Arlo Pro power failure

[MrsB]

I am considering buying the Arlo Pro for my holiday home in Spain, my concern is in the event of a power failure and loss of internet which do happen here periodically,  will the base station and cameras return to their operating mode when power resumes, or can this be done through remotely through the app ?

[TomMac]

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The answer yes and no... sometimes the system will come back and sometimes not as there are many varibles in the bootup sequence ( modem, router, base if done properly )

There are two ways to help prevent issues , esp if you are away for a time

1) use a UPS on the (minimum) base unit ... tho it may be better to include your modem and router too

With a usp, the cameras tend to drop out less and if your router comes back all willl be good ...also if you have a Pro model, the USB backup will continue to record anything that happens

2) put a ac power switch on the base unit like WEMO... If you router alsways comes back online, it is a wifi switch for the base so you can reset the base remotely whne there is no other way

[AncientGeek]

Great advice.  I have Arlo and Arlo Pro systems set up at four houses.  I use UPS devices for all of my network equipment and Arlo base stations.   Two of my houses have generator backup, so I never see the power related Arlo issues, but the Arlo Pro at my father-in-law's home has gone offline aftert a power failure twice now.  I installed a UPS after the first incident, but we had a longer power outage this week which outlasted the UPS battery by about a day. When the power came back on, I get motion alerts from one camera, but no video and the entire system shows off-line.  I think I'll install a WeMo on the Arlo Base to see if that helps in the future.  This is a royal pain.  I don't think my orginal Arlo base ever has this problem, so I assume it is unique to the Pro base unit.  I hope the folks in the Arlo development group are monitoring this and fixing the problem.  It is not all that rare and no one should have to manually touch a camera system after a power outage since that completely defeats the value of having a system at a vacation home or while one is traveling away from home.

[jguerdat]

The original base also demonstrated this issue.  You may have just been lucky or the router rebooted faster than the base. It's an ongoing issue which has resulted in the UPS/WiFi switch recommendations.

[AncientGeek]

I hope the development team creates a more robust and built-in fix.  Power failure is a pretty basic issue and operation shouldn’t require orchestrated restarts of the portfolio of network equipment a customer might have installed.

That said, I’ve been using WiFi switched outlets for a few years on routers, etc. and have planned to add them to my Arlo base stations for quite a while.  Seems like now might be a good time to get it done.  

Hopefully the base stations are truly off-line so there is no chance we will power cycle them remotely while they are doing one of those automatic software updates (like the one that caused a big problem for me while I was on vacation last year).

[MrsB]

Thanks for your information and advice, most helpful. I did not expect to encounter such a complicated set up with back up in case of power failures, obviously the technology with the Arlo is not quite there yet, power failures quite a basic problem.

Think I shall hang fire on monitoring the holiday home, as probably will cause more stress being a flight and several hours away.

[AncientGeek]

I use cameras from more than one vendor because they all have strengths and weaknesses and I prefer to minimize “single points of failure”.   I’d recommend using Arlo Pro where you need truly wireless cameras and another vendor where you can plug the camera into an outlet.  I do this.   It allows me to check two sources to determine if I’m having a camera problem or a network problem.  It guards against the rare but possible cloud server problems as well.  Every vendor will have one of those occasionally.

I think Arlo has the best combination of modes, rules and geofencing on the market today.  That’s a real strength for me.  I also like the solar panel so far.  But it needs fairly good sun.