Arlo Ultra Wired Advantages

[danaiguri64]

Hi there. I have an Arlo Ultra 2 Camera system. I’ve used it on battery power since I’ve had it. Just wondering if there are any advantages to having it powered constantly with the wired outdoor cable instead of just using the battery? Does it load in the app faster? Is the quality better?

[jguerdat]

Nope, just don't have to charge batteries as well as the ability to use features that require AC power.

[pwaggs]

I am curious jguerdat what are the features that require DC power and is there zero onboard processing done on the camera before transmitting to the base station and cloud when plugged into DC. 

If you do research online there is lots of debate about the reason behind the crazy Arlo lag time and the consensus seems to be that it is because processing is done in the could. There is a smaller subset of users who plug their units in who claim that is a great way to reduce lag. I have not seen actual evidence of the speeded up process.

[jguerdat]

The primary utility of AC power is the addition of the 3 second look-back (what happens before the motion trigger) as well as the use of zones without a subscription. It's my understanding that the 3 second look-back is an onboard buffer that can be activated since it's always powered but other than recording and compression I don't believe there's any other processing.

Lag time is debatable. First, there's the lag needed to wake the camera up when motion is detected to create the connection to the servers. This is ~2-3 seconds in most cases - if longer, that implies a connection issue between the camera and hub. Then there's the transmission to the servers - the higher the resolution and the longer the recording the longer it takes. This is where upload speed can make a difference. Finally, there's the post-processing of the video by the servers for Smart detection which typically adds a small delay but should generally be a few to several seconds. DIscussion of "lag" frequently seems to be lack of understanding of the process and/or how a particular system is set up. There certainly are times where Arlo is at fault but that's not the norm. If Smart is the reason for complaints, you can always deactivate a camera in Smart Notifications to still get a notification, just not one with subject identification. That's your choice.