Camera(s) stops recording - reboot only solution

[Seattlegrunge]

I have had Arlo Wire-Free for several years, without any big issues. In February I bought Arlo Ultra with 3 cameras (appr. $1300 including mounts, outdoor power cables etc) and it worked fine in the beginning (except for the install, where the smart hub didn't connect/update so I had to perform the first install by my parents house). But since a couple of months ago the cameras stop recording/recognizing movements. Not all three at the same time, but one camera, or sometimes two. The only solution to get a non-recording camera to record is to reboot the smart hub. Then the camera works as supposed again - for a couple of hours or maybe up to 20 hours sometimes. Then it stops recording/recognizing movements again and I have too reboot the smart hub again. Very unreliable system!

It is not always the same camera. Sometimes it happens to the camera closest (6 feet) to the smart hub, sometimes to the camera furthest away (40 feet) and sometimes the camera in between (9 feet). When a camera starts recording/recognizing movements it doesn't show any live view. When clicking the play button the load icon starts spinning, but live view picture doesn't appear in the app. Terrible! Not acceptable for a system of this big sum of money! All cameras are in a Smart plan, so that is not the issue.

This unreliable behaviour (forcing you to reboot all the time, extra annoying when not at home for a trip) is not acceptable at all! There must be a fix to this huge problem. And I know that I am not alone, several posts in this forum is about the same problem. I also have several friends that have Arlo Pro 2 (on my recommendation) and they start to experience the same problem, but not as frequent as with Arlo Ultra.

Also the activity zones haven't worked for a couple of weeks. Thats leads to a big bunch of alerts (when the camera does record/recognize movements) that I have chosen to not get (alerts that are outside the activity zones).

There are so many flaws to this expensive system. I have recommended Arlo to other people for several years, I have been talking proudly of my good cameras/surveillance system to many people. My recommendations to other have given Arlo at least 6 new customers, probably more. I can't recommend Arlo anymore, not right now, with all these problems. And I am ashamed of my friends and family that now are having issues with their systems.

Get your expensive product working! It is that simple and plain.

[KingSolomon]

My base station shows blue light but my app and my.arlo.com shows it's offline. I unplugged it and plugged it back in several times. It still shows blue light and still shows offline.

Another "successffull" update by Arlo! How "wonderful"! 🙄

[Seattlegrunge]

@ShayneS

Thanks! My hub is updated, and everything is online and running. Have to wait and see if the recording stops or not.

[ShayneS]

Hi @Seattlegrunge @n1976jmk @LandJS

How is everything going after the new firmware release?

[n1976jmk]

Thank you for asking @ShayneS .

i have had no issue since the recent firmware update  and reinstalling my SD card thankfully.

it is also working better with notifications within my activity zone again as well.  Probably due to the hub not locking up so easily anymore.

[LandJS]

ShanyeS as I posted at the time, the instructions from JamesC didn't work so after five I had to do as before and remove the hub, factory reset and start over, that did finally get the update.  It did go offline once while manually re-syncing the cameras and had to get it back to finish.  So working for now and only time will tell.  One thing I did notice is that it seems to be doing a much better job of recording until motion stops than it was.  Not sure that was even in the fix but glad to see.  There was no fix for the 4K live that is still 2K.  Irritating only because it's a feature, I don't use it much.  And thanks for checking back.

[jprikios]

Sign me up for a class action lawsuit against Arlo.  They have no problem taking my subscription fee for 11 cameras but they can't help but break my system at least once a month.  All motion detection on my basestation stopped but mysteriously my other basestation is working just fine.  Hours on chat with support and a removal of my camera to re-add it although somehow the basestation no longer syncs with devices.  I'm sure this is leading to a full reset of all devices which is hours worth of work with no guarantee of this not happening in a month again.

[Seattlegrunge]

@ShayneS

My hub has been online for approximately 24h now, since the last reboot. And everything seems to work properly. The cameras are recording, I haven't been forced to reboot. I am crossing my fingers that it will work properly from now on.

Thanks for listening to us, and for providing us a fix. Although you could have been a little quicker 😉

[ShayneS]

@jprikios

This specific issue was only affecting the Arlo Ultra smart hub with 5 or more Arlo Ultra cameras. Does your other base station/cameras fall within this category?

If you need further assistance, Please contact the Support Team to further investigate this issue. Arlo Tech Support

[n1976jmk]

@ShayneS 

my Ultra system was definitely affected

i have 2 Ultra cameras, an Arlo audio doorbell and Arlo door chime.

[jprikios]

That’s the odd thing. Only the five cameras attached to one of the base stations was problematic. The other base station as respective cameras work just fine.

[Seattlegrunge]

@ShayneS @JamesC

Sorry to say it, but the update have not fixed the problem. Now, more than 48 hours since last hub reboot, I noticed that one of my cameras stopped recording. The camera says the last movement it recognized was 18 hours ago, but the latest recording from that camera is more than 26 hours old. And all day long it hasn't recognized or recorded movements.

