Total Reset - It's all gone wrong!

[Haley_B]

We have a base station, three Arlo Pro wireless cameras, and a doorbell/chime setup.   We use our phone for geofencing, and it actually worked well for a bit, but we've replaced our phones, and did some factory resets to troubleshoot them.  This has resulted in a huge list of phones on our account.  We cannot authenticate my husband's, mine is in the list, but asks for permission to use this phone for geofencing every time I log in to the app.  Its still geofencing correctly, but only based on my phone.  It's the only one checked, yet the option says, Enabled Mobile Devices (2).   We both use Google Pixel 3a  (Android 10) devices, the kids use Nokia 6.1 (Android 9)

I've tried resetting the base station and re-adding everything.  All the old devices are still there and it is saying we're at our limit.  My husband is unable to even log in to check the cameras or anything.

Is there any way to reset the whole thing?  Even a scorched-earth redo of everything?  I hate taking the time to re-set everything up, but would be willing to do it one more time if it will get all the old stuff off our account so we can actually use it again.

For the record, we both have accounts, his is the original, and my account was linked.  I actually log in with his since I administer the security system, and he with mine since he has less time than I do.  I also know from researching this issue a lot that there's no way to remove the old devices easily.  Thus my asking if there's a better way.

[ShayneS]

Hi @Haley_B

  Have you tried contacting customer support regarding this issue? I have attached the link here for you - Arlo Tech Support

[Haley_B · Accepted solution]

Okay, I had enough time to sit down and contact customer care.  I was told that there was no limit to the number of phones that can be in the list.  Odd, since I get a message saying too many devices, but okay.

Here's a breakdown on the problem:

• each time we changed/factory reset phones, it left that phone in the geofencing list
• this resulted in a large number of devices
• my husband, even though logged in correctly, permissions granted, etc, did not have his device showing in the list of available devices for geofencing.
• I was getting a splash screen message every time I started the Arlo app asking if I wanted to allow my phone to participate in geofencing.  (Mind you, it already was, and was the ONLY phone out of our 5 that was correctly working at this point)  Tapping "Maybe Later" made it go away, and the geofencing list was correctly using my phone.  Tapping "Enable" made it go away, and it was still correctly using my phone, but said 2 devices were participating in geofencing, but only one device (mine) was checkmarked.

Here is the solution:

• Temporarily turn off 2 factor auth.  
• Have the other phones log out.
• Log in as the main account on the other phones.  Rename the device to something unique and descriptive.
• Set the device as a geofencing device.  Make sure to give permissions.
• Log out
• Uninstall and reboot
• Reinstall and log in with the user's normal credentials (not the main user's credentials.)
• Turn back on 2 factor auth.

We still have a ridiculously long list of phones as available for geofencing, but at least both my husband's phone and mine are correctly reporting as being in the geofencing zone, and my husband's phone was actually on the list after I logged in on his phone.

[Haley_B]

Forgot to add, logging out of my device, uninstall/reinstall, logging back in, choosing new name, etc has made that annoying "Maybe Later" and "Enable" splash screen go away.