Recording without a subscription

[JacoD]

I have different cameras (arlo Pro, Pro2, Ultra 2) with a base station. All of a sudden it is not recording anything anymore. Local Storage is enabled, and have a USB drive connected. Motion is triggered, but no recording. Was working until now, no changes since. For info, some new additions came with a subscription trial that probably ended recently. But never had a paying plan for recording only locally.

[StephenB]

---

@JacoD wrote:

I have different cameras (arlo Pro, Pro2, Ultra 2) with a base station. All of a sudden it is not recording anything anymore. Local Storage is enabled, and have a USB drive connected. Motion is triggered, but no recording. Was working until now, no changes since. For info, some new additions came with a subscription trial that probably ended recently. But never had a paying plan for recording only locally.

---

This is with a VMB4000 base?

That base supports local recording, but not playback.  Did you eject the storage and connect it to a PC, and check for recordings that way?

Also, do you now have more than 5 unsubscribed cameras?  The 7-day free cloud storage for legacy cameras (pro, pro 2) is limited to unsubscribed cameras per account.  FWIW, that is not a new requirement.

[JacoD]

Thanks for the reply. Everything worked fine (recording, playbak) until today. My smartbase has always recorded all cameras and playback. To be more precise, it stopped working ONLY on some newer cameras (ultra 2 and Pro 4). Older cameras still record. Also noticed that recording button and screenshot disappeared from those cameras.

Same setup, nothing changed since problem appeared. Maybe a new firmware was downloaded?

Tried rebooting smartbase... no change...

[StephenB]

---

@JacoD wrote:

Thanks for the reply. Everything worked fine (recording, playbak) until today. My smartbase has always recorded all cameras and playback.

---

The VMB4000 doesn't support playback.  Do you actually have a VMB4540?

---

@JacoD wrote:

 To be more precise, it stopped working ONLY on some newer cameras (ultra 2 and Pro 4). Older cameras still record. Also noticed that recording button and screenshot disappeared from those cameras.

---

This is totally consistent with an expired trial subscription.  When did you purchase/install the newer cameras?

[JacoD]

I have a VMB4000r3 and it’s been recording and playing back locally for years.

Bought 4 ultra 2, 6 weeks ago and 2 Pro 4 a month ago. If it’s a trial subsc. expiration, why would one new pro 4 still records fine (installed exactly at same time)?

All Arlo cameras are supposed to record locally without subscription, which is what I dit for years.

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

---

@JacoD wrote:

I have a VMB4000r3 and it’s been recording and playing back locally for years.

---

No it hasn't.  Any videos you see in the app or my.arlo.com are stored in the Arlo Cloud, not locally.

Your old cameras were sold with 7-days of cloud storage, so this didn't require a subscription.  New cameras do require an Arlo Secure subscription to get any recordings in the cloud.

This is confusing, and you are not the first person to assume that the recordings they were seeing with a VMB4000 and VMB4500 were stored in the cloud.  You can easily test what I am saying by removing the storage from your base.  You'll still see recordings for the Pro 2 (and older) cameras - both existing recordings in the library, and new ones when motion is detected.

---

@JacoD wrote:

Bought 4 ultra 2, 6 weeks ago and 2 Pro 4 a month ago. If it’s a trial subsc. expiration, why would one new pro 4 still records fine (installed exactly at same time)?

---

Last fall, Arlo reduced the length of the trial from 3 months to 1 month.  Since the length of the trial is generally on the packaging, they didn't change the trial length for existing inventory, just for newly produced products.  

So likely what happened here is that one of your Pro 4 cameras happened to be one of the older ones that had a three month trial.

---

@JacoD wrote:

All Arlo cameras are supposed to record locally without subscription, which is what I dit for years.

---

Not exactly.  Some bases (VMB3xxx) have no support for either recording or playback.  VMB4000 and VMB4500 bases support recording, but not playback.  VMB4540 and VMB5000 support both recording and (restricted) playback.

[JacoD]

Dear Stephen,

After having checked the contents of my USB drive, you are 100% correct. Since I have never paid a subscription, I always thought that my recordings (and playback) were coming from the USB drive. Never imagined I had free cloud storage for so many years... So i guess that there is no solution for recording and playing back (from the app) locally without having to remove the USB drive. I am therefore forced to pay a subscription 😞 

In the last purchased set of 4 Ultra 2 was a VBM5000 base that I did not use, since compared to my actual VBM4000 it does not have the Siren and I did not see a USB port to connect a drive. Would using that base instead solve anything to my problem or the only solution is to go with the subscription? I'm not keen on putting my recording in the cloud.

Thanks a lot

Jaco

[StephenB]

---

@JacoD wrote:

In the last purchased set of 4 Ultra 2 was a VBM5000 base that I did not use, since compared to my actual VBM4000 it does not have the Siren and I did not see a USB port to connect a drive. Would using that base instead solve anything to my problem or the only solution is to go with the subscription?

---

The VMB5000 does support the direct access to local storage feature.  But it does that with a microSD card, not USB storage.  There's a microSD slot on the bottom or the smarthub.  Personally I find that 128 GB of storage is more than enough.

• https://kb.arlo.com/000062337/What-is-Direct-Storage-Access-and-how-do-I-use-it

There are downsides to using local storage instead of a subscription.  One is that you do lose other subscription features - activity zones and smart notifications.

In addition:

• recordings can only be viewed from the app (not the browser)
• recordings can only be viewed from the primary account (not shared friend accounts)
• no ability to take manual recordings or snapshots
• no thumbnails; recordings need to be downloaded to your phone before viewing
• remote access requires router setting changes which many find difficult (and which won't work with some internet service providers).