Arlo Pro4 xl spotlight 3 camera with hub bundle at Costco 3 month sub trial period,then drop the sub

[davidk1952]

OK,  so I just received my package yesterday of my Arlo Pro 4 xl with the vmb4540 hub and I came here to look at some of the questions I had (since there is no telephone support from Arlo)  the idea of community support is nice for some things but when you want to just talk to someone and the answers then and there it gets a bit frustrating but saying that... Here is what my planned set up will be and how I think thing should work can someone take a look and see if I'm on the right track? 

I would attach my hub to my Netgear router directly with the Ethernet cable.  

1 camera would be located on our front porch on battery ( I did buy a solar panel for this one)  and would be about 30' from the hub so I don't see much of an issue there.  

Camera 2 will be in a breezeway viewing the breezeway area and pointed forward to the driveway I could run a cable to power this camera if need be, This camera will be about about 30' from the hub but I'd probably try with battery only at this point. 

Camera 3 will be placed on the other side of an external garage, outside on the building viewing the garage doors and external door in.   This camera I'd say is probably 150' - 175' from the hub and I have a solar panel for this set up.

From my understanding camera 1 and 2 would have a direct connection to the hub and because of short distance probably work with the hub fine.  ( does the hub act like a router and then use the home router to connect to the internet.   My main interest is to do local storage with a 2tb external USB drive for that) 

Camera 3 is the wild card because of distance.  How does the camera actually talk to the hub?  Because these cameras also include WiFi I actually have a Access Point in the garage area, If worst case I had to use Wifi to connect to my Access Point that is attached to our home Netgear router would I be able to access the Arlo Hub/recordings and do recordings of that camera?  

Now once the trial subscription is up what will I lose,  can I still access all of our cameras?  I see people say they have to use a VPN to do this... why is that?  What can actually be done in real life with the cameras with out the subscription (I've had it with subscriptions).  And what really matters is I get notifications of activity and can stream live ... but I read somewhere Live streams don't really get captured.  I just want to know the ups and downs before I open the boxes up 🙂  

I am coming from having 5 IP cameras I've been using for 5 years they each have huge microsd cards and record 24/7 and I can look back for months at the videos the record and, they log them by date, time and 30 minute segments.  In some of the comments here the Arlo will not allow me that type of recordings.   By the way, what resolution does the Pro4 camera record at... and why when you look at (with out subscription it has the resolution blanked out?)

I guess this is a bit of a buyer beware set of questions so I don't have expectations of the Arlo set up and not have those expectations met.   I hope this all makes sense...   This my 

[ShayneS]

You can place the cameras approximately 300' from the base station or SmartHub but walls, concrete, windows etc will have an impact on range performance and possibly surrounding wireless frequencies etc.

When connected to a SmartHub/Base Station, this will act as the access point for your connected Arlo devices.

Depending on the Hub, it may require a SD card: https://kb.arlo.com/1146857/How-do-I-set-up-local-storage-backups-using-my-Arlo-Base-Station-or-Smar...

You can connect the pro 4 camera directly to your router as well.

[davidk1952]

Thanks  I believe the distance issues could be worked around but unfortunately the limiting use of the system with out a subscription killed the deal for me,  I went ahead and returned the product to Costco ..  The system I had purchased would have been perfect but too limiting with out having to buy the subscription for the service...    I have a friend with a 6 camera set up with no subscription but from the sounds of it he has an old "Grandfathered" system and does not have a subscription and he can do far more with his set up that I would have been able to....   I guess I'll keep looking at my options.  

[ShayneS]

It sounds like your friend has the legacy cameras with the free 7 day recordings. You can find more info here: https://kb.arlo.com/000039111/What-are-the-available-Arlo-subscription-plans-and-how-much-cloud-reco...

[davidk1952 · Accepted solution]

Yep  that is what I figured.... thank goodness for Costco and their easy return policy..  Time to look at other options.