my initial impressions (day 5 & counting) with 1 Arlo Ultra camera + doorbell & chime

[n1976jmk]

Good afternoon all!  I am new to Arlo but have been reading closely about them for the last 1.5 years.  I am tech person so I somewhat savvy and enjoy new technology!  Hence the 4k models :).

Thanks for everyone who helped me out so far with my many questions (I still have more 🙂  ).

This is my fifth day using one Arlo Ultra camera, base station, doorbell, and door chime.  So, I wanted to the be the newbie providing my first overall observations and feelings so far.

Initial setup was straight forward.  I did initially have my base station in my basement and the camera is on the front of my house about 15-20 feet away.  I am using the outdoor 25-foot power cord for the camera.

I did not have any issues recording to the cloud or receiving push notifications during setup.  The camera, doorbell and door chime did not have issues connecting to the base station in the basement.  Sometimes the doorbell would not connect right away if I had to use the app to reboot the base station.  Or if I physically went to the door bell and rang it twice then it would reconnect by itself.  

Later, day one and day two, I noticed when I was at home at my iPhone was connected to our Verizon FIOS 5g.  And I opened the Arlo app it was usually lock up or not display live video and kept saying 'getting status' and the doorbell and door chime would not show as connected either.  If I force closed the app or restarted my iphone that would help most of the time.

Additionally, what I found if i was working on the camera settings via the Arlo app on my iPhone while at home on wifi.  After I made camera positioning changes, activity zone changes or motion setting changes then shortly after a lot of the time the base station would reboot itself for no reason.

But I slowly noticed/realized that if I was using the Arlo app to view live video or playback clips, or making setting changes on the app while at home to the camera while I was on cellular service only (wifi disconnected) then the Arlo app does not lock up as much (significantly less) and the base station does not reboot itself for no reason.

 I ended up moving the base station from the basement to the first floor which put the camera and doorbells 12-15 away instead and wireless signals not having to go through the floor to the basement via the wood floors and structure beams.  That is what made me realize even more that it was my iPhone using the home wifi causing the Arlo app problems.  Since all the equipment was now really close and issues did not resolve. 

So, for the last two days as a further test I have kept the wifi off on my phone and only using cellular service the Arlo works almost all the time to view live video or playback clips and making setting changes to the camera via the Arlo app.  And I have not had to force close the app or restart the phone.  The Arlo app works just better on cellular for me.

One question I had around that is I have Verizon FIOS router with 2.4 and 5ghz.  Is the Arlo Base station using the 2.4 or 5ghz for the camera and door bells to connect to it?

Any suggestions on fixes the issues I have reported above are much appreciated.  

Thank you all