Smart Plan Premier Plan in Dubai for Arlo Ultra

[dmakhkamov]

So the unit should come with 1 year free smart premiere plan. But there is no such plan offered in the UAE. As the matter of fact, the only country the 1 year free is available is in the country for which this unit is produced for (figured this out after 4 hours of total calls, and few hours of community forum reads). Mine was Australian unit. (look at the sticker at the bottom of the box, last 3 letters - AUS).
I registered the unit in UAE, and it was the dumbest camera ever, since smart plan is not available, and unit is on basic plan. just a camera that triggers an alert for any movement. Activity zones dont work on basic plan. Nothing really works. so you can only record footage locally, but to view it, you have to pull out the microSD.

HOW TO GET 1 Year free subscription on smart premiere.
1. DO NOT REGISTER UNIT.
2. Figure out the unit country (mine was Australia)
3. Set up the VPN to that country on your router (if your router supports it)
My routers (i have 3) did not support the VPN they way I wanted. So I decided to use my Raspberry pi.
what you need is:
a. main router with internet
b. raspberry pi, which has OpenVPN installed.
c. Some VPN server (I purchased ExpressVPN)
d. Another router.
so the connection I set up was the following:
Router1 with internet » WiFi » RaspPi + VPN + DHCP » Ethernet » Router2 » Phone on Wifi + Hub on Ethernet.

So I connected my Pi to VPN, and NATed the WIFI to ETH0 so that anything connected via Ethernet can get internet from the WIFI connection. At this point every device connected after Pi will be in VPN, including the Pi Eth0 etc.
So we connect the pi eth to Router2. Then connect your phone to Router2 via WIFI and Hub with Ethernet.

4. Set up the device
5. 1 year free plan should automatically be applied.