Arlo-Q won't reconnect to WiFi

[Steerpike58]

I have two Arlo devices at two locations. Both have been working fine. Today at one location I needed to shut down the wifi access point that the Arlo was connected to. I have two access points at the location., so I set about reconfiguring the device to the second access point.. I followed all instructions; power cycled device and wait for blinking amber; press/hold sync button till slow blue blink. Enter wifi SSID / pwd in Arlo app on android phone, generate qr-code, point at camera, wait for 'chime', press continue. (light continues to blink blue) App on phone says 'discovering your device please wait'. After a while (minute or two), camera itself issues an ugly uh-oh tone to suggest failure. then returns to blinking orange. Phone app then says Arlo Q couldn't connect to network. I tried this several times, did a few resets using paper-clip, few power cycles, etc - nothing worked. I verified my pwd and SSID, and neither contain special chars. Several other devices are connected fine. In desperation, I reconnected the original access point, and tried to reconfigure the Arlo Q back to this AP, but still no luck! This is the exact same device it's been connected to for perhaps a year. Double-checked pwd, SSID, etc. Both AP's are using WPA-PSK. The original AP is a Netgear device even!. I'm leaving town for 2 weeks after tomorrow and really need to camera to be working. Any thoughts?

[Steerpike58]

Update from Original Poster - I tried doing the setup using the web page on my laptop, rather than the App on my android phone.  The camera still does not connect, but the failure mode is different.  Using the Arlo page, I choose to reconnect the device just like I did on the phone, and get a (giant!) QR code on the screen. I pointed the camera at the screen, and got the 'chime' from the camera. But now, the camera just sits and blinks blue 'forever' (been 20 minutes now). When I did the same process using the phone app, the camera would give an 'uh oh' kind of failure sound about 2 minutes into the process and return to blinking amber. So now, my camera is just sitting there, blinking blue ...  I tried this method twice on the laptop, both times got long period of blue blinking. The setup page on my laptop continues to display 'Discovering your device please wait' and a secondary message, 'taking too long to discover your device?....'. 

[jguerdat · Accepted solution]

SInce you reset the camera, be sure to remove it from Settings, My Devices also. Then try syncing again.

[Steerpike58]

OK, that did it thanks!  Now, if I may ask ... is that an absolute requirement, after doing a hard reset of the device?  I only reset after being unable to reconfigure wifi without it.  It seems to me that changing the WiFi access point should not require a remove/re-add of a device.  Doing the remove / re-add has caused the loss of special modes, and also caused it to no longer be seen by my Samsung Smartthings device - pretty drastic for a simple Access Point change! 

[jguerdat]

The usual procedure is to change the WiFi in Settings, My Devices, your camera, Connected To. It's supposed to be that simple. Did you try that first?

And, yes, it's a requirment when resetting.

[Steerpike58]

Yes, of course I tried the simple approach first, but it did not connect.