Arlo pro cloud upload disable

[damdude]

Hi everyone I am looking into buying Arlo Pro  and I am trying find out answers to below questions

1) if there is a way to completely turn OFF cloud upload ?

2) Arlo Pro base station provides way to use USB drive as your local storage element , if lets say you can turn OFF cloud upload. will arlo app still lets you playback the recorded videos from that usb connected external hard drive ? 

[TomMac · Accepted solution]

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1) no...

2) no... the usb backup is a back up... the drive/stick must be removed from the base ( ejected ) and then played in another device that supports mp4 files.

The drive will continue to record IF the internet DROPS ( if set up prior ), issue becomes without the cloud you can not send any commands to the base unit.

[rbrashear68]

IMO, it would be in Netgear's interest to allow the cloud upload to be disabled. Many rural customers that have to pay for limited data transfers and want to avoid overages, but one of my friends who was interested in getting an ARLO Pro system like me said he could not do it with their limited data.  There is a market in rural areas if you allowed this or made a separate system that doesn't use the cloud.

[Ramphex]

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rbrashear68 wrote:

IMO, it would be in Netgear's interest to allow the cloud upload to be disabled. Many rural customers that have to pay for limited data transfers and want to avoid overages, but one of my friends who was interested in getting an ARLO Pro system like me said he could not do it with their limited data.  There is a market in rural areas if you allowed this or made a separate system that doesn't use the cloud.

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Completely agree, regardless of limited bandwidth or not, I am having second thoughts about purchasing the system and then having to worry about setting up QoS or bandwidth limiting through my router just so it doesn't destroy my upload speed for when I am home.

[jguerdat]

I think you're over-thinking this some.  While an upload does consume limited upload capacity, it's also brief unless you're constantly recording.  I've never noticed an issue, even when I had only 1Mb/s upload speeds.  I did set QoS but that was due to uploading photos and videos to Flickr while streaming Hulu, not for Arlo.  ANd QoS was set only to save maybe 100Kb/s to provide a bit of capacity for other traffic which worked well.

[Ramphex]

Yeah I kind of realized it now from doing further research in file size and video quality. While it's 720p in resolution it is by far not a quality 720p video and the high compression allows for a small file so it's really not a big toll on the upload speed for anyone with a decent home connection.

[rbrashear68]

I am NOT talking about affecting speed.  I'm talking about data limits each month.  My friend has kids at home and a 10GB limit.  This system uploading to the cloud will use up their limit of data (not speed).

[jguerdat]

The need to use the cloud is well-known and can't be changed. If that exceeds to capability of your data plan a different camera system will be needed or other compromises will be needed. Judicious use of recording and live viewing can minimize data usage.

[Ramphex]

What NEEDs to happen is there needs to be an option to use cloud, local, or both. Allow the user to decide on what they want to do with the camera system that they pay money for. How would someone not using the cloud space negatively affect the company?

I have a server with a 3TB drive and my own cloud server running at home. I would much rather record and store the footage there and access it on the need by case scenarios vs all of it being uploaded somewhere involuntary wasting their space and my bandwidth limits.

Instead of forcing what they want onto the user, should be more user friendly and allow them to make their own decisions on storage options.

[rbrashear68]

Exactly Ramphex! My sentiments exactly! It's a nice system but the ability to switch it would make it just that much better!