Connecting Arlo Wire Free VideoDoorbell to VMB500r5 Smarthub

[Killian888]

OK, so I've read through the troubleshooting post from 2020 https://community.arlo.com/t5/Arlo-Video-Doorbell/Doorbell-Won-t-Connect-to-Base-Station-or-Wireless... I have reset my VMB500r5 Ultra Smarthub (firmware 1.20.6.0_1385_24cf271), reset the wire free video doorbell and am still unable to connect. I have five other Arlo Ultra camera devices on this same Smarthub and did not have any of these connection issues. I am using a Samsung Galaxy S20 FE Android phone on a TMOBILE Home Internet Router (NOK 5G21 Gateway, HW ver 3TG00739B).

How do I get this to work? I'm very close to re-boxing and sending this device back, which is a shame considering I have been wanting one for a while and finally pulled the trigger on purchasing it. How is the wire free video doorbell created AFTER my Ultra camera devices so inferior a technology for pairing to the Ultra Smarthub? Very disappointing.

Please advise. 

[jguerdat]

The wireless doorbell first has to be connected to your WiFi to proceed with connecting to your hub. Selecting to connect to your hub early in the onboarding should provide all directions. Is that what you're doing? Have you reset the doorbell?

https://kb.arlo.com/000062346/How-do-I-reset-my-Arlo-Essential-Video-Doorbell

Connecting to your T-Mobile gateway could possibly be the problem. I believe there have been other posts about issues with this or similar setups. A search here, perhaps using some variation of T-Mobile, may be useful.

[StephenB]

---

@jguerdat wrote:

Connecting to your T-Mobile gateway could possibly be the problem. I believe there have been other posts about issues with this or similar setups. 

---

Hard to say, given all the friction people have trying to on-board their doorbells.

While I didn't try to on-board anything to the T-mobile gateway I was trying out, I did shift a VMB5000 base to it and didn't have any problems.  You can't get remote access to local storage with T-mobile broadband, because you can't use either port forwarding or an inbound VPN on their network.  But other stuff should all work.

Anyway, I suggest

• disabling the T-mobile 5 ghz wifi during onboarding
• making sure the wifi security is WPA2
• removing any punctuation from the network name and password.
• making sure the phone is connected to the T-mobile wifi

[Killian888]

From my original post "...I have reset my VMB500r5 Ultra Smarthub (firmware 1.20.6.0_1385_24cf271), reset the wire free video doorbell", so yes, I have reset the video doorbell. Yes, I'm being forced to complete a firmware update on the video doorbell prior to connecting to the Smarthub, I'm unable to connect to the the video doorbell using my Android phone over the TMobile Home Internet router, thus cannot complete the required firmware update.

I can probably take the video doorbell to another home and have it connect via a different network for the firmware update and then bring it back home to connect to the Smarthub, but quite frankly, I shouldn't have to do this. This technology is simply inferior and it deserves any more of my time to troubleshoot. I'm going to send it back. Piece of junk!