Arlo Pro Camera's Frequently lose connection to Base Station

[Epor]

As of sometime in March 2018,  my cameras no longer stay reliably connected to my base station.   They had been rock solid for years without any changes to my network.   I have read about numerous other people in the forums also having this issue starting in the month of March also without a solution. 

Randomly when i check the app or the website, 1, more, or all 4 cameras will report being Offline.  They have recovered themselves sometimes, but the only thing that reliably works to fix the issue is to push the sync button on the top of the base station, or to reboot the base station.    Some have been told by support in the forums that the probems is on netgear server side, but I am sceptical since rebooting the base station temporaily resolves the issue.  

The main inconvenience this causes is that the cameras will very quickly lose battery charge as they try to reestablish connection to the base station.  This has caused me to go from charging my cameras every 3-6 months to now every week (or more). (if you have this issue, and your cameras have not reconected in a long time, the batteires might now be dead)

I have also reset the base station to defaults by holding in the reset button for more than 10 seconds and then re-sycned each camera as some people in the forums had reported helping.  But not a few hours after doing this, the connection instability returned. 

We are going on a trip soon, so it would be nice to have a solution to this problem.  My next step is to have a device disconnect and reconnect power to the base station every hour, but this should not be necessary. 

I tried to submit this as an email support request, but that doesn't seem to exist anymore on the Arlo supoort site.  

4 Arlo Pro Cameras:

HW Version = H7

Firmware = 1.092.0.8_17203

Base Station:

HW Version = VMB4000r3

Firmware = 1.9.8.0_16666

[jguerdat]

When "offline", what are the LEDs on the base showing? It's possible it's a display issue rather than truly offline. Do you get recordings even when offline? That would enforce the idea that it's a display issue. If you check with both the app and a browser, do you get different results?

Many of the issues lately have to do with being able to successfully log in rather than systems being down.

[Epor]

Which ever camera is offline, it will report in the interface "This Arlo Device is offline. Please make sure it is connected to the internet"  When all 4 cameras are reporting this, the "Camera" LED on the front of the base station will be off.  If any one of the 4 is still connected, the camera LED will be on.  After rebooting the base station, it will reconnect to the cameras which will then show in the interface, but will sometimes not stream.  Doing a second reboot or holding down the sync button on the base station again, the cameras will then be able to stream again.  

When they are reporting offline, they are not recording with no saved recordings.  After charging all of the cameras yesterday to 100%, this morning, my driveway camera only reported being offline.  After hitting the sync button on the base station, it came back, but it is now at only 50% battery, I assume because it was looking for the base station all night during the disconnect.  

 These are a few other posts I had been following with simiar on and off issues like mine that also have no resolution.  

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Arlo/All-devices-offline/m-p/1530294

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Arlo/Base-and-cameras-offline-AGAIN/m-p/1531278

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Arlo-Pro/Arlo-down-again/m-p/1526577

[brh]

@Epor

It is very possible that it is an interference issue. Maybe your neighbor has added some electronic devices that are interfering with your wifi.

Try moving the base station further away from the router and possibly bring one of the cameras closer to the base station as a test. If the problem goes away for that camera, then you will at least know where to start troubleshooting.

Brian

[Epor]

I had considered interference, but the base station is located about 30 feet from my router (hardwired) and about 100 feet from my neighbors house.  All of the cameras are also 2 or 3 of the 3 signal bars.  I woud also think if it was a signal problem, this problem would be persisant and not able to be fixed with the base station "sync" button.  I would also think that the base station would be able to deal with a temporary interruption.  If it can't, that is a pretty bad design.  

[brh]

@Epor

It could be Arlo server problems, but it seems to me that if that was the case, all the cameras would be offline until they fixed the problem. Just trying to do some basic troubleshooting just in case it is not on Arlo's end.

Brian

[jguerdat]

I don't think a server problem would cause the cameras to disconnect from the base. You can turn off your router and the cameras will remain connected.

I would start testing by bringing a camera (perhaps the one that disconnects most) close to the base. If that remains connected, we need to determine if something, possibly near the base since it affects all cameras, is providing interference, such as a cordless phone or other device that happens to use the 2.4GHz band.

Also, try using a WiFi analyzer app around the house, watching the base's WiFi signal to see how it varies. You could also try something like the Ekahau Heat Mapper (https://www.ekahau.com/products/heatmapper/overview/) to see if that helps.

Of course, it may be a faulty base...

[Epor]

I don't belive that it is a 2.4 GHz because then I would feel that the signal would never be stable when the cameras were away from the station.  During the last offline issue when I bought them in to resync and charge them all, they remained offline when placed near the base station, and only reconnected after hitting the sync button on the top of the base station.  Plus, this setup has worked fine for a year and a half without issue till now.  

I would consider possibly a bad base station except for the fact that others in the forums have simialr issues.  Since there was just a firmware update for both the Arlo Pro and the base station on 1/29/2018, I have a feeling this is some kind of firmware issue.  I would reflash the base station firmware, but there does not seem to be any mechanism to do that.  I was hoping a reset to defualts would help, but it hasn't.    It has been about 28 hours now since last needing to restart the base station.  

[jguerdat]

I had a camera that was to only one on a base station drop off today and had to resync it. Dunno why - first time in 3 years this has happened to me.

[Epor]

Things have been great for the past month, but again this morning all 4 of my camera's were offline again.  I had to reboot the base station 4 times over the period of an hour before all 4 cameras were recognized again.  

Hopefully the Arlo System upgrade Scheduled for 4/27 resolves the issue.  

Here are again several new posts with the same issue that I am having:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Arlo/Arlo-keeps-going-off-line-and-batteries-only-laying-one-week/m...
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Arlo/Same-Arlo-camera-on-pro-2-station-quot-device-is-offline/td-p/...

[Epor]

Without any other better troubleshooting tips, I decided to go out and buy an extra base station off amazon for a cool $80.  They are both the same hardware and firmware revision.  I then paired two of my 4 cameras to the new base station, and kept the other two cameras on the old base station.   Things were good for about 9 days when this morning I found that the two cameras on the old base station now report "This Arlo device is offline" but the other two cameras on the new base station are fine.  This reduces the likelihood that the issue is with the Arlo servers, other external interference, or the camera's themselves and points to something wrong at least with this one base station.  While this isn't long enough to be reasonably sure this isn't happening to the new base station, I would bet it is going to be fine. 

My equipment is now 18 months old.  Is there any likelihood of getting an RMA on my base station?  If the wifi radio is failing inside of my base station, is that something Arlo engineering would want to look at? 

[JPC]

Monitor your Modem/ISP/Extenders(if Any) if there's a sudden drop of internet connectivity which can cause your Arlo to be offline. Also, whenver you suspect any glitch on your system, Reset your Arlo Account Password. 

[Epor]

This issue has nothing to do with internet connectivity, as the base station would then report being offline.   The base station itself never reports being offline, but it reports that the cameras connected to it via its internal 2.4 wifi are offline.  This tells me that the 2.4 gHz wifi radio that the base station uses to communicate with the cameras in my bad base station seems to be intermittantly not working.