Solved - Cameras offline and battery drain

[Dougie360]

Have four cameras connected.  Started noticing cameras would go offline almost everyday.  I could never be sure system was okay.  Also, batteries would drain in about 2 weeks.   After several battery replacements, and restarts, and others, I think I solved my situation.    I am using ATT U-verse for Internet which comes into their modem/router.  I would then connect a CAT5 to my preferred router an Airport Extreme and then connect that to the Arlo Base Station.  I had also tried just plugging the Arlo Base station directly into the ATT Modem/Router.  Neither setup worked.

This so far has worked:  on The ATT Modem/Router - went in and disabled all the firewall switches, and also turned off wifi, so it is just a modem.  Connect that directly to my Airport Extreme router.  So far so good.   Even though I was changing channels, having two routers emitting a wifi signal must have caused some kind of conflict.   Oh, and my batteries also seem to be holding up now.

[jguerdat]

Great info! Any idea what channels were in use for each device (including the base)? Maybe that was part of the problem.

[asrodgers]

If I were only techie enough to understand the channel stuff. All above my head. Unfortunately I am having the same problems. Off line and battery drain. Just can't fix.

[jguerdat]

There are tons of WiFi signal apps in the various app stores. You can install one and just look to see what shows up. You don't need to necessarily understand it since you could post a screenshot here for us to comment on but all you're looking for is device names, channels and maybe signal strength.

As for your problems, tell us more about your setup/layout. Where is your router and base? How far to the cameras? Do you have other wireless devices near either the base or cameras, things like cordless phones and microwave ovens? How close are your neighbors and do they have WiFi? Any details you can provide would help.

[Dougie360]

I tried channels 1 and 6 on the ATT router before just shutting the wifi down.  Didn't try changing channels on the Airport Extreme - I was using a direct wire to Arlo there as well

[Dougie360]

I had solved my offline problem by configuring my ATT Uverse modem to act as a pass-through by turning it's WIFI off so my Apple Extreme Airport could be my primary router.   All 4 cameras worked great - my batteries lasted for over 3 months.    

Now I went and changed the batteries in my 4 cameras - and didn't change anything else.  Cameras online - but then - bam - check my phone and wonder why I haven't gotten a recording alert in a while.  All cameras are offline.  Do a base station restart - cameras back online, but then whithin 24 hours (usually less) - all cameras offline again!

power cycled modem, router and base station.   no change.

What could cause this?  It worked fine before, and all I did was change batteries.  (I put in the Panasonic batteries that support sent me).  Before, I had used Tenergy cr123a.   That is the only change.    

Ideas?

[Ubu]

I am having same problem and cannot get the system to work again. Ugggg

[JamesC]

Dougie360, Ubu
 
Are you seeing this behavior when trying to view across multiple devices (web client and mobile app)?
 
What is the behavior of your base station LEDs when you see the cameras offline?
 
JamesC

[Dougie360]

the third led (green) would be off.  

I just fixed it, but still not sure why it started happening since it was working for 3 months.  

Previous setup:

1. ISP is ATT Gigapower line coming into house, then into ATT Modem/router

2. Disabled 2.4ghz Wifi on router

3. Cat5 into home network

4. Cat5 into Apple Airport Extreme router to create home wifi to which Arlo cameras connected to

5. Arlo Base station connected to ATT Modem/router via Cat5

This set up worked for 3 months, then I changed batteries and it the cameras would randomly all go offline within 10- 20 hours.

New setup:

Same as above, except instead of connecting Arlo Base Station into ATT Model/router, I connected the Cat5 to my Apple Airport Extreme directly.  This seems stable now, but have no idea why it was necessary to do this.