Alerting Mechanism for Base Station / Camera Offline

[Richard-65]

Our installation will be very remote beach house. There is a need for mains failure detection in case intruder has deliberately switched of the power. This would be a nice sofware update feature.

[ActionMedford]

@JamesC Community Manager

PLEASE get this Feature Added - It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT and has Been Discussed OVER 3 YEARS!  Email & Text if Either Any Camera or Base Station Fails to Communicate after a Few Minutes?

[Jimbodos]

I agree we need a text and email.   But  I plan on plugging in base station and router and any other power items related to the internet.   Base station more likely to be turned off outside my home than inside,  but you have a great idea which I am sure could be easily done.  Thanks

[Hung-Cheung]

Agreed. This is a home security system camera and it NEEDS to have a way to handle situations for internet outages, power outages, someone cutting power, etc. 

The arlo system (cameras and base station) all depends on WIFI and power. 

Here are some ideas:

1) Base station manages all camera's online/offline status. Each camera to/from base station can ping each other/one-way at 'x' interval (configurable by user incase user doesn't want to and preserve battery power). If camera is powered by power cable, then it can constantly do camera ping to base station (say, every 5sec. private network anyways). If internet/power is available, notify user when camera down for 30sec or more.. etc.
2) Cloud manages base station's online/offline status. Say if base station wasn't reachable in over a minute, notify the user. If base station is unreachable, its probably not possible to tell if it is power outage or internet outage.. but either way, it is important to notify the user because that means there's something important happening and they would need to check it out. Way better than user not knowing at all... Maybe, a thief purposely cuts the power to the house and then breaks in.

3) Advanced Home security systems run on cellular network and provides a battery-backup of the central control unit.. so if someone cuts power/internet to break in, sensor/alarms are still able to alert monitoring centers and home owners using cellular network when WIFI is not available. 

Maybe say.. arlo home systems version 3/4/future can have something similar. 

[iDragon]

I can't actually believe the system doesn't alert when a camera goes offline either, this is BASICS of a security system..

For some reason one of my Arlo Q's has started sporadically just apparently freezing and going offline.. which isn't very helpful.

[Custa641]

I am in a scenario where my daughter is sneaking a boy in at night. All she has to do is unplug the base station, then plug it back in before I wake-up. Since I receive no notification when this occurs, or even that it has occured, it renders arlo completely useless for my application. I am furious.

[corganek]

I want to echo this.  As an original Arlo owner, my cameras seem to frequenty go out for no reason.  The only way to bring them back is to take out the batteries and put them back in (no the batteries are not dead either so I do not get a low battery notification).  While this is very annoying, it is only compounded by the fact I find out my camera wasn't working for a week and had no idea until I checked my app on occasion.

PLEASE add a notification for when the base station detects a camera has gone offline, for one reason or another.  This is the number one gripe I tell my friends and family when considering purchasing Arlo.

Thanks!

[2Neos]

Excellent idea. Lately, when my Spectrum router randomly re-boots, sometimes the base station doesn’t come back online. Not knowing when this happens and being away and unable to remotely reset it really makes me irritated...especially with a dog I need to monitor!

[ShayneS]

2Neos,

If you are looking to reboot your base station when you are away. You will need to go to Settings > Select the desired Base Station > Restart

[lawson1911]

ShayneS,

I don't think the main issue is that you cannot reboot the base station, but if it is offline, how can you send a reset command to it period?  I think the biggest issue that everyone has here is that 1. There is NO notification that a camera goes offline and 2. There is NO notification that a base station goes offline.  Forget about actions post offline, think about what has to be done to ensure that you are protected in the first place.  

[ShayneS]

lawson1911,

This would be a neat feature and useful. Make sure to use the kudos feature.