Video Doorbell Wire-Free not recording locally to USB connected to VMB4000r3

[zuccos]

I have an Essential Video Doorbell Wire-Free that is connected to my VMB4000r3 base station. 

Connected to the base station is a SSD USB drive to store videos. 

I also have two older Arlo wireless cameras (they show as Hardware H8 in Device Info) that are connected to the same base station. Both of these cameras are able to save videos to the USB drive connected to the base station. 

I thought that the Video Doorbells were now able to save videos locally WITHOUT a Cloud Subscription from Arlo. 

The base station is running on firmware 1.20.2.1_4195_3673353 and indicates that no updates are available

The doorbell is running on firmware 1.4.1.0_683_562d1ba_c341942 with hardware version 1.2. It also indicates that no updates are available. 

Yesterday I did a full factory reset of all devices. The doorbell is detecting motion and sending push notifications, but nothing is saved to my local USB drive connected to the base station. 

[StephenB]

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@zuccos wrote:

I have an Essential Video Doorbell Wire-Free that is connected to my VMB4000r3 base station. 

Connected to the base station is a SSD USB drive to store videos. 

I also have two older Arlo wireless cameras (they show as Hardware H8 in Device Info) that are connected to the same base station. Both of these cameras are able to save videos to the USB drive connected to the base station. 

I thought that the Video Doorbells were now able to save videos locally WITHOUT a Cloud Subscription from Arlo. 

One thing that frequently causes confusion...

The ONLY way to see locally stored recordings with the VMB4000 base is to eject the storage using the app, and move the USB drive to a PC.  Then look for the recordings on the PC.

If you are looking in the app (or my.arlo.com) library, then you are actually seeing videos stored in the cloud.  The older cameras came with free 7-day cloud storage.  But Arlo stopped doing that with newer camera models back in 2018 when they introduced the Ultra.  You need a subscription for the Essential cameras in order to get any cloud storage.

[zuccos]

I don't believe that is correct. I have no videos stored in the cloud and everything is set to store videos local. I am able to view my camera videos via the app. But I am not able to see that any videos have even been recorded by the doorbell (no green dots)

[JamesC]

zuccos,

The content you're viewing in the app library is saved on the cloud. Arlo Video Doorbell requires a subscription plan to save content to the cloud library as mentioned above. The only way to view VMB4000 locally stored content from your storage device is to eject the device and view from a PC.

JamesC