Arlo|Smart Home Security|Wireless HD Security Cameras
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Alerting Mechanism for Base Station / Camera Offline

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.

Comments
Beauxdean
Tutor

Well, here we are at 2019-09-29 and I (personally) am still not getting alerts when cameras go offline. If a person doesn't know their camera is offline, then that makes a VERY LARGE SECURITY ISSUE. Suppose an intruder sneaks up behind said person's camera and SHOOTS it. That would DEFINITELY take THAT camera offline, wouldn't it. You'd think that said person would want to know about that immediately, wouldn't ya... Most security systems DO alert if the cameras go offline immediately. Is Arlo for real or just like some sort of HI-TECH TOY

Beauxdean
Tutor

Well, here we are at 2019-09-29 and I (personally) am still not getting alerts when cameras go offline. If a person doesn't know their camera is offline, then that makes a VERY LARGE SECURITY ISSUE. Suppose an intruder sneaks up behind said person's camera and SHOOTS it. That would DEFINITELY take THAT camera offline, wouldn't it. You'd think that said person would want to know about that immediately, wouldn't ya... Most security systems DO alert if the cameras go offline immediately. Is Arlo for real or just like some sort of HI-TECH TOY

joecw
Aspirant

I want to add my vote to this.  

I had a power outage and my system was intermittent down for 1/2 day after that due to my wifi not recovering cleanly.   Base station internet light was out.

After that, 2 days later, wanted to check my garage was closed and the cameras were offline.  Came back 5-10 minutes later on its own.  A little concerning.

 

Please highly consider this.  My other cloud services all notify when I they are down or cannot communicate to my house.

AxJu
Follower

Hi Richard,

I'm with you. It is essential for a serious security system to get a push notification when the system is down! Otherwise Arlo is not suitable for professional usage!

 

Today it is quite simple to sabotage a wireless system via a jammer. Everyone can buy this for just 20 Dollar/Euro.

I'm very disappointed that Arlo didn't agree to implement this functionality up to now although it should be very simple to do so:

- Arlo knows about the status of my equipment due to the movement recognition in the cloud

- The functionality for sending push notifications is already in place

So it is just another type of event to be added within the settings.

Should be less than two days effort including testing.

 

I cannot understand why they are so ignorant 😠.

 

Axel

 

Emperor1
Aspirant
That's incredible ... tons of message from users and no reply at all by Arlo's Team ... Come on ! An official reply on this long awaited important feature!!! WHEN it will be available ???
grandpapifunk
Novice

Can you please implement a feature that alerts us to offline cameras? 

Ive been broken into twice. Once the camera had been offline for 1 week and it didnt record any of the break in. The 2nd time i had my bike stolen from directly under the camera and it had been offline for 48hours,

Its hardly worth having if the cameras never record anything.

Palekto
Star

Really disappointed!

Thought this was a basic standard feature.

I set up 10 cameras, and all that it takes to disengage it is just to take out the WiFi/power and I won't be notified.

Luckily my real alarm send me a notification if either power or WiFi connection is broken.

This is a big flaw in a surveillance system, shouldn't be that hard to solve ..

StuartC
Aspirant

This is a seriously lacking feature. Wish Netgear/Arlo team implements this ASAP.

And yes, some might say to get a UPS. But that is so expensive for a home user, and it shouldn't be too hard for the Cloud to send a simple alert or email if it can no longer connect to the base station or a camera.

DeArlo
Star

In a few months (Feb 2020), this feature request thread will be beginning its 5th YEAR.

 

I'm hoping the dev team will consider adding some sort of alert.  Far too many times have I logged in only to discover several hours have elapsed since the base station went offline.     An alert would've allowed me to call someone to reset it.

 

At least allow the app to ping the base station periodically and to confirm that it is online. 

 

Thank you.

TheWolk
Apprentice

Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen for a reason that is quite obvious… We all know how frequently our base stations tend to go offline. There are numerous long threads on this board dedicated to this issue. Some suggest to remove local storage devices, some recommend to put these base stations on a reboot schedule via a smart-plug… However, from my personal experience, most of the time these base stations do recover and re-establish connection to the Arlo’s backend system on their own after some period of time. Unless one sits in front of a monitor constantly watching Arlo’s Web portal for that “Your base station is offline” message it’s clear that majority of these temporary disconnects do go unnoticed. Of course, our homes are not monitored for these time periods but who cares… Right? (sarcastic icon here)
Now, imagine if Arlo’s customers would start getting notifications about each and every of these temporary outages? What would happen? CORRECT! Complaints volume would jump 10X scarring off potential new customers and burning out phone lines to Support’s Call Center… Go ahead Arlo and prove me wrong! And, do not try to blame this SH#T on my internet connection. It is reliable with sustainable 25Mb upload rates. I have solid monitoring in place with means to prove that.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!