Capabillities of the ARLO smart hub

[ironmike1077]

I bought an ARLO Video doorbell and my one month free trial is over.  I thought I would at least get a picture of the person ringing my doorbell on my feed once the trial expired.  Now I'm only getting the live feed.  I'm interested in one of the smart hubs because it sounds like this would store some history from the doorbell.  Can someone tell me how this would work?  Can I view the history on the smart hub without a subscription?  I would like to be able to see at least a picture of the person that rang my doorbell but do not want to have to pay the monthly subscription.  Does the smart hub connect to your wifi and sync with the cameras and then are you able to view the history on your mobile feed from the smart hub?  Or is it a case where the smart hub stores the history on a USB type drive and you have to take than and connect it to a PC to view.  It does not offer a lot of details on the product and just says that you can connect your cameras and devices to the smart hub but does not say how this works.

[DannyBearAgain]

@ironmike1077 

The arlo base stations access the arlo servers via an Ethernet connection to the internet modem/router.

The Camera connects to the base’s closed wifi network so that it can record to the local storage device if fitted as well as upload to the arlo cloud storage. This would require to remove the doorbell and readd under the base/hub device.

Only the VMB4xxx bases support USB storage and VMB5000 supports a memory card. To access the backup recordings you will need to remove the storage device and view recordings with a pc.

The arlo hubs vmb4540 and vmb5000 support the mobile arlo app to directly access the files on the storage device to allow you to download them to your mobile for viewing. Not available using the web app interface unfortunately and they can’t be shared to friends accounts. In app access may be limited to the local network location, depends on the router port forwarding capabilities.

[Edinburgh_lad1]

Plus, what you can do with videos is very limited. In fact, you can only download videos - one at a time, not in bulk - and this in itself takes a while by modern standards, and current tends and developments. There isn't even an option to filter by camera. Finally, my personal experience is that when my doorbell was connected to the SmartHub, it was less responsive than when it was connected to my router.