SmartHub VMB5000 showing offline even with solid blue led

[Kari313]

Hi,

since Saturday our Arlo SmarHub is not working anymore. From any device/app it appears to be offline even if the LED is solid blue. I tried to reset the station, keep it unplugged from power for a while, etc., but nothing helped. Is there anything we can try to solve? We also have a paid subscription that since Saturday we cannot use!

Thank you

[StephenB]

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@Kari313 wrote:

I tried to reset the station,

If you did that, you'll need to remove the base and cameras from your account, and onboard them again.

[Kari313]

Now I tried to do again a complete reset but even without Ethernet cable connected LED stays blue and the base station won't reset. When I press reset button it does nothing.

But, when I connect it to the network I can see that it takes an IP address from the router so it seems to work in some way and it's not completely dead.

What else I can try to do now?

[StephenB]

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@Kari313 wrote:

Now I tried to do again a complete reset but even without Ethernet cable connected LED stays blue and the base station won't reset. When I press reset button it does nothing.

It can be a little hard to reach - are you sure you are pressing down on the reset switch?  How long are you holding it?

[Kari313]

Yes, I'm sure because I "feel" that the little reset button is pressed. I'm holding it for at least 15 sec. but even if I keep it pressed nothing happens.

[ShayneS]

Please reach out to the Support Team to further investigate this issue you are experiencing. You can find several options for contacting support though the Arlo Mobile App by navigating to Settings/System/Support.

[Kari313]

Hi @ShayneS ,

unfortunately contacting Support Team was a complete waste of time. I don't know if every time I have to contact Arlo's support I talk with the wrong support office but it seems that the only 2 provided solutions are:

"let's do a complete reset and see if it works" or "your unit is out of warranty, throw your €250 base away and buy a new one" with no other possible solutions or possible tests to try. We bought this unit in 2019 not 30 years ago, have bought 10 additional Arlo Ultra 4K Cameras, and have also a (for now) useless paid plan. Now I have a €3000 value camera system I cannot use since last month. The only information Support Team told us was that just before the base stopped working firmware updates were going on and I feel that a firmware update is probably what went wrong as it seems that the unit simply isn't able to boot properly anymore. It also connects to the Internet (it takes an IP address from the router) and I can also see from routers' logs that it connects successfully to some external IP addresses. So it seems that the hardware is OK. If only Arlo would provide a guide and resources to let users try a manual firmware update to restore its operating system instead of forcing customers to buy new units would be very appreciable. At least to check if it's completely broken or recoverable.