So... the problem is still there. Nothing has been fixed 😞 The only difference now is that the problem did occur much later than before. Earlier it occurred several times a day.

You can remove the "Solved" and "Go to solution" icons in this thread.
Please find a fix asap.

[Montty]

Cameras stop recording.. no camera icon appears on either 1 of my 2 cameras.. what is really going on? I’m using Arlo ultra and I have rest my system and to no help cause it still not working.

[HazzMatt]

I have this problem too. One of my Ultra cameras will seemingly "go to sleep", stops recording on motion. Rebooting will restore but it will happen again. It's not always th same camera.

[LandJS]

That is something I've been watching since the firmware fix.  All cameras will have 2 or 3 bars after a reboot and then one will drop to red and struggle.  Reboot and that camera is fine but another camera drops to red, reboot and those two are fine but another drops to red.  Enough reboots get them all back to 2 or 3 bars until the next time.  It's as if the hub is struggling to handle all the cameras.  Before the April 27 update I never had a camera in the red.

[HazzMatt]

Sounds like maybe the Smarthub is trying different wifi channels. I recall prior posts about forcing (locking in) your hub to certain wifi channels. How does one do this and once done, would that solve the switching and struggling?

[Al71]

I’ve have 8 Arlo ultra cameras installed for 2 months and everything worked great. Suddenly they don’t record and send notifications. We can live view and manually record. I manually tested the motion detection and it is working. Has anyone solved this problem?

[LandJS]

whether it works or not is try it.  Log in to your router and go to 2.4 and change the channel from auto to your choice and save.  With 2.4 it's often 1, 6 or 11 that's best.  Go to 5 ghz and change from auto to your choice and save.  My analyzer says to use 36 but I have done best with 153.  Now everything on your system will be on those channels.  Some like it, some don't.  Kind of depends on the traffic in your area which you can find out with a analyzer app.  If it doesn't help just log back in and go back to auto.   One thing I did that I think helps is in the router go to QoS  and set the priority to streaming.  A lot a gamer's will set it to gaming.

[HazzMatt]

I'm happy to try it, but if the Smarthub to Camera Wifi is all handled internally, can changing the router wifi channels still do some good?

[LandJS]

That would be the question but it would force Arlo to use those two channels.  Whether they are the best two for you would be trial and error.  Everyone's house design, where they put router and Arlo, how many people live in your area and are using what channels will be as different as there are people.  I used to find the two that worked best for me after a reboot to lock Arlo to them and then go back and put the router on auto putting my laptops and printer, TV's etc back to what came up.  After awhile I saw that anything that caused Arlo to boot or such would just go back to what was.  So it became lock everything to those two channels or hope Arlo produced a better hub.  It's crazy that they struggle so much when my home router functions fine 400 feet away and I can stream 4K movies to a RV 70 feet away with it.

[HazzMatt]

Ok, so you're suggesting that I lock the Arlo Smarthub to an Ethernet channel to my router, since my router has no control of what wifi channels the base station uses to talk to the cameras?

[Seattlegrunge]

@HazzMatt @LandJS

Sorry, but you are discussing a totally different problem in this thread, a thread that highlights the problem with cameras not recognizing motion/stop recording.

@ShayneS @JamesC

The problem with cameras not recognizing motion/stop recording several times a day is NOT SOLVED! Still have to reboot the smart hub once or twice every day to get all cameras work properly... for a couple of hours (up to approximately 20 hours).
The constant rebooting is not the way to go. This expensive system must work! I don't like talking about law suits and such, but soon there will be no other option for all of us that experience this and other problems with Arlo Ultra.

Please listen do everything you can for your customers, it is us that have made Arlo being Arlo by buying your systems for several years.

[HazzMatt]

I got the impression from others here that the wifi channel issue was causing motion recording to fail. So I certainly was it intentional discussing a different topic. Even Arlo support brought up poor wifi and maybe being the culprit. Take care...

[Seattlegrunge]

If that is the case, sorry, but why would this suddenly occur? The system has been working, and suddenly the issue discussed in this thread comes from nowhere.
All routers can't suddenly interfere with the smart hub. That is what I think.

[Undercover972]

I get a lot of exercise going up and down the ladder. It works, it doesn't work. Camera was switched out once. The camera is well in range of base. Called my Internet provider, verified the channel, verified all the settings. Yes, yes, rebooted, many times, rebooted the Internet many times. At this point, I've learned to just leave it and hope that it starts working again. Can't keep setting up the ladder on my house. You guys should just say "re-pairing it every few days." Because that's the only thing that fixes it. So inconvenient, just get your ladder out to re-pair it every day. Pain in the ass. 

[Guy09]

My Arlo Ultra camera has suddenly stopped detecting or recording motion, in the app the motion symbol is always yellow as if it is constantly recording. Yet it isn’t because the battery hasn’t run down. I can view a livestream.