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.

[eddyj]

It's hard to believe that notification of off-line cameras is not yet a feature, since users have been asking for it since 2015 and other cameras like Nest have this functionality. I love my Arlo cameras, but lack of features like this make it frustrating.

[Adksi11892]

As well as alerting I believe that if a base station doesn’t see the cloud service for a set amount of time then it should attempt to reboot itself as I have had my base stations sit as offline until I manually depower/repower.

[ABorin]

I am getting ready to replace all three of my Arlo cameras. (original version). I was considering the newer versions but I am actively searching for something better due to one single issue; the fact that my cameras drop offline line repeatedly and I have no way in which to receive a push notification when this occurs.. If these cameras are to be taken seriously as a security device, there must be a way in which to monitor the availability of the protection you are marketing for these devices.

[kcovkcov]

I honestly don't think they care as this theme has gone on for a LONG time in all of the comments and I think because their sales continue, they just aren't willing to LISTEN TO EXISTING CUSTOMERS

[ABorin]

Tha may be true.  I am loooking hard at Amcrest IP Cams.  They may be wired (for power like the Arlo Prod 2 for the added features) but they give me the flixibility of using my existing home network.  I dislike having to use the Netgear access point as it limits my range and my Arlos keep dropping off the network (even though they are within 30' of the base).

[Romes]

You could just buy additional Base Station but the cost is higher now.  If your camera keeps dropping due to distance, not sure if this would help anyone but try moving your basestation around your home.  I found that even though I could reach cameras from one end of my home they dropped frequently.  I figured it out that this was due to a neighbour's wireless router switching between wifi channels on the 2.4G frequency near the basestation.  So here is what I did > used an app Wifi Analyzer throught the home to see what was a good spot for a basestation start pushing out it's 2.4G network and plugged it there and ran a hardwire to my actual router near my ISP modem.  Before I just pugged it where my router and modem was setup.  Now the basestation's signal still reaches all cameras and less conflict with neighbour's 2.4G network that's hoping channels. So far has been working no issues.

Additionally, I still have my 2.4G network from my own wireless router but I have it manually set to a channel that doesn't intefere with the basestation's channel.  This is because I have few old devices that use Wifi but are not capable of 5G support (yes it is what it is until I switch those devices in future).

I hope that helps someone and lastly for anyone still having issues about Arlo notifications - I have turned on all updates/notifications on the app that I could find and the only notification that exists is a LOW BATTERY alert to your email.  There is no notification if you happen to ignore that ONE TIME low battery alert once the battery is fully depleted then your camera is not recording nothing until you check and replace your battery yourself. So here is an example > you get sent a low battery alert and you're too busy or forgot and all of sudden some serious activity near your garage (driveway) or whatever - say a delivery guy decides to park his car end of your driveway and decides to have a long conversation with someone on his phone and walk back and forth - well there goes your battery >> to zero.  Now untill you replace that battery you're getting nothing recorded and NO more alerts - which I think is simply rediculous.

For this reason, I bought an extra battery and am currently swapping my batteries well before their low battery alert or put them on a schedule - say weekly just swap them even if they are say 50%.

Arlo doesn't seem like they care about this and they are obviously not serious about taking their security cameras seriuosly.  If they were, they would've addressed this by now.  It really didn't need to be a post on their forum - I mean are any of their developers or testers really using their own product?  Because if even one person was, they would know the frustration for not having an alert when a camera drops.  Seriously Arlo?  Why even have a forum if no one in the team is going through them? Or even responding?

[ABorin]

I appreciate the comments.  I have also ran into the battery issue.  I bought four sets of Lithium Ion batteries for my three Arlo cams so I can swap them quickly when one runs out of power.  I always have an available set of charged batteries unless more than one cam dies at the same time.

I went with a wireless mesh at home due to the wifi contention in my area.  I can control my network channels but have no control over the Arlo base station other than to locate a coverage gap.  Not really possible in my area but it is not a technical roadblock with the right hardware.  The Arlo base station is not the right hardware.  This i s another reason to for me to swich to a company that doesn't mandate the router used for the cameras.

Just got a quote from Amcrest.  $473 for five outdoor IP cams and a Network Video Recorder (NVR).  This means I will not have to rely on someone else's cloud service (although this is available form the company).  The bullet cams have mirco SD slots for local storage and the NVR provides centralized management for up to 8 IP cams. 

Almost convinced to make the jump.  I just need to work through the power wiring and see if there are any negative reviews on the Internet.

[Gabriello79]

Sure an offline notification is a must!

[Gellie]

I am also looking for a alternative to the Arlo. I need to add 3-4 more cameras. Any ideas. No off line notifications at this point , forces me to dump Arlo. 

[ABorin]

Good video on home system build. Video show indoor cams but the outdoor Amcrest will work as well. If you do not have a NAS, you can get a NVR for under $100.

https://twit.tv/shows/know-how/episodes/265