Do I need a subscription or not, I just bought my bundle and need some clarification.

[davidk1952]

OK,  so I just received my package yesterday of my Arlo Pro 4 xl with the vmb4540 hub and I came here to look at some of the questions I had (since there is no telephone support from Arlo)  the idea of community support is nice for some things but when you want to just talk to someone and the answers then and there it gets a bit frustrating but saying that... Here is what my planned set up will be and how I think thing should work can someone take a look and see if I'm on the right track? 

I would attach my hub to my Netgear router directly with the Ethernet cable.  

1 camera would be located on our front porch on battery ( I did buy a solar panel for this one)  and would be about 30' from the hub so I don't see much of an issue there.  

Camera 2 will be in a breezeway viewing the breezeway area and pointed forward to the driveway I could run a cable to power this camera if need be, This camera will be about about 30' from the hub but I'd probably try with battery only at this point. 

Camera 3 will be placed on the other side of an external garage, outside on the building viewing the garage doors and external door in.   This camera I'd say is probably 150' - 175' from the hub and I have a solar panel for this set up.

From my understanding camera 1 and 2 would have a direct connection to the hub and because of short distance probably work with the hub fine.  ( does the hub act like a router and then use the home router to connect to the internet.   My main interest is to do local storage with a 2tb external USB drive for that) 

Camera 3 is the wild card because of distance.  How does the camera actually talk to the hub?  Because these cameras also include WiFi I actually have a Access Point in the garage area, If worst case I had to use Wifi to connect to my Access Point that is attached to our home Netgear router would I be able to access the Arlo Hub/recordings and do recordings of that camera?  

Now once the trial subscription is up what will I lose,  can I still access all of our cameras?  I see people say they have to use a VPN to do this... why is that?  What can actually be done in real life with the cameras with out the subscription (I've had it with subscriptions).  And what really matters is I get notifications of activity and can stream live ... but I read somewhere Live streams don't really get captured.  I just want to know the ups and downs before I open the boxes up 

I am coming from having 5 IP cameras I've been using for 5 years they each have huge microsd cards and record 24/7 and I can look back for months at the videos the record and, they log them by date, time and 30 minute segments.  In some of the comments here the Arlo will not allow me that type of recordings.   By the way, what resolution does the Pro4 camera record at... and why when you look at (with out subscription it has the resolution blanked out?)

I guess this is a bit of a buyer beware set of questions so I don't have expectations of the Arlo set up and not have those expectations met.   I hope this all makes sense...   This my 

[StephenB]

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@davidk1952 wrote:

By the way, what resolution does the Pro4 camera record at...

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2K (2560 x 1440).

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@davidk1952 wrote:

Now once the trial subscription is up what will I lose,  can I still access all of our cameras? 

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see

• https://kb.arlo.com/000062312/What-options-will-I-have-when-the-Arlo-trial-ends

Direct Access to Local storage has a number of limitations you should be aware of:

• recordings only accessible in the app (not the browser)
• recordings only accessible to the primary account (not "friend" accounts)
• no ability to save snapshots or make manual recordings
• no thumbnails (videos need to be downloaded to the phone before viewing)
• remote access requires either an inbound VPN or port forwarding (and can't be done at all with some internet service providers).

You also would lose activity zones.

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@davidk1952 wrote:

does the hub act like a router and then use the home router to connect to the internet. 

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yes.  The hub creates a closed wifi network that only the cameras can join.  It connects to the internet using ethernet through your home router.

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@davidk1952 wrote:

Camera 3 will be placed on the other side of an external garage, outside on the building viewing the garage doors and external door in.   This camera I'd say is probably 150' - 175' from the hub and I have a solar panel for this set up.

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That is really far for a wifi connection, and I suspect it won't work reliably.

If you have a mesh network that gives good signal to that location, you could use that instead.  Though you would give up local recordings, and would need to have a subscription.  

If you don't have a mesh, you could try connecting to your home wifi at that location with your phone (disabling mobile data), and if you can connect, measure the speed with speedtest.net (using the free ookla app).

Other options include a second base (located in the garage if you can get ethernet to it), or using a Go 2 camera with a mobile data connection (which requires both a service plan with the carrier and a subscription from Arlo). 

Note the Go 2 does have a microSD slot inside, so you could get local recordings that way.  You would need to go to the camera and remove the card in order to see the recordings.

[davidk1952 · Accepted solution]

Thank you very much for your detailed response to my questions you have verified most of what I thought but hoped things would be different.  Todays world for companies it the constant subscription based connections which for me and my use seems crazy.  I have for 7 used another set up that has worked for us, I had thought if I could continue in the same way Arlo would be a nice upgrade but I find having local storage just fine but to reduce what should be standard use with no additional cost something I do not want to do....it isn't the price but these companies are constantly changing what you get and for what price.  

I do thank you for your response that I am sure will help others with similar questions.  It just seems for the cost of the equipment up front the companies ability to limit the use or features with out a subscription kind of crazy.