Pro 3 and SmartHub Connection Issues

[GabrielD]

I have been on quite the journey trying to get my 4 Pro3's to work what so ever. Bare with me as I have a lot of info:

Originally had the cameras set up in December or so, worked OK. They are set up in a garage next to a fairly populated office space with around 25-30 different networks I can see from my computer. The garage where I had the cameras set up is one building over, where there is less network interference. (Say 15 or so networks) My wi-fi did not reach over there, nor did I have any way to run a cable out there. So I had a Powerline ethernet adapter hooked up in the main building, which was connected to a switch, that was connected to the router. The smart hub connected to the powerline in the other building. As I said, this worked fine for a while. 

As of January 6th I have not been able to use the system what so ever, and have had 10 or different support tickets open to try and fix it. I started to trouble shoot, (in the main building w/ lots of networks) and at first I couldn't even get my hub to connect to my account. Support told me it was likely dead and I sourced a replacement. So I got my new hub, and I can get that to connect. (hooray.) Now moving onto syncing the cameras.

While the hub was alright, non of my four pro 3's would connect. Support again told me that the cameras could either be broke, or that my router outgoing ports 123, 443, and 80 were blocked. I started figuring out who I could get to open those ports, in the background trying to connect the cameras over and over again. 

Now just yesterday I reset the hub again, and thankfully I was able to connect 3 of my 4 cameras.  For whatever reason the fourth still won't pair though. Still it was great because that removed a lot of variables I was uncertain of. My issue now is the connection between the cameras and the hub is quite poor. For example, when I got the first camera synched I wanted to try out live view. I tested it 10 times, 9 of which the base station would lose connection; only showing me a live view once. Interestingly enough the base station disconnected while trying to get a live view at repeating times. Out of the 9 failed attempts, 6 of which failed at 37 seconds. I'm guessing there is some timeout feature, but why does it kill the base stations connection? When trying to get a live view w/ 3 cams synched the base stations connection seems to be much more stable. (I haven't tested it as precisely as with the signal camera.) 

My current idea is that all the overlapping signals is causing these issues, and that Arlo systems were never really meant for an environment such as this. So, that would mean moving it to the garage where the cameras and hub will stay SHOULD solve my issue. I will try that at some point today (as it has finally warmed up to a nice and balmy 8 f) and will update here. 

If anyone has read through this (thanks!) and would like to read my log of my thoughts through this I will have it linked below. Looking at other Arlo Community post has helped me a lot with this, so the detailed post is if anyone runs into these same issues as I. 

[GabrielD]

Small update: Have managed to sync my last camera, but just the like the rest it shows very low signal while being right next to the hub and no live view. 

[GabrielD]

Update: Currently freezing in the garage seeing if a greater distance between the router and other networks will help performance. So far, nothing has changed. Attempting to do a live view on any of the four cameras results in the camera saying that the hub has disconnected.

At least the smarthub seems to keep a steady connection, it hasn't dropped afaik.

[GabrielD]

Update again:
Seems that I can get a life view on some cameras, but it's quite shoddy. Sometimes it works, most times it doesn't. I believe that moving everything away from interference has helped, but there must be some different variable that caused everything to fail in the first place.

I'm thinking that I'll check whatever routers I have access to, shrinking the effective area.

[Baumbach]

I highly appreciate your hard-working skills as the post you published have some great information wh

[GabrielD]

Glad someone has gotten some use out of it already.

Unfortunately I have not been able to reduce the signal strength of the router I believe to be causing the interference yet. Once I had moved cameras and smart hub out there yesterday, there was varying signal strength all through the day. At some points  I could access every cams live view, at other times all of them would state they are not connected to the hub. 

While I wait for some IT help to change the router settings, I will move it as far as possible away from my smart hub. 

[GabrielD · Accepted solution]

So I unplugged the router, and the cameras work great. I'll have to find a permanent solution, one where I can still have wi-fi in the problematic office. As of now though I have had all cameras in live view with no interruptions for a good 10 min or so. Problem solved, hooray. 

[maxup]

Very simple fix!!. Trash the arlo cams as support simply is not there and a good idea that does not WORK RIGHT is simply trash.

[GabrielD]

Lol I would, but they were provided by my employer. If was my decision I would have gone with a more traditional wired dvr.