CVR - Subscription mandatory?

[pankajmt]

Is a Subscription mandatory for continuous recording? At times the camera would be able to catch fast moving creatures like possum eating veggies. In these cases I would like to turn on CVR for a day to see what was happening. I would hope that can be saved to disk attached to Arlo SmartHub. Going by docs, not sure if that is the case. If NOT, is there a possibility of making that available soon?

[jguerdat · Accepted solution]

Yes, you have to have a subscription for CVR. The way it's currently set up, you can only enable it by subscribing but to remove it means canceling the sub, not just deactivating the camera, so each time would require the same process. In any event, it's cloud-based and not possible to capture directly to local storage. You would need to play back the timeline and use screen capture software to record it locally.

[pankajmt]

Many thanks @jguerdat for the quick response. 

Would it be possible to do with free NVR software plus local storage attached to the hub. For NVR software, I think the specific question would be do these cameras work off standard comms and interfaces and Netgear does not block/firewall any of that. For local storage, do the disks present itself as a NAS? 

Because otherwise I am thinking I am being locked into Cloud subscription, feature by feature. Which on first impressions was not what Arlo felt like. 

[jguerdat]

No. The Arlo stream is encrypted and not the more typical RSTP stream. The only way you might be able to pull this off would be subscribing to CVR and then leaving a computer browser watching the CVR stream while using screen capture. Of course, if the page times out or anything else happens, the stream would be lost until going back to it to pick up where it left off. Clumsy at best.

[pankajmt]

Thanks, thats good insight. 

"The only way you might be able to pull this off would be subscribing to CVR and then leaving a computer browser watching the CVR stream while using screen capture. "

Could you please expand on what would this mean for OS X Desktop? Just open a browser to ARLO provided dashboard (and I know I can Quicktime Screen Record)? And of course all this with no subscription involved ...

Or alternatively watch live stream for camera I am looking to continuous record from my desktop & screen record?

Researching my options before I get my ARLOs which were out of stock with vendor I ordered them from! Hoping, over time, Netgear lets those inclined punch holes on a closed box.  

[jguerdat]

Continuous live view (no subscription to CVR) will time out at ~30 minutes so that won't work. Subscribing to CVR _might_ allow monitoring the live view for extended periods of time but I think there's a limit there, too - I just don't know what it would be.

[pankajmt]

Hmm. Thanks. 

[pankajmt]

On a related note, I assume I should be able to see "Continuous live view" on my Android TV too? Sony kd75x8000g Android 8.0.0 if it needs to be specific!

[pankajmt]

Ah sorry, I forgot. Way Arlo handles them as as Google Home compatible cameras.