-
222946 Views
-
51 Likes
-
-
Power cycling the Arlo base station and my router, power cycling cameras by opening the battery compartment door, removing and re-pairing cameras - none of that worked for my "your device is not connected" issue:
Only thing that fixed it was factory reset of the base station via the button on the back, followed by retreiving and resyncing each camera.
The base station had apparently got itself 'confused' about its connectivity, displaying the Internet LED in amber and the cameras as though they were offline, yet still capturing and uploading videos.
I am having the exact same problem: cameras are constantly losing sync to my basestation, batteries are draining within 2-3 days, and Arlo customer support is of little to no help (well, that part should not surprise anyone, since it's Netgear after all).
I bought my 5-wire-free-camera system from Amazon on 8/13. I took great care to place the basestation as far away as possible from my WiFi router to avoid interference (I ran a 100-ft Ethernet cable), and as close as possible to the cameras. For the first week or so, everything was perfect. Battery life had only degraded to about 94-97%, depending on the location and usage of the camera. Then, suddenly, one camera died. I called customer support and they shipped me new batteries. 2 days later, another camera died, and the day after that, I watched my other 3 cameras go from about 85% to 15% battery life within 4-5 hours. Why? Because the basestation kept losing sync to the cameras. Power and Internet LEDs were green, but the camera LED was completely off.
Over the next 10 days, I placed multiple calls to customer support; eventually, I got to a Level 2 person who was nice enough to listen carefully. He sent me fresh batteries, and, more importantly, a "new" basestation.
The "new" basestation arrived on Wednesday 9/7. First thing out of the wrapping, I could not press the sync button; it was completely immovable. Then I noticed that the USB connectors were only 50% visible from the outside, and that the cover on two sides was bent, as if it had been forced to close, and you could see the board from inside.
Well, I'll be damned: whoever placed the cover on this refurbished basestation didn't care if they placed it correctly!! Classic Netgear!
So I spent an hour to open the cover, realign it correctly with the board, and close it securely. Netgear, you owe me for the time I spent fixing your mistake!
After that, everything worked like a charm - for a while. For 3 days, I monitored the basestation and the cameras. There was NO loss of sync, and the battery drain was only about 2-3% after 3 days. I could live with that, right?
Well, this morning I found ALL the cameras offline again; I don't know when exactly the basestation lost sync during the night. But once I power-cycled it (by removing the power cord), it came back and the cameras have lost another 10% of their battery.
Needless to say, this system is being returned to Amazon, unless someone from Netgear can come up with a magic-trick solution in the next 48 hours (i.e, by 10am Pacific Time on Tuesday 9/13).
Before you start wondering about how far the cameras are from the basestation, here is how I set up this controlled experiment:
1 camera was placed about 5 feet from the basestation;
1 camera was placed about 30 feet from the basestation;
1 camera was placed about 70 feet from the basestation.
Last night, all 3 cameras were showing 95-97% of battery life remaining, after 3.5 days of use.
This morning, all 3 cameras are showing 84-87% of battery life remaining, after only another 8 hours or so of use.
In my opinion, this proves that the battery drain is due to the loss of sync, not distance from basestation or interference or anything else.
BTW, I should tell you that I blame only myself for stupidly allowing myself to buy another Netgear product. I had a horrible experience with their Nighthawk X8 R8500 AC55300 router a few months ago: I bought it in January and, again, it worked like a charm. Then, about 10 days after the Amazon return period had expired, the router bricked itself. I tried everything I could find online, and everything the Netgear "support team" could suggest. Nothing but an amber light.
They wanted to ship me a replacement, but I didn't want to go through the same pain again. Since they would not issue a refund, I ended up going to their headquarters and planting myself in their lobby, requesting to speak to some mucky-muck from Customer Support. I spoke to 4 different people, all of whom seemed desperate to get my defective unit in their hands in order to figure out what had caused the problem. But they would not budge on the refund, so I walked away with my defective unit.
That defective unit has now become one of the strangest doorstops I've ever seen (see photo below). It's a great conversation piece, since it allows me to tell my visitors about my terrible experience with Netgear. And now I'll add my Arlo experience to the story, of course.
-
222946 Views
-
51 Likes
-
-