Camera reported offline and fails to detect motion but my UniFi shows it uninterrupted online

[Jens_Denmark]

Both my cameras where FW updated and installed yesterday but they randomly fall offline though WiFi connection quality for one of them is perfect and more than adequate for the other. My BEV charger is placed 1,5 m from one of the cams and has zero problems keeping a stable connection. 

What is driving me nuts is the fact, that the app says a camera is offline but at the same time the UniFi system shows that the camera is indeed online and communicating with the AP and the network.

My UniFi installation is professionally installed and maintained and I experience zero WiFi or netowork related problems except with the arlo cameras... We have already switched to a fixed WiFi channel and turned various other features off as suggested by the security company's tech support. This and arlo's useless online support is reason enough to ditch the cameras but the problem is that they are part of a complete security system for which the company does not offer any other option than these cameras. 

Can anyone help? - but please, not by suggesting to factory reset the cameras, I'd rather return them as this is well documented in various reviews as a useless and at best temporary workaround.   

[jguerdat]

I'd start by looking for wireless devices near the cameras and router that could be causing interference. The BEV charger may have little to do with why the cameras fall offline since the amount of data could be significantly different. Can you tell if the cameras go offline only when they are accessed for any reason (recordings, live view, etc.)?

The camera near the charge may be an issue with interference - try moving it away some more to see if that helps (or just temporarily place the camera elsewhere). You can also try rebooting the router and the cameras to see if that helps.

[Jens_Denmark]

Thanks, I've tried rebooting everything to no avail.

From what I can see the offline is reported randomly and both cameras are affected while only one is close to anything (the ElviBox). The other is placed 1,5 m from the access point.

In the app I get the message that the camera(s) is(are) offline, but the weird part is that they are online and traffic is sent and received by them. None of the about 10 other clients on the same network and the same freq./channel have any problems - I can monitor all traffic in real-time. Except for the BEV charger there is at least 3 meters space between devices and a camera. The system also monitors noise and logs the presence of any other wifi transmitters, which is why the system is running fixed on CH11 as this is the channel with the least amount of noise.

But again the offline message does not correlate to anything logged during or before that moment.

That is why I suspect it is by poor design this flaw occurs and not by anything related to interference.

[jguerdat]

I would swap cameras around to see if it's something about the camera or location.

[Jens_Denmark]

Excellent suggestion, I should have thought of that - but I'm 400 km away and the people looking after the house can probably not be trusted with swapping them 🙂 

Maybe I have by chance found the root cause: Where we are vacationing traffic on the WiFi connection is routed through a SAT connection and a somewhat troubling proxy-server. This has caused other thing to malfunction as some types of traffic experiences drop-outs. When ascending to a point with 4G connection on my phone - while maintaining access to the WiFi AP the camera that is shown as offline immediately becomes online when switching to the 4G connection.

This is consistent with the UniFi in the house reporting uninterrupted traffic from the cameras.

I will see if I can analyze the traffic to figure out why certain traffic to the phone is required for a notification to be sent.

[Jens_Denmark · Accepted solution]

This can now be closed as solved, except solved is not the right word. The Danish Verisure support has informed me that the problem is known and that it is caused by the presence of a 5GHz WiFi signal near by. In other words these cameras are unable to perform with any usable degree of reliability if the user and or the neighbors have 5GHz capable WiFi. 

Buyer beware...

[StephenB]

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@Jens_Denmark wrote:

This can now be closed as solved, except solved is not the right word. The Danish Verisure support has informed me that the problem is known and that it is caused by the presence of a 5GHz WiFi signal near by.

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Very strange response, since I have a VMC2030 that works perfectly well with my Orbi Triband mesh system.

I don't think Verisure gave you the right response.

[Triumphs]

Strange I have a front camera/doorbel from Arlo which don’t give problems but the the wifi essential camera does give problems, a lot. (Loosing wifi connection for the camera and draining the battery in under 24 hours)

[anders1701]

Ha ha ha, that's definitely not a solution. Even if I wanted to turn off my own 5 GHz network (I don't), am I supposed to insist my neighbours do to?

[StephenB]

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@StephenB wrote:

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@Jens_Denmark wrote:

This can now be closed as solved, except solved is not the right word. The Danish Verisure support has informed me that the problem is known and that it is caused by the presence of a 5GHz WiFi signal near by.

---

Very strange response, since I have a VMC2030 that works perfectly well with my Orbi Triband mesh system.

I don't think Verisure gave you the right response.

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@JamesC , I think it would be helpful to have a response from Arlo on this information.

[JamesC]

While a nearby 5GHz WiFi connection should not normally have a negative impact on Arlo camera connectivity, it's possible in this specific environment, it's causing an issue. It sounds like the Verisure team concluded general interference was the cause of the issue here as a standard environment with the presence of a 5GHz WiFi connection should not typically be an issue.

JamesC

[Triumphs]

Camera is offline again after 28 hours of online

[anders1701]

Is your camera on the new firmware?

[Triumphs]

Yes indeed

[Triumphs]

I am sorry but it was the Arlon wireless frontdoor camera/bel which is now offline. He was now on top of the list which was first the camera wirelss arlon 

[Jens_Denmark]

Here the situation has become totally ridiculous. In the app the camera closest to the AP has perfect signal strength as well as 100% reported signal quality but stil it randomly show up as offline. If I try to do anything I get the usual error message about the camera not responding, but when I open the door and walk out onto the terrace I get a notification within 5 seconds about "Person registered". Nice... Except that the camera is not recording or at least the recording is not shown and never becomes available in the app.

The integration with Verisure is just as flawed. There's literally ZERO correlation between a camera being offline or online and if the Verisure system reports it to be offline.

This is by far the worst crapware I have ever wasted time and money on.