Doorbell Stopped Working with App

[jbhardman2]

I've had the Essential Video Doorbell Wired for exactly 3 years last month. Never had a single problem with it. Even bragged to others about how good it was.

Yesterday, I noticed my app on iOS said the doorbell was offline. I flipped the breaker, let it sit 30 mins, then back on. Never came back online. 

I went through the reset process 7 times by now. Pushing the reset button, adding it in my app. I get the QR code. Scan it in front of the camera. Get the chime, and then wait for the app to find it. Never ever finds it. I logged out of and deleted the app from my phone. Re-installed and tried again. No luck.

The frustrating thing is that I can see the camera on my network!!! I can ping it's IP address and get a response.

So I know the camera is on my network and has internet access. Why can the app not find it?

[jbhardman2]

Ok, so I got it working. I have no idea what happened and why it started doing this. I'm hoping there's somebody with advanced network skills who can take a look... 🙂

I run a pretty decent network setup. VyOS linux based router. Multiple access points. The issue at hand had to do with the fact that I am running two internal DNS servers (pihole) that are setup to be the name-server's given out via DHCP on
the IOT Lan where these devices live. I have like 5 Arlo devices and never had a problem like this.

I got my laptop all setup with multiple instances of tcpdump running on screen and tailing the firewall log. I was determined to find out what was happening.

When I scanned the QR code from the app, the device kicked into action. I saw it ask the router for the hardware address of the two DNS servers, and it just hung there. Never ever got a response.

ARP, Ethernet (len 6), IPv4 (len 4), Request who-has 10.99.0.2 tell 10.0.2.232, length 28
ARP, Ethernet (len 6), IPv4 (len 4), Request who-has 10.0.3.9 tell 10.0.2.232, length 28

Over and over, with never an answer. I have no idea why no answer. I can actively use every other device on that LAN. Including my Phone which I connected to this LAN for this setup exercise.

I then edited my firewall config and set the name-server's on the dhcp config to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and saved changes.

I reset the doorbell again, and started over. This time, as soon as I scanned the QR code, the log messages on tcpdump (that was filtered to the doorbell's mac), started scrolling so fast I couldn't keep track of what they were. Within seco
nds my phone app had found the new doorbell and I was back in business.

Thing is, my internal DNS server's work for everything else. Multiple types of smart devices and all of my servers and laptops and iphones and ipads. What is going on?

Now that I'm attached, can I revert to my internal DNS server's? Why did this doorbell drop off in the first place?

All perplexing to me.

PS: When I contacted Arlo, they told me my device was broken and I should just buy a new one. Basically their tech support team is a sales team.

[jguerdat]

"Unusual" networks can be a problem since Arlo is aimed at typical home networks. However, the original probelm may have been caused by turning power off for ~30 minutes which isn't necessary. There's a small internal battery in the doorbell that's used for surge power usage and it will discharge when power is removed. The doorbell won't work until a sufficient charge is supplied so I suspect that's what happened to you. In the future, only a brief power off is needed.