Arlo Ultra Data Usage incredibly high

[slash695]

Have had the arlo Ultra 2x cameras and Arlo Pro x 2 cameras connected to the arlo Ultra smart base station.

The last month our dat usage has sky rocketed.  Were in australia and we have used more than 400GB of our internet, of which i can only assume is the cameras as thats the only thing that changed.

Every time i talk to support they mention that the Ultra requires 3 mbps and the Pro 1mbps bandwith.

What i cant understand, is, why would they be downloading all the time?  Thats rediculous!  Shouldnt they just upload 10-20 second clips at that rate when motion is detected.  I am being told that the base station with the cameras connected would use 8mbps download.  

But why download all the time?  That makes no sense.  It has cost me over $100 in excess data charges this month alone.

I have checked my camera clips also, maximum is 10-15 clips per day for one camera.  And half that amount of clips for the others.

In australia you cant sell a product that consumes that much data in standby.  Its criminal!

If this is the case i will need a refund or perhaps let others know that to own these cameras even without recording you need a much bigger data allowance.

I was told to put a SD card in, if i wanted to do that then i would have bought much much cheaper cameras!  What is going on!!!!

[StephenB]

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@slash695 wrote:

The last month our dat usage has sky rocketed.  Were in australia and we have used more than 400GB of our internet, of which i can only assume is the cameras as thats the only thing that changed.

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What is your typical bandwidth use?  Do you know the split of upload/download?

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@slash695 wrote:

But why download all the time?  That makes no sense.  It has cost me over $100 in excess data charges this month alone.

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They don't.  They will download firmware updates, and since you are using cloud storage, you will use download bandwidth whenever you view videos stored in the cloud.  But that is used by the device you are viewing with - not the cameras or the base station.

On the upload side, they will upload a video stream whenever motion is detected.  Are you using activity zones?  That can mask the amount of upload bandwidth being used (since the in-zone/out-of-zone decision is made in the cloud).  So if you are using them, try turning them off for couple of days, and then let us know the activity per day.

Does your router let you see the internet bandwidth used for each device?

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@slash695 wrote:

I was told to put a SD card in, if i wanted to do that then i would have bought much much cheaper cameras!  What is going on!!!!

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I'm not sure how that is related.  But I would suggest putting in a microSD card anyway, as it does give you a backup of everything going to the cloud.  Using local storage when home would largely eliminate download bandwidth. 

The only way to control upload bandwidth is to reduce the number of seconds of video streaming to the cloud per day.