 camera does not record. Please help

[jguerdat]

There is no such setting for local recordings - ANYTHING that passes through the base or hub  should be recorded. It's not camera-specific.

OP, have you ejected the drive for viewing on a computer to verify that nothing is being recorded from that camera?

[bkurta]

So I did check the USB to see if it was recording, and the essential camera is recording clips, but they are not showing up in the feed or camera on the app.

[StephenB]

---

@bkurta wrote:

So I did check the USB to see if it was recording, and the essential camera is recording clips, but they are not showing up in the feed or camera on the app.

---

What model base station do you own?  There is a VMBxxxx label on it.

The models that support playback are the VMB4540 and VMB5000 smarthubs.  If you have a VMB4000 or VMB4500 then the recordings you are seeing from your legacy cameras are stored in the Arlo Cloud.

Pro and Pro 2 cameras were sold with free 7-day cloud recording.  None of the currently sold cameras (including the Essential models) have that feature.  All require a subscription to get cloud storage.

[AnneB212]

I am experiencing the same problem. Base Station VMB5000.  It has previously worked locally with a confirmed/formatted microSD....now it appears to be recording, based on storage info but the clips are not showing up in the feed.  This is after Arlo renewed a free trial...then local storage ceased to work.  Hmm

[jguerdat]

If you check the hub's settings and go to Storage Settings do you see your recordings?

[AnneB212]

no, and what’s strange is that I’ve reformatted the micro SD card more than once and it appears to be ready to go, but it still shows clips (in the hub storage settings - although  they cannot be played/throws an error) from a year ago! No new clips show up even though the microSD card info shows that it’s apparently recording/taking up space. 

[jguerdat]

Try clearing the app's cache in the phone settings for the app. There used to be a setting in the app to erase downloaded videos on the phone but I'm not finding that now.

WHen viewing the card on a computer after formatting, do any videos show up in the Arlo folder as you poke around?