Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight camera goes offline overnight

[Iberna]

I bought this camera over the weekend and installed it fine, got it working in no time on the Sunday and was really happy with it however on Monday morning I was unable to connect to it and it appeared as offline in the app. It appears to have gone offline or into some kind of deep sleep, my other camera (Arlo Ultra) is fine and working normally.

It connects back to the Arlo Ultra Smarthub (VMB5000r4). I took the battery out and put it back in and it all sprang back into life, fast forward 24hrs and I'm doing exactly the same again.

The camera going offline during the night makes it essentially useless as it is overnight it was put in to watch. any suggestions or do I just have a faulty one that needs to be replaced or is there a firmware bug?

Any advice would be great as of right now its kinda useless to me

[jguerdat]

It may be the location causing this. Would it be possible to swap the Ultra and floodlight around as a test?

[Iberna]

Thank you for the suggestion, I could do that however the wireless signal shows as full on the floodlight and where the ultra is has only medium to low signal so I'm not convinced its the location of the camera otherwise I would have expected the Ultra to go offline more often, also I do not have any trouble with it during the day, although not sure if that is because I reset it in the morning and it works for let's say 20 hours (?) then disconnects. I don't know if there are any logs anywhere that could let me know what time it goes offline? Then I could reset the battery later one day to see if it goes through the night. Even that's far from an ideal scenario though and the camera should not need to be reset each day which is what has been the case thus far.

In case it's relevant:

The floodlight camera is running firmware version 1.070.19.2_20_d19c2ceb

the Hub is on 1.16.3.4_744_c289687

[JamesC]

Iberna,

Try temporarily testing the floodlight in a different location, closer to your router/SmartHub. This will help isolate if there is an issue with the location of the floodlight that is causing it to drop offline.

JamesC

[Iberna]

OK, I will move it right next to the smart hub tomorrow morning, gonna leave it where it is overnight tonight to see if it happens again and then I will have a firm pattern of overnight failures.

Still a little new to Arlo, is there a notification I can set when a device goes offline so that I can get a feel for when it is doing so?

[Iberna]

This evening I have also been testing the camera a bit and things of note are that it doesn't pick up movement well when using zones and people just appear in the middle of the driveway and recording stops before they have finished moving away of if they stop for a short period of time also the light duration and it seems it only stays on a couple of seconds following movement stopping when it is set to stay on for 5 mins. It seems to me as though there are some bugs to be worked out in the firmware is this likely to be fixed because if not then I will need to send these back as unfit for purpose.

If it is just a settings thing I'm happy to play with them until it does what I want although nothing I have changed thus far seems to have had any effect. The motion detection also seems a little hit/miss, if I walk slowly (sneak) then I do not get picked up and if I stop and fiddle with the door for a little bit with small movements I don't get picked up or it stops recording if I have been picked up, so basically if a thief was any good as his craft the camera wouldn't even activate, and even if it did it would be too late to help identify them, It would probably be fine if I can dancing in wielding a sledgehammer though 🙂

I've only had the camera a couple of days but so far a little underwhelmed on the value for money, hoping someone can steer me though because I love the concept just not willing to pay for "beta" testing a product.

[JamesC]

Iberna,

You may need to increase the sensitivity to alleviate some of the symptoms you're describing.

You can adjust sensitivity within the rules for your camera. For more information, take a look here: How do I change the motion sensitivity on my Arlo camera?

You also will want to make sure the movement you're trying to detect is within the cameras range, take a look here for tips on positioning for best performance: How should I position my Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight Camera?

JamesC

[Iberna]

Thanks for the advice JamesC, I will try make some positioning adjustments and see it it improves and report back.

In the mean time I have also been reading the forums and noted that the system doesn't currently have any form of pre record buffer, do you know if this is something that is being worked on or will likely be implemented?