Arlo Wired Video Doorbell not connecting to TP-Link Deco W7200

[JP619]

I purchased an Arlo Wired Video Doorbell in November of last year.  At the time I had a netgear Orbi Mesh network and the Arlo device was working well.  The ORBI device went bad and I purchased a new TP-Link Deco W-7200 in June of 2022.  I have been unable to connect the Arlo doorbell device to my Deco mesh network.  I've tried everything that ARLO suggested: turned off the satellite router, turned off the 5 gHz and several other settings.  The MAC filtering is not on... and so I am a complete loss for ideas to get it working.   The signal on my IPhone from the Deco is strong at the site of my doorbell - its only approximately 20 feet from the main router -  through an outside wall.  Given that the ARLO device worked with the Netgear ORBI mesh network and I have to believe the problem lies with the TP-Link Deco device.

Does anyone in the community or the company have any additional ideas?

[jguerdat]

Have you reset the doorbell? WHen you do that, you also need to remove it from your account.

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

[JP619]

Thanks jguerdat for the reply.

I have reset the doorbell and it has not worked.   I have consistently gotten to the point past the chime while setting it up but the doorbell is never acknowledged by my mesh network and so the device is never added to the Arlo app.  

I believe the problem is with the TP-Link Deco router but I've tried all sorts of things with the router - turned off the satellite router (using just the main router), disengaged the 5 gHz setting and the two roaming features.  I am at my wits end...

[jguerdat]

There's another brand mesh network that needs to turn off some additional security setting to allow Arlo to connect. You may want to slog through the router's settings to see if you can find anything like that.

[JP619 · Accepted solution]

I finally got the Arlo doorbell to recognize the network.  And you wouldn't believe what the solution was... I had an apostrophe in my SSID and I had special characters in my security password.  I took out both and the doorbell found the network!  It seems that the Arlo device didn't recognize the special characters.  Does anyone have a thought on this?

Thanks

Jeff

[StephenB]

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@JP619 wrote:

 It seems that the Arlo device didn't recognize the special characters.  Does anyone have a thought on this?

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Others have reported that with some characters.   Unfortunately Arlo hasn't provided a list of characters that don't work.

[R5Ryder]

The special character thing is news to me but might explain a few issues I've had.  While I find it hard to believe that a wifi device wouldn't support special characters in 2022, nothing surprises me with this POS doorbell.  Does anyone know what the banned characters are?

Also, regarding Deco mesh - if it has trouble you can do two things:

1) in Deco settings, temporarily disable 5Ghz then connect the doorbell.  Then re-enable 5GHz and bounce any 5GHz devices you have, since they will have switched to the 2.4GHz network.

2) set up a Guest network but only enable 2.4 GHz.  This also allows you to dumb-down the security settings just for  your doorbell, since it doesn't seem to support WPA 3 Personal.

Either of those methods will allow for the doorbell to connect, but good luck with it staying connected, as it just goes offline all the time  anyway.