VMB5000, wireless doorbell

[krazanmp]

Hello,

I bought a wireless doorbell about 4-5 months ago and it worked fine until Arlo informed me that the doorbell would be useless unless I payed for a subscription or buy a hub... So I bought a hub.  The both of them worked perfectly fine until last week where all of a sudden not a single Arlo device in my house works any more.  The network has not changed AT ALL.  I have tried running through the setup process.  As suggested in posts, I have reset both devices and tried to set up both again.  The (re)setup process was taking place within 3 feet of all of: the wifi router, the base station, the doorbell and my cellphone (app).

I simply cannot connect to the hub in any way... It has a blue light on and the router says it is connected to it, but other than that it is a slightly warm brick on my desk. 

Going through the setup process for the doorbell, I get to the point where I show the QR code to the doorbell and it chimes happily, but it get stuck in "looking for Arlo doorbell" and returns that it didn't find anything (tried at least 2 dozen times, different timing of button presses, all within 6 inches between the cellphone and the doorbell).  I also have several other devices I have installed the app on, and they can't find the doorbell either.

This smacks of a failed software update since everything went out at the same time.

Is there any way to actually diagnose what is going on?  Can I ssh into either of these devices?  Or try to connect to them some other way?  Is there a way to avoid using the app? (It is the common denominator with connection)  Is there a way to access them through a webpage interface (ideally locally to avoid security issues).  Do I need to wireshark the device to see if it is even responding to the network at all (past the DHCP registration).  Is there a sequence of buttons to enable a diagnostic mode?  At this point, they are very expensive bricks that I just want to return and never think about again.

[krazanmp]

Oh and yes, 2.4 Ghz.  Reviewed the wifi password visually.  The network and wifi works perfectly fine for the 30 or so other devices connected to it.  Yes, connected the hub directly to the network modem that controls the wifi.   I also have a microSD that has video recordings from the doorbell to the hub until both stopped working.   Nothing else stopped working recently.

[JamesC]

From your description, it sounds like the factory reset may not have been successfully completed for the hub and the doorbell.

Be sure you're following the instructions listed here and take note that the LED behavior described is actually happening during the reset process:

https://kb.arlo.com/1057976/How-can-I-reset-my-Arlo-SmartHub-or-Base-Station

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

JamesC

[krazanmp]

I have spent weeks trying to build the energy to post this message:

This equipment is garbage.

In November after spending weeks following the instructions above EXACTLY, I made no progress.  Literally days after posting this message everything magically started working again.

Two weeks after that, everything magically stopped working again and no amount of following the instructions above will get it to work again.

If I could log into the device itself, I'd try to find out what was going on.  I tried running wireshark to see if I could ascertain from the network packets what is going on... no luck.

I literally have DOZENS of other devices on my network that have absolutely NO problems with the network.  It is suspicious that it started working right after I complained before Christmas and stops working otherwise.  It feels like an attempt at extortion to pay the exorbitant subscription fees of their cloud service.

How do I get my money back?  I am convinced that this equipment is garbage and that these posts are just a delay tactic to make me eat the cost of this never-working-as-advertised equipment. 

This equipment is literally the only device on my network that has ANY problems, let alone NEVER connects correctly and it is the only device that I can't directly manage to ensure that it can work correctly.