Arlo Pro - 3 cameras, some intermittently don't record or alert

[Samwel]

I have 3 Arlo Pro cameras. They worked mostly fine and consistently for a good year.  For the last few months, the cameras at random will just stop sending alerts or recording.  The camera will be on, and I can walk in front of it and it will do nothing.

The Front Door Camera works like 95% of the time. It is by far the most consistent camera.  The two in the back yard are unreliably.  The hub and my router are literally 5 feet from one camera and 10 feet from the other.  The front door camera is much further away but it works reliably.

When I notice that it stops working, which can happen at any time (so it's very frustrating), I pull up the app and reboot the hub. USUALLY this will make all the cameras work again. Sometimes however a different camera will stop working after the reboot so I have to reboot it again.  

What's most frustrating is that the camera appears on so I have no idea when it's just not going to alert/record.

Any ideas?

[ShayneS]

Hi @Samwel

What troubleshooting steps have you tried so far? I do not want to suggest anything you may have previously performed.

[Samwel]

I mostly just reboot the hub.  Happened again today - front door and back door are working, but rec room camera just won't alert or record. It was working yesterday.

I understand that unpairing and re-pairing them is a diagnostic step but I'm not sure how that would help. It's not a connection issue. I have been avoiding it because I'll have to update a ton of Smartthings automations.

What other steps are there to try?

Sam

[ShayneS]

@Samwel

Have you altered the position of the rec room camera by chance? There is a possibility it is not catching motion because of the angle. 

[Samwel]

I haven't tried it but I seriously doubt it. When the cameras work, they pick up the motion of me walking by them. When they don't work, they pick up nothing.  I can jump around their range and it won't give me an alert or record.

[ShayneS]

Hi @Samwel

I have opened a case for you. Customer Support will be reaching out to you as soon as possible. I have provided the case number for your reference: 41061052

[waynebaron]

I have the same problem.  Recently I've noticed that I'm not getting alerts/recordings when I know someone was there, right in the middle of the field of view.  I tested using the motion detector and that works just fine, but when I test live with someone standing there, it's totally hit or miss.  This was working fine until recently, did something change?

[Samwel]

Glad I’m not the only one... will help to diagnose if we can identify patterns or similarities.

Mine was working fine for over a year. This problem started occurring for me a few months ago - possibly around Feb - May 2019 timeframe. I didn’t pay close attention when it started and I let it persist for way too long before seeking help here.

[waynebaron]

It's certainly possible mine hasn't worked for that long, I'm not sure I pay enough attention unless I'm looking for something or something goes wrong.  I put out a package on the porch to be picked up by USPS and noticed the package was gone, but no alert.  The package was about 12 feet from the camera, just right of center, and nothing.  If I go test that scenario myself, it doesn't alert record.  I put it in motion detect mode and the yellow light comes on, so no idea why it's not recording.... it's like the motion detection has nothing to do with triggering recording.  It looks like I need to get about 7 feet away before it will start recording... this is a big problem.

[Samwel]

Does this happen to all of your cameras or some?

My front door camera works pretty consistently. I don’t want to say 100% but close to it. The 2 cameras in my back are each completely intermittent. Usually one will work and one will not. It’s unlikely that they both are failing to alert and record at the same time.

Is that similar to yours?

[waynebaron]

I've only noticed it on my front camera, but my back camera is on a schedule and very rarely used.  I'll do some testing with it today to see if it's behaving the same.

[02redcavi]

I have this same problem where sometimes my cameras will not record motion, works as intended about 95 percent of the time but sometime will have a package delivered and no recording of anybody dropping it off or alert.

[Samwel]

Yeah so I spent a few hours on the phone with Arlo support.  We just went over all the stuff you can think of - resetting the cameras, adding them back to the account, moving the cameras closer to the hub, etc etc. No dice,

Eventually they just told me it's probably a bad camera and needs to be replaced.  Since it's over a year old, it's out of warranty.

My system is only about 2 years old. This is too much money to spend on junk that will fail so quickly. I don't know if I'll buy any more Arlos.  If I bought some cheap-o cameras on Amazon I would understand if they start failing. But not a premium product like this. Sad.