Arlo Doorbell 2nd Generation Wireless Video Recording Gaps

[Skyjps]

Has gaps in 1 minute video recording to Pro Smart Hub. The activity is constant: worker blowing leaves off my driveway. I have motion sensitivity set at 100%. Firmware: 1.8.1_2316_f4c4103, Hardware 1.4. Doorbell is about 15' from the Hub.

Reasons? Suggestions?

[jguerdat]

It may be hard to diagnose via the internet but my first thought is that the worker may have moved outside the detection range of the doorbell or is moving directly at (or away) from the doorbell. PIR sensors require motion across the FOV for best detection. I suppose it could also be an issue of the recordings being lengthy and are slow to upload to the servers due to slow ISP upload speeds.

[StephenB]

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@Skyjps wrote:

Has gaps in 1 minute video recording to Pro Smart Hub. The activity is constant: worker blowing leaves off my driveway. I have motion sensitivity set at 100%. Firmware: 1.8.1_2316_f4c4103, Hardware 1.4. Doorbell is about 15' from the Hub.

Reasons? Suggestions?

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Is it set up to do a timed recording?  Or is it set up to record until motion stops?

[Skyjps]

The action is right in front of the Doorbell camera, less than 15' away! It's set to do a timed recording- 1 minute. I checked the same video Local recording to the USB drive plugged into my Smart Hub. That same video of the yard man blowing off my driveway, less than 10' from the camera, freezes the picture but the sound continues unabated. I'm suspicious that this new Doorbell Camera may be defective. Perhaps I should just make a warranty claim.

I just downloaded the video from the Arlo website. When I played it back there was no freezing but it was full of artifacts the obscured the video playback. I copied the link below. See for yourself:

https://myapi-z2.arlo.com/hmsfeeds/users/library/share/link/C47A2C0B8965A1EA_202603

[Skyjps]

See for yourself:

https://myapi-z2.arlo.com/hmsfeeds/users/library/share/link/C47A2C0B8965A1EA_202603

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

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@Skyjps wrote:

freezes the picture but the sound continues unabated.

I just downloaded the video from the Arlo website. When I played it back there was no freezing but it was full of artifacts the obscured the video playback.

These symptoms are because the recorded video stream is corrupted.  Different players handle errored bitstreams differently.

This could be a problem with the compression hardware in the camera, but more often it is due to packet loss on the connection between the camera and the Arlo Cloud.   I'd start by measuring the wifi speed at the doorbell using your phone - either the ookla speedtest app or one from cloudflare.  Upload speed and packet loss are the two key metrics.