Arlo|Smart Home Security|Wireless HD Security Cameras
× Arlo End of Life Policy Notice
To view Arlo’s new End of Life Policy, click here.

Minimize lag by saving to USB drive first

I know I've seen a lot of complaints about lag.  From what I see most of the lag is caused by the camera waiting for the network to be able to upload to the cloud.  The mechanical part of the sensor being tripped and the lens opening is a second or less but if there is any network congestion or hiccup of any kind you camera can't record to the cloud.  

Make it so I can buy a USB drive put it in the back of the base when a camera activates it records directly to the flash drive, once the recording is complete then it uploads to the cloud, but the actual recording is immediate, no waiting for the Internet.  This simple solution would change how fast our cameras record

Comments
JamesC
Community Manager

Nothappy2,

 

A USB flash drive or external hard drive with at least 100-200 MB of available space. For more information, take a look here: How do I set up local storage backups on a USB device using my Arlo Pro base station?

 

JamesC

_nd345
Initiate

+1 all-the-things local-net should be priority.  To cloud should be buffered/secondary.

As much as we pay for the cameas, base station, accessories, cvr subscription, i totally agree.  Theres absolutely no reason at this price point we should have any lag.  Something needs to be done to improve lag and this is a sensible alternative.  Like the above commenter said, local support first, cloud second...

DawnM
Arlo Employee Retired
Status changed to: Engineering Investigation
 

I’m not sure what folks mean by lag.  If they mean the missing video due to the time it takes for a camera to sense motion and then start recording, the local USB recording wouldn’t help that.  We know this works for a powered Pro 2 camera because it can be recording and discarding video all the time until motion is detected and then the recording can be effectively be started a few seconds prior to when motion was detected.  However, a PIR sensor needs to detect motion and then start up the camera, if it is not already recording.  This will take some number of seconds regardless of destination for the streaming video.

 

If folks mean the lag between real life and when we can see the video on the app, local recording coupled with local viewing could help this.  However, we would need the app to be able to view live video feeds from the base station (or camera).  I believe the current hardware/app design streams camera video to cloud servers and then views video from those same cloud servers...even if we are on premises with the camera system.  So just adding local buffering and recording wouldn’t fix the problem,  we would need to app to also be able to look at the local video stream before it leaves the building.