Frustrated with internet connectivity requirement...

[Digitalfiend]

I know this has been discussed before but lately I’ve been getting extremely frustrated with the way Arlo products require internet connectivity to work. Our wonderful ISP has been doing frequent maintenance lately and when our internet connection goes down, we can no longer access our cameras (locally) on our network via the app. There is zero reason for that - the app should be able to connect directly to the cameras on the local network. The only thing losing the internet should affect is cloud services/storage and remote viewing (and the latter could be addressed via dynamic DNS and UPnP). Furthermore, this requirement also unnecessarily uses bandwidth. If I want to view a camera’s feed while I’m connected to my wifi, there is zero reason to require routing the stream through Arlo cloud servers.

I actually like the Q Plus as it’s a decent camera for the price, but the unnecessarily forced internet requirement is becoming a real turn-off and will likely have me shopping for something else in the future. Netgear could easily address this frustrating issue.

[michaelkenward]

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@Digitalfiend wrote:

I actually like the Q Plus as it’s a decent camera for the price, but the unnecessarily forced internet requirement is becoming a real turn-off and will likely have me shopping for something else in the future. Netgear could easily address this frustrating issue.

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I'm not sure that I follow all of that stuff, but Netgear has said that it is addressing the issue of local access. (Whether or not it is "easily addressed", is beyond my knowledge of programming, so I take such claims with a pinch of salt.)

There has been a promise that Arlo will add the ability for users to use local access to get at the files  saved on the on-board memory card.

You can always get at files now, but you have to remove the card from  the camera or base station and transfer it to a PC or some other device.

This feature was promised in the wake of the launch of the Ultra system, which currently requires a paid subscription to do anything useful. The first year is free, but there was uproar when people realised that after that first year they would be stranded. The announcement of local access came in the wake of that.

I have no idea if this will apply to things like the Arlo Q Plus.

But the whole point of the Arlo system is that it is web/cloud based. So it is a bit odd to buy an Arlo and then complain that it is web/cloud based. There are plenty of alternatives for people who don't want something web/cloud based.