ARLO Keeps going offline

[thewurzel]

this is the message i keep getting on the device page online 

This Arlo device is offline

Please make sure it is connected to the Internet. Visit support.arlo.com for help.

some careras are further away and are still connected 

i am getting fustrated with this 

i am using rechargable batteries. the cameras have the firmware updated. this only hapens with 2 out of my 5 cameras. i can change the batteries then i get this message again within a day or so.

any help would be aperciated thanks

Julian

[dragonarm]

Thanks for your reply JamesC.

That particular camera is not more than 15 feet away, with one wall between it and the base unit. It was working perfectly the last year and a half. Don't know why suddenly it's not working. 

Did not change any setting since it was setup. Did not change the router network setting neither.

I might try to move the base unit to another location and see if it helps.

[ozmale1]

James C,

You cant be serious, this is always the advise companies give when they have no idea what is wrong.

to test all this I had my base station sitting on a desk for over a month. With the 4 cameras variious distances from the unit from 1 metre to 5 metres away.  All 4 cameras lost connection at least once each week. There is nothing in between no interference, new batteries,  one lost connection after only 1 hour.  If Arlo was genuine they would contact directly several people with this same problem and seriously try to identify the problem.  A good start would be to allow us to go back to previous firmware.  The million dollar question is why after the cameras disconnect themselve dont they just try to automatically reconnect ? 

[SpiesLikeUs]

Anyone reading this thread, THE solution is to take your Arlo system back for warranty, get a refund. Do it before it runs out as you will have this issue, it does not get better!

[AMH7]

We've had Arlo for a couple of years now and it gets worse with nearly every few months that go by and I'm now ready to finally cut my losses and go to another vendor.  I thought all the battery drain issues and frequent disconnects might be related to weak wifi despite Arlo's advertisement of supporting up to 300ft to the camera.  (The greatest distance in my case is 75ft and most are less than 20ft.)  So I got an additional router to be able to move the routers even closer to the cameras, replaced all the batteries, and went on vacation for 3 weeks.  By day 3, 3 of the 5 cameras had disconnected so I remotely restarted the routers and when they came up, all 5 of 5 were disconnected and never came back.  So for all but 3 days of the vacation, I had zero coverage.  And when I came home $18 of new batteries were all dead and wasted.  I truly don't know what else I can do.  I can't spend every weekend restarting and resetting stuff after finding out it didn't record half of the week.  It is so strange that they had this all working pretty well / reliably when I first started with them only to get worse, and worse, and worse to the point of truly being useless.  What a shame.

[capnbob]

Two of three cameras only stay on line for 3-8 hours . I have turned them off , disconnected them , updated them , re synced them . The system is 2 years old , the camera that stays on line is a pro the 2 that are going off are not .

I have power cycled the base unit .

What else can I do ?

My wifi does go out on occasion but comes back on and the one camera comes right back on too .

I have not been able to directly corolate the wifi dropping out with the cameras going off line and not coming back on .

[RegieH]

I've been in the same situation as you do. 

Arlo seemed very unstable.  I spend more time adjusting, reconfiguing, power cycling, etc. to get it to work well but to no avail.  No support from Netgear other than what they've published.

I decided to switch over to a very cost effective camera system & I am extremely happy.  I now use WYZE Camera V2.0 & Camera Pan Cam.  The cost is very low.  I have configure the system to my own desire & has worked very very very well.  The only downside is it is not all-weather camera & has no battery -- BUT there is a work around.  i can share my set-up if you are interested & serious.  I have 7 cameras working without a glitch.  A lot lot better than Arlo.

[ozmale1]

Really curios about the "Wyze" camera system.  I have looks at reviews and videos. Looks good. I think being powered via cable is bit of a problem. Cables dangling look ugly and the manufactures never supple enough length. however having said that what is the point of a battery camera system if it doesnt work most of the time.

[RegieH]

Aha..... there is way to fix that. Remember it uses USB ergo you can plug it in a solar powered charger you used for your cellphone. Very cheap from Amazon or eBay. Wires? You can buy various lengths. I bought 1 for trial loved it & immediately junked my Arlo .

[ozmale1]

solar charger, or one of those clee phone chargers.  What a great idea

[RegieH]

Both will do because it is USB. While Arlo looks neat but we need something that will work. My Arlo, battery only lady 2 weeks then have charge it again. I had apprehension with Wyze cam before. You always want the best. I thought Arlo would be the best because of price compared to Wyze; looked down on Wyze capability......... I was wrong.

[jguerdat]

I had both gen 1 and 2 Wyze cameras and sold them. You can't specify recording times and can only record every 5 minutes. Use of an SD card so it could record continuously locally was a workaround but not sufficient for real use.

As for Arlo, while it's a PITA, I would remove everything from Settings, My Devices and start fresh. Sometimes a kick in the pants is what's needed to get things working properly.

