Arlo Wirefree - was online, still have three steady green lights, but says "offline"

[woolenegg]

We haven't used our two cameras through the winter, but the base station has remained connected/powered on. Today, I took one of the cameras and put fresh batteries in. I logged in using my phone app, and the camera immediately showed as fully powered. Took it outside and put it back on the mount, tested the motion sensing (fine), used the camera positioning feature, got it all set up. Set mode to "armed." Came back inside and logged in on my desktop. Clicked on devices and it showed me the last view from that camera as it was when I finished positioning it.

A couple minutes later, it suddenly said my base station was "offline." Went to check it out - still on, showing three steady green lights. Turned it off and on again, after a few minutes all three green lights were on and steady, but when I login it still tells me that it's offline.

Help.

Thank you.

[TomMac]

First I would go back and check if it still works on the phone... if so, then it's the laptop no operating correctly for some reason.

But if not, power down the modem, router , and base and bring them back up in same order ( letting each reboot )

[woolenegg]

No, it was working neither with the phone app, nor on my desktop in the browser. I'll try what you suggested...

[woolenegg]

Today we removed devices, reset the base station, re-added and re-named it, and then re-synced the two cameras. Both synced correctly as shown by a fast blinking blue LED. The base station shows three steady green LEDs. The first camera we synced even sensed motion and collected two videos while we were getting the second camera synced. We got the alert on the phone and then the notification email. I have the two videos in my library. Then the system went offline again.

I uninstalled and reinstalled the phone app. I've logged in/out from web and app multiple times. The system is still offline and remains offline, except for when you first log in and the system is "getting status..." Then you are able to click "Live" on the cameras and they will come on... until the base station goes offline several seconds later.

We moved the base station, and tried a different LAN cable. The base station came up once again with three green LEDs. I could login and see the cameras for several seconds and get "Live" views. Then the system went Offline again, next verse, same as the first.

I'm wondering if Netgear's servers are unable to handle the load of an increasingly popular system (which will rapidly become unpopular at this rate).

[JamesC]

woolenegg,

It sounds this could be a hardware related issue. Please contact the Arlo Support Team to further investigate this issue. You will find several options for contacting support in the provided link.

JamesC

[woolenegg]

I did contact support, on April 18th. I have to say, thus far I am not terribly impressed. I provided a very detailed description of the events and things we have tried (including removing devices and going through a whole reset procedure). They are unfailingly polite, but I suspect English is not their first language, from some of the odd sentence syntax and word usage I'm seeing. Regardless, I have been asked to jump through several hoops so far, including answering questions about our internet provider, type of internet access, upload/download speeds, make and model of modem and router, how many devices are on our network, etc. Then was asked to once again go through a re-set procedure, this time making sure to hold the reset button for at least 30 seconds, and taking the batteries out of the cameras for at least 3 minutes.

I followed those instructions, with the same result: everything works properly until I hit the "Finish" button after adding the second and final camera, and then a few seconds later the system is "offline", although the base station still shows three steady green LEDs. One piece of additional information I was able to obtain on this go-round of resetting is that the firmware version I currently have is 1.2.10342. This information was available until the system went Offline, at which point I watched that bit of information disappear from the Device Info screen. If I'd blinked, or not been looking at that screen at exactly the right moment, I'd have missed it. Very odd....

Now I'm being asked if the base station is indeed connected to the router I said it was connected to, or if it's connected to the router that I told them we use only as a Wifi access point. And if so, to please connect it to the router I already told them we are using as a router, and go through the reset procedure AGAIN, this time making sure to hold the reset button for at least 1 minute ....

I've now replied that no, it's not connected to our Wifi access point hardware, so I am not going to go through the whole reset procedure again. I also asked what reason is there for increasing the length of time to hold the reset button? (First, 30 seconds, now 1 minute?)

And I've asked that as they just seem to be asking me to jump through hoops now for the sake of it, that if there is another tier of support that they can escalate my ticket to, to please do so.

I feel that as they are asking me questions to which they already have been provided answers, there is some lack of reading comprehension on their part. Or, possibly, they really do not have any idea of what the problem could be and are giving me more and more hoops to jump through, hoping I'll get fed up and go away. Or, they DO know what the problem is, but are aware that they cannot do anything to solve it and don't want to admit this to be the case, and are hoping I'll get fed up and go away.

It will be interesting to see how this all turns out....

[woolenegg]

So, after multiple back-and-forths with level 1 support over a couple of weeks time, we finally escalated to level 2. Level 1 was informed more than once that the firmware version apparently running was way, way, way out of date, and was asked if that could be the problem, but they never responded to that and just gave us more hoops to jump through. Level 2 started out with even more hoops, until my husband, a former network analyst, managed to convince them that he might just know what he was talking about and their hoops made no sense, and then they asked for a phone number. They called last night and said that they were going to issue an RMA. The woman checked everything, confirmed the name for our base station and the email address, and sent the RMA info to us.

We have not touched the base station now for a few days. No power cycling, resetting, no nothing. This morning, bingo, suddenly it's working again, is in Armed mode, and the firmware is magically up-to-date.

I have to think that the problem all along was the firmware, and for whatever reason it wasn't getting updated, and when the L2 support person looked at things last night, something woke up and an update was finally downloaded. Now I'm wondering if I need to send this unit back for replacement after all. I may wait a few days and see what happens...