Smarthub loses connection and reconnects every 3-5 minutes!

[hwcheng]

Bought the arlo 4k UHD wire-free security camera system (2-cam) kit a couple of days earlier. Unboxed and setup this morning. Found every 3-5 minutes, the Smarthub loses connection, flashing LED in amber for around a minute, and reconnects. This drives me nut!

Tried everything I can:

1/ power reset according to the kb;

2/ had the smarthub reset and setup the kit afresh;

3/ checked the ethernet connection;

4/ combine the 2.4GHz and 5GHz of the router as one and setup up;

5/ separate the 2.4GHz and 5GHz of the router as one and setup up;

None, yes, none of the above works. Do I have a faulty smarthub or the system actually works as such? Please inspire at your convenience. Many thanks!

[jguerdat]

The flashing amber LED means a poor camera connection:

https://kb.arlo.com/000039100/What-do-the-LEDs-on-my-Arlo-SmartHub-or-base-station-mean

[hwcheng]

Thanks, but no, the kB says also "other connection error". In another troubleshooting, that says lost of internet connection.

Well, the app said the smarthub is offline when it flashes amber! All cameras are fine and sit next to the hub. They reconnected almost instantly when the hub got connected again. Faulty hub?

[jguerdat]

Or maybe power supply. Swap at the store or use the Contact Support link at the bottom here.

[hwcheng]

Thank you @jguerdat . The possibility of a power supply problem is quite slim. Over the past days, I see only alternating steady blue and flashing amber. It's not rebooted, I think. One interesting thing I did notice so far is when I was using a live view, connection seemed unbroken?? A way to force us to subscribe to CVS?

I raised a service ticket two days ago and heard nothing back so far.

Anyway, I guess it's a faulty SmartHub since no one has left any message here about similar experience. Returned, and likely to say farewell with Arlo. What a shame! The latency I found is only 2-4 seconds, with 4 seconds to connect, and then 2 seconds in realtime view. Acceptable!

[RafS]

Hey there.  This sounds like an issue that plagued people with Orbi wifi systems but has since been fixed.  It turned out that the Orbi would release IP addresses associated with everything connected to it and assign new ones to it every few minutes which would take the Arlo offline.  Check the connection to your router as your Arlo might not be the issue..

[hwcheng]

Hi, @RafS . Thank you for your suggestion. This is something that I suspected. I am not with the Orbi, and I did try to see if there's anything to do with the handshake between my router and the SmartHub. Sadly I found no evidence of it. I did try also to refresh the firmware according to some suggestions in this community. That didn't work either. After a week's frustration, I at last say goodbye to Arlo, though a 4K cam is really really tempting. Nest IQ is what I am considering to replace the Arlo.