Missing Recordings to cloud

[Dannybear]

Suggestion to those that end up with missing cloud recordings.

I have found that if I set the recording duration to be fixed at minimum 10sec then no recordings are made to the cloud when motion is detected. Notifications appear and emails are sent but nothing in the library.
If I set the record duration to be fixed at 11sec then it records normally as expected.
Then if I change it back then to 10sec it doesn’t record to the cloud.

I have previously noted that this fixed record mode at 10sec is defaulted to when settings are being corrupted by the arlo server.
So if you suspect your missing recordings check that your recording duration is not fixed at 10sec.

[jguerdat]

Hmph - interesting. Did you try reverting to 10 seconds again to verify that the recordings stop showing up again?

[Dannybear]

Yes, I have even made a desktop screen recording with the web browser showing the behaviour repeatedly.
I have not made any effort to reset the camera as it was only resynced the day before.
I will add it to the trove of desktop recordings I’ve made showing the settings corruptions and pixelation, time-out errors that have been observed.

[Dannybear]

Not wishing to dwell too much on this but I set my schedules to record normally during the night mode (auto) and woke up to the daytime mode (fixed) and the recording behaviour followed accordingly.

[Dannybear]

You got to laugh at this one.

I can duplicate the same issue on another powered camera but battery only cameras behave as normal.
The best bit is that if I unplug power to the camera the recording reverts to normal recording, then reconnecting power the issue returns.
Seems to me that it may have caught the PZ ultra bug....

[Dannybear]

Some good news to report is that I checked my USB backup drive and all the missing recordings are there.

So to conclude, if your system has caught the PZ Ultra bug then you will loose recording capability to the cloud but not the USB backup.

[Dannybear]

I am now satisfied that this issue is caused by a arlo firmware bug that presents within 48hrs of continuous operation. The solution is for Arlo’s software team to implement a bug fix in the next update.

A workaround is to use the web browser to reset the pinch and zoom setting on all your cameras. While on the same page recommend that you also delete any activity zones.
Note that battery cameras may loose connection when you apply the reset and will require a battery reset and resync to the base.

If you intend to reapply the pinch and zoom settings, I suggest that you reset the base station and reseat all the camera batteries every 24hrs to maintain reliability.

[Downunda]

Reinstalling the basestaion and resyncing cameras has to be a last resort because of the effort required for most users, particulalry if their cameras are installed high up externally like mine are.

I've had this happen to me the other day, all of a sudden result no recordings were being passed to the library (recordings to the USB drive were ok). I had to reset the time zone and it worked fine immediately after.

I reckon they did a software update to the basestation but how would I know for sure?

[Dannybear]

@Downunda
The problem with changing time zones was a problem with the last base firmware update that they have since reversed.

The behaviour of what I reported here was occurring well before the update, in fact weeks before as part of proof testing before the results were shared.