Ultra 2 - Recording Settings > Fixed length not working & general recording issues

[hugggg]

After using the Arlo Pro 2 I have now switched to four Ultra 2 camera's. So far the experience is not so good. My recordings very often get cut off (either with a green video screen, a grey video screen with some vague moving pixels or 'good' video cutting off after a few seconds during the motion is happening). I have tried many many different settings under 'Recording Settings': 'record until activity stops' and 'record for a fixed length of time'. Videos cut off very often in both options (before motion stops or before fixed time is reached), while sometimes recordings do work according to plan/correctly. Especially the fixed length of time (my preferred setting) very often records videos which are just a few seconds (which is much shorter than the 60 or 120 seconds fixed length I tried in settings). Also sometimes the night vision doesn't turn on (or off) properly, today 1 camera during daytime acted even stranger as all recording showed in a pinkish color (resetting the Hub fixed this).

My troubleshooting so far: resetting the base station/hubs many many times (at least daily), factory resetting the whole system and re-adding all camera's, resetting the camera's (taking the batteries out). I'm getting a bit fed up with this - paid a lot of money for this upgrade to Ultra 2 and everyday there are video recording issues.  

Any solutions to get this fixed?

My setup: 1 Smarthub VMB5000 with 2 Arlo Ultra's, 1 VMB4000 Base station with 2 Ultra's. Connection with all camera's is good (at least 2 out of 3 signal). All 4 camera's are connected with USB charging continuously.

Much appreciated!

[jguerdat]

What happens if you lower the resolution? 4K videos may be an issue with the signal strength and/or quality so a lower resolution may work better. If that's the case, moving the hub closer to the cameras or repositioning the cameras may be needed. A second hub may also prove useful.

[hugggg]

Thanks for your reply. I am actually using 2 bases (see my setup in the original post), where the Base (VMB4000) which currently seems to give the most issues is ~4 meter away from 1 of the camera's, and ~5m from the other. The other 2 cameras are connected to the Smart Hub - and they're at 1m and 3m distance from the hub. In my view this is already very close (as signal strength is also 2/3 or 3/3 for all cameras). 

Downscaling from 4K seems a very poor solution in my view - having paid a lot for this 4K system and then hearing it might only work properly with lower resolution is not what customer buy this system for. 

I'll further continue my conquest to solving this.. have moved the base station around a bit (slightly closer to the cameras - now behind a window instead of behind the wall), and have removed the USB storage in the Base (maybe that could cause issues as local 4K recording is too heavy for the USB stick? Are there minimum USB write speed requirements for e.g. two 4K cameras recording locally simultaneously?

Another thought: adding smart plugs with a schedule that reset the base station / smart hub every 6 or 12 hours is another idea on my troubleshooting list. As the cameras seem to work best closest after a reset of the base station / hub..

Nonetheless - all help and thoughts are very much appreciated!

[jguerdat · Accepted solution]

Downscaling is a suggestion just for testing. It may provide a useful observation.

Moving the base/hub away from the router can also be useful. The cameras are certainly close enough for signal strength although that doesn't preclude the possibility of interference from wireless devices that are nearby.

The specs for a VMB5000 using a micro SD card are noted in the folllowing link:

https://kb.arlo.com/000062124/How-do-I-record-4K-videos-to-a-local-storage-device

There's no specific speed suggested for a VMB4000 using a thumb drive but you could try a different drive, just in case.

[hugggg]

Your suggestion on the WiFi interference seems to be the solution! The base / hubs were both at ~50cm max. distance from my WiFi units (TP-Link Deco M4). I've now tried to move them at ~2m apart and seem to have hardly any issues. Thanks a lot for your support!

So while the signal strength seems fine on the cameras (2/3 or 3/3) the interference indeed seemed to be causing trouble (and this wasn't visible in the signal strength).