[MTTEMPLE]

I AM HAVING THE SAME ISSUE. I HAVE THE OLDER CAMERAS. ONE OF THEM I DICONNECTED AND WHEN ATTEMPTING TO RESYNC IT WILL NOT LET ME. THE OTHERS RANDOMLY GO OFFLINE. ISSUE JUST STARTED WITHIN THE LAST MONTH OR SO. VERY FRUSTRATING. READY TO GO BUY DIFFERENT SYSTEM ENTIRELY. BATTERIES ARE FULLY CHARGED.

[txdreww]

I'm beyond the 2yr warranty and things have not changed for my camera that goes offline.  Basically it will stay online for up to 3-5 days, regardless of anything I do.  My older camera by 3 or 4 months which lives in a tree in the weather has never had an issue, so as everyone has stated has nothing to do with wireless etc.  Anyway I opened up the problem child, and found it has a small battery inside too.  I unplugged and plugged it back in to reset whatever it was keeping alive, and so far it's been online for 11 days.  Will update if it makes it a whole month, which is beyond anything it's done since this started.  Maybe something got in a bad state and needed the full power cycle.  Here's a picture of that battery, at least that's my guess what it is.  We'll see...   

[RegieH]

Not 5mins interval.  Mine does it in less than a min.  There is always a workaround.  Anyway this is an Arlo Community.  I can discuss Wyze on a separate forum in respect to neatgear.

[ozmale1]

Txdreww,

I think you have found the root of the problem we are all facing.

I am an electronics engineer for 38 years, I worked for IBM.

The "Battery" you mention in your post is not actually a battery in the conventional term its a high capacity low leakage capacitor. Its job is to maintain a very stable independent voltage to the cmos data chip.  In "Windows" terms this is the cmos battery. It is there to maintain the integrity on the critical system values.

Imagine the internal IP address of the camera getting corrupted or the wifi frequency being slightly off. The camera would endlessly search for a network it knows is there but cant find. This explains the huge battery drain problems people are reporting. 

The Cmos almost always gets corrupted during a firmware (BIOS in windows terms) update. Once again people reported the disconnection problem mostly after firmware update.

Thus in a Windows PC there is always a simple way to clear the Cmos and the cmos battery costs $2 and the user can replace in about 5 minutes.

Arlos mistake is they did not provide a paper clip access for a cmos clear/reset switch.

The problem is a simple fix but a little difficult to perform.  Your idea is correct.

You must simply unplug the battery for at least 3 minutes. The cmos must be without any power for that time to allow any residual charge to drain away. The problem is (as you know) you have to dis assemble the camera to do this. Maybe you could provide a simple tutorial on how you did it for others to follow.

If I am correct once the data values are reset to their factory defaults the camera should revert back to an out of box situation, and you should be able to resync as new with no more problems until maybe the next firmware update.

Just one thing to note, these capacitive batteries are very reliable but do usually fail. After you open up the camera you should check that there is NO swelling of the battery. If there is then it is faulty 

This is why Netgear does not solve the problem, and won't talk to us. 

They were obviously aware of this potential issue right from the beginning. They knew there could be a corruption during update. Since they provided no way for the customer to reset the Cmos (as it were) they just remain silent.

[ozmale1]

TXdreww

Thanks to your post I know exactly how to fix the "Keeps going offline" problem.  But every time I try to post how to do it Arlo delete my post. 

[ozmale1]

PM me if you want to know the fix.

[txdreww]

Ozmale1, I don't see any PM options in this forum, maybe I'm missing it?  My camera still seems to be working fine, haven't had the failure again, up to 14 days so far. 

[dragonarm]

Click the user's name and then you can see there.

[txdreww]

I think that battery looking device is just part of the lense, maybe for focusing etc., don't think it's a battery, measured it @ 0V.  See below from a site that did a teardown.  I think what helped mine the most is leaving the batteries out for a day or so, since I usually replace the batteries in a few minutes when the camera is outside, basically taking down the camera, take out dead batteries, install new, not much time with no batteries at all.  When I disassembled the camera, I had them out for many hours, so maybe this is all it takes. I'm going to put the camera back together entirely and put outside, will see how it goes.  

[txdreww]

Been going without issue since the 19th of July, over a month.  I think if you have this issue, just take out the batteries for 24hr., see if that helps.  Not sure my disassemble and reassemble made a difference, so must be related to having the batteries out for awhile.  

[capnbob]

I removed everything Arlo  and restarted all as if it were a new system  . It has all worked fine since then .(about a month)

[Gtherio1]

Base station goes off line sometimes

[Babarage]

What I don’t get is. If I swap cameras it is the other one that will go offline every 2-3 days. Take out battery and replace it and we’re good to go. This is the Arlo pro btw. So it seems it is the location that is the problem. But why has everything been running smoothly for 18 months at exactly the same spot and then started acting up 2 or so months ago while nothing changed at the location or near the base station or well the whole house.

[jguerdat]

There can be various reasons even though it seems invisible. Moving something in the house (a mirror? Corless phone?) could change the signal strenth or add interference. I suppose it's also possible that the base is undergoing slow degradation in its ability to create a strong WiFi signal. Repositioning the base and/or camera would be good first steps.