Arlo|Smart Home Security|Wireless HD Security Cameras

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IndyKPB
Aspirant
Aspirant

The symptoms: I added two new cameras at my mother-in-laws home, to an existing system of cameras covering my home. I can't get live feed to start for the new cameras. I get notifications of motion detected by the new cameras, but there's no corresponding video in the feed for the camera for that notice. This problem is somewhat sporadic; I can occasionally get live feed to start but not very often. When I'm at MIL home, I can start live feed on my phone, and I get notifications of movement which appear in the feed. After I leave MIL home, the problem re-occurs. The original cameras on this system continue to work normally with notifications and feed and live stream. My wife and I have identical Samsung phones and the Arlo app on both phones is behaving the same way. Using the Arlo web interface on my desktop, I get the same problems of no live feed and missing notification items in the feed.

Environment: Two new VMC2040 cameras installed in my mother-in-laws home, connected to her local WiFi, which is Metronet. I have four cameras, generation one Arlo Pro, in my home, connected to a base station. I'm on AT&T U-Verse fiber service. I've had my cameras installed for several years and everything was functioning prior to adding the two new cameras. In the course of installing the new cameras in my MIL home, I started a trial plan for Arlo Secure. When I look at the "Manage" page for the trial, both cameras are listed as being included in the trial. I also upgraded the "user experience" in the app. My cameras and Location show as having "no plan." App version is 4.9.1_28596.

Steps taken:  Created routines for each camera to activate motion detection and generate a notification. Routines are associated with "Arm Home" state and the location is in Arm Home status. Created a unique Location and moved my cameras to that location, leaving the two MIL cameras in the original "Home" location. Power cycled the cameras and the router and access point at MIL house. Logged out of the app, closed the app and restarted, numerous times. Disabled all of my local cameras temporarily. Camera firmware appears to be up to date. The next thing I'll look at is the Metronet firewall ports and try another sequence of power cycle the components and restart the app. I suppose the next thing would be to delete the two new cameras and reinstall.

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IndyKPB
Aspirant
Aspirant

I removed the two new cameras, removed the location and added it all back. I was unable to get into the Metronet management page to check on open ports; it's password protected and it's not the default password. At the moment, the situation is unchanged and still has the same problems described in my post. 

IndyKPB
Aspirant
Aspirant

Another update, after removing the new cameras and re-installing: About three hours after re-installing, all of a sudden four motion events were detected on the new cameras and appeared in the feed. Still couldn't get live feed to activate. Then around midnight, six more motion events were detected on the new cameras and appeared in the feed. This morning, I logged off then back on to the app and had some strange behavior: the "Dashboard," "Emergency" and "Routines" icons were missing from the bottom of the screen. When I looked at the feed, the times were all wrong. The notification items were correct, but the times were wrong by several hours. When I logged off and back on a second time, everything appeared normal again. 

I'm coming to the conclusion that there is something wrong in the Arlo infrastructure that I can't control. The fact that I occasionally get live feed and accurate notifications tells me that the cameras and software are installed correctly. The motion alerts are able to find their way from my MIL home, through the internet to Arlo, and from Arlo to my phone, which tells me the installation is basically correct and all the software can work. There is something unreliable in the Arlo infrastructure that I can't do anything about. Unless we get a breakthrough soon, I will abandon Arlo and switch to Google Nest. 

ShayneS
Arlo Moderator
Arlo Moderator

Please reach out to the Support Team to further investigate this issue you are experiencing. You can find several options for contacting support though the Arlo Mobile App by navigating to the Profile icon > Support Center > Select device > contact

IndyKPB
Aspirant
Aspirant

The Support Team made several suggestions about the arming status, rules and routines, and questioned if we had sufficient bandwidth. The cameras continued to work sporadically for several days. Buying the next higher tier of bandwidth from Metronet would be a very expensive change and a gamble, so I didn't do that. I have abandoned Arlo cameras for this solution. 

ShayneS
Arlo Moderator
Arlo Moderator

@IndyKPB thank you for your feedback. I have notified the appropriate team and someone will be reaching out to further troubleshoot this with you.