Cameras are "busy"

[Mikeshop]

My cameras do not respond. They show as being "busy". I can't reset. How to I get them to respond? This has happened before and I had to re-sync them. Is there another way?

[hokeysmoke]

Not sure if it's the same issue, but I'm seeing the same thing right now.  The cameras by themselves seem to be operating.  They click and turn on the LEDs in the dark, for instance.  But streaming via the apps or web page does not work, and no recordings appear.  I've restarted, reset, re-paired, took the batteries out of the cameras, and nothing seems to affect this.  The cameras do take snapshots, but no video.  Perhaps cloud streaming is down right now?

[hokeysmoke]

I am now seeing a message on my iPhone app saying "We are sorry, the streaming service is currently down.  We will be back up and running at January 12, 2015, 12:44 AM UTC."  Unfortunately it is now past that time and it still seems to be down.

This is pretty serious.  If you can't stream then the cameras don't do anything.

[cep55]

I'm having similar problems. Sometimes the cameras are "busy", sometimes not, but I have them set to "motion on" and the only image I see is from 9AM this morning. I've restarted the base station, and resynced the cameras, and I can't get them to show current footage.

[rerick]

I am having the same trouble. My cameras stopped sending me motion notifications and recording this afternoon. I also cannot stream them live, but as far as I can tell they are still connected. I received a notification in the app at one point that streaming would not be available until 11pm tonight, but there was no explanation and I haven't been able to get that notification up again. If they are doing maintenance on their systems, they should send downtime notifications to customers with plenty of warning. Really poor communication on the part of Arlo/Netgear.

[Cameron]

Mine are doing the same now. Both cameras seem to show online but when I try to get a picture from them it shows "Busy" or "Getting Status". I have pulled the batteries from the camera, powered the base on/off. resynced the cameras and used the reset in the software. I finally did the base station reset with both the reset and sync buttons pressed for 10s but it didn't change anything. Both cameras are still offline. 

Lots of problems with this system so far. Looks to still be headed back for a return on Monday.

[rerick]

I just checked again and after a few hours down, I am now able to stream them again. I'll cross my fingers and hope it lasts.

[Stefan]

Hello Netgear Support!

Is anybody monitoring this thread?

I have the exact same issue: the cameras stopped working. At first this is a local problem and rebooted both teh base station and each camera. To no avail.

It is an Arlo server issue.

Netgear: please let us know what the status is here with your server. This is an unacceptable problem for a service destined to be home video security.

[cep55]

Suddenly both of mine are streaming live... Looking pretty good. Now I'm curious to see about battery life!

[hokeysmoke]

Mine are working again.

[Stefan]

Mine work too. Seems like they fixed the server streaming service, for now...

It would be great if there was a maintenace/server status announcement on the Arlo streaming page so that we can know there is an issue and they are working to fix it,  and stop wasting our time trying to troubleshoot our local systems.

[Cameron]

Mine are still offline as is my Base Station now. 

[Stefan]

Cameron, this looks like a different issue. You may have a problem either with the base station or with your internet connectivity and router.

[Stefan]

The server is broken again. Now, only one camera works and the second one is stuck in "Please wait...". forever

Arlo, at his point, does not look like an usable system for home security. Unfortunately, because the cameras are high quality and the whole system design is well thought out. But its server implementation seems to be its weak point and a big annoyance for this user...

Maybe it is just a temporary server thing, maybe there is no one there in arlo server land  over the weekend to take care of things, but the system at this point looks quite unreliable .

I would be ineterested to know what other users have experienced and if this server outage is an exception.

I also tried to contact support about the server instability. Have not heard anything yet.

[Cameron]

I decided to setup an entirely new account and it worked for about a minute. The Base Station is working again but the cameras will not record. I can set their motion setting (the camera responds properly) and I can sometimes get a snapshot to work but nothing else is working. Really buggy.

[rerick]

Is the entire arlo service down for everyone right now? I can not get to the arlo.netgear.com website at all. A little while ago I was able to get to the login page but I could not log in. Oddly, a message popped up saying I wasnt connected to the internet. Obviously I am and was connected. I can not login via the app either

[hokeysmoke]

Completely down for me.  I can barely even log into this site right now.  If I try to view my cameras, the site tells me I am not connected to the internet.

[SGT]

Completely down for me as well.  I just set up my cameras for the first time about two hours ago and it was intermittently working but I can't even log onto the website or use the app.  Even this arlo support site is having connectivity issues...

[Cameron]

The cameras are intermittently working for me but very inconsistent. Sometimes one works and the other doesn't but most of the time neither work.

[Stefan]

The service is up now. But it was down for most of the evening.

Basically, in the 7 days since I installed the system, the only problem has been the unreliability of the server backend. But what a problem! Yesterday it was down for a few hours and this repetated today.

And, if the server is down, nothing works. If this was just a backup cloud for uploading videos, maybe it could be tolerated. But it is not. The way Arlo is designed, the server is central,  providing the camera streams. I think this is a design flaw:

Netgear should have allowed the base station to act as a local web server and give you the streams and also act as a local DVR. This would have been a much, much more robust system without thsi centralized single point of failure they have it now. And they could have used the server as cloud backup for the video streams. It is un-understandable why they have engineered it in such a differnt way. This is where all our annoyance with the system comes from.

But, being as it is, with the streams from the base station going up in the cloud and only then coming back to you (which is why you see such a latency)  Netgear should have provisioned, at the very least, a a back-up for the server. For all of us here, uninterrupted functionality is critical. Instead, they got a central point of failure type of architecture based entirely on a flaky server which disables the system completely, every day for a few hours in the last 2 days. This is a design flaw and I hope they fix it.

I hope Netgear releases a future firmware update to allow us to see the streams locally and thus prevent these system outages. This would greatly enchance the robustness of the system and the statisfaction of its early adopters.

[hokeysmoke]

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Stefan wrote:

I hope Netgear releases a future firmware update to allow us to see the streams locally and thus prevent these system outages. This would greatly enchance the robustness of the system and the statisfaction of its early adopters.

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Maybe that's what the USB ports are for.  If you could make the base station into a NAS with a USB drive then you could have a backup system.

[Cameron]

I would not hold my breath on getting a local stream going unless someone cracks the transmission protocol and does it 3rd party. The entire online setup looks as if it is designed to encourage buyers to shell out additional money for the upgraded packages. I am sure a secondary function is that a person doesn't need a computer to make it all work but that seems secondary at best. It had to be easier to develop local buffering with an online upload rather than a direct online streaming system.

[rerick]

I have a feeling that we have all paid for the privilege of being Netgear's beta testers.

[ChristineT]

Hello Arlo Community,

Thank you all for your valuable feedback. We sincerely apologize for the outage and any inconvenience this may have caused. Rest assured our Engineering team is working diligently to ensure these types of incidents do not happen.  We are committed to ensuring the Arlo service is available and we greatly appreciate your patience and understanding.

Thank you for the suggestion regarding local storage. Offering local storage is not available as of yet however we will provide more updates as we develop our future roadmap. 

Thanks for being a valued Customer and please let us know if there is anything more we can do to help.

Christine

NETGEAR - Arlo Team

[John]

Today I have the same issue. Both cameras worked yesterday but as of this morning, one camera works but the other camera does not stream/ does not record and when I try to access it the status is "busy"

Is this a server issue?