Use Arlo Pro and base station at a cottage - limited bandwidth

[rickatt]

Folks,

My brother wants to set up a wireless video security system at his cottage and he has been looking at the Arlo Pro with 4 cameras and the Base station. The cottage is a little remote, so no wired internet connectivity is available. He is willing to invest in a MiFi solution but it is not clear to me that this will be sufficient. This leads to some questions

1) Does this system have to continuously stream? or only when it detects motion above the threshold?

2) If the bandwidth drops to a low speed, I have read the the quality of the stream is lowered to compensate, does this impact the quality that is recorded to the USB on the base station?

3) Is there a size limit to what sort of USB drive can be attached for storage? A 128 GB stick would record for almost 2 weeks for 4 cameras, from what I can tell. He could also add a 1TB or larger usb hard drive for really long term recording.

4) It appears that the wifi cameras support operating off the battery plus being plugged in a the same time. Is this feasable if they are out doors?

5) How long do the batteries last with an average duty/activation cycle?

[jguerdat]

1) The wireless cameras only stream when recording or using live view.

2) Yes, a drop in Internet speed will cause the resolution to drop, too, as well as what's recorded locally. It could also result in truncated videos (shorter than requested).

3) 2TB is the limit, based on the FAT32 format. A 128GB thumb drive would likely last a year unless you're recording the bejeezus out of things. I use a 16GB thumb drive that was only about half full after a couple of months with 5 drives.

4) You can use the USB power supply to power the camera with or without the battery. The type of charger is important if you want to use power but leave the battery in for instances of power loss. It needs to be a quality Qualcomm Quick Charge charger with both 5v and 9v of at least 1.5A per voltage. If not using the battery, you can use a quality standard charger of only 5v. It would also behoove you to use a UPS/battery backup to power the MiFi and base in case of power outage. The big issue is waterproofing the charger and connection to the camera. There's an outdoor power supply in the works but not available yet. And you still need to be close enough to be able to plug it in.

5) Battery life depends on the number of minutes of recording and live viewing per day, with 5 minutes or less being the spec. However, the quality and strength of the WiFi connection between the base and cameras can have a big factor to play, too.

He might want to consider the new Arlo Go camera which uses only cell service for the Internet access. See the product links above here.