Arlo Business Advanced 16 Camera Smart Plan Only Supports 15 Cameras

[WGWheeler]

System consists of two VMB4000s and one VMB4500 base stations.  All firmware for stations and cameras is up to date.  We have a 16 camera Arlo Advanced Business Smart Plan which purports to support 16 cameras.  We have 16 Arlo Pro2 Cameras and 16 cameras is what we need to monitor our small non-profit nature education center and reserve.  Screenshots reflecting the apparent mismatch between what the plans advertise and what they deliver are included below:

As you see above, our current plan is an Arlo Smart Plan for Business at the Advanced level which the app and the My Arlo website both reflect includes 16 cameras.

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However, as you see above, the system is using 15 of 15 allowed cameras.  Attempting to add the 16th camera to the system either results in the finding camera process failing or one of the existing cameras being knocked off the system.  At times, 16 cameras have shown up in the device list, however one camera is always disabled and cannot be activated unless another device is deactivated first for a total of 15.

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Above is the popup that appears when you click on the information link explaining the Advanced plan.  While this seems to be an issue on the Arlo server side, I'm open to the idea that it's actually a technical problem on our end so any and all ideas or solutions are appreciated.

Thank you for your assistance - Bill  🌲

[JessicaP]

Hi WGWheeler,

The Arlo development team is investigating this issue. We will provide an update as soon as we have more information to share with the community.

[WGWheeler · Accepted solution]

Hello and thank you for looking into this!

I spent this the last few days troubleshooting the problem I was having with my Arlo setup as outlined previously.  When I brought the whole system, base station and four cameras to the main building I was able to reinitialize the base station after a factory reset and successfully add all four cameras to bring the total up to 16 as allowed in our Smart Plan.

When I took the setup back to the outbuilding where they are to be installed, I once again observed problems with the setup.  While trying to ponder what was different now, I also happened to notice that my cell phone was having trouble not only with Wi-Fi, but also with cellular data and voice.  

This left me with a pretty strong suspicion regarding the nature of the problem.  Using the Open Signal app for iOS, I noticed that my cellular signal was coming from the wrong direction from the norm and was actually stronger by several bars despite the degraded data speeds and call quality.  There's only one thing that I know of that causes this . . . someone within a mile or so to our east had installed a cheap, high-powered, and off-frequency cellular signal booster.  Overdriving the cell signal with a high-powered amplifier sends out all sorts of harmonic signals and actually affects the cell tower itself.

I called my cell carrier.  As soon as I relayed my suspicions they were all over it as they were getting complaints from all around our area  Apparently with the availability of these unapproved booster devices on Amazon and eBay this is a problem AT&T has to deal with all the time.  This morning an AT&T technician called me from a nearby farm where there was indeed an installed and illegal cell booster operating.  It was shutdown within an hour and "voila," all our issues disappeared!

Problem resolved.