Netgear Arlo

[admin]

Just a bit of discussion more than a question..

I recently read a discussion on another forum about the newish Netgear Arlo Wireless security camera systems.

Basically, you buy the base station with either 1,2 or 3 cameras. The base station plugs in to your router. Cameras are battery powered and battery life is about 6 months. Cameras record only on motion sensor and all recordings are sent to a cloud account. Footage can be live viewed via smart phone app as can recordings.

Basic cloud storage which is free gives you about 7 days of recordings on the cloud. If you want more, its a paid subscription service.

Cloud storage is really starting to take off in other areas, for example, with photos. I can take a photo now and its been auto uploaded to my cloud account immediately.

Do you think cloud based security system such as the Arlo will perhaps start becoming more common in regards to security camera systems ? Footage quality is fairly good.

[MCman]

There good and bad with this, but my thoughts are - if you go this way, you become dependant of someone else, who can (start to) charge you for that dependency at anytime.
Youre relying on batteries and unlike wireless PIRs which give you about two years, people won't always change them, again ongoing costs and an australian attitude of it doesnt matter until after an event..
Motion record is always an issue, its great to highlight an event, but never rely on it alone.
Ease at which you should be able to jam the wifi signal.
Probably my biggest issue is the styles of camera. They're far from anything vandal resistant.
The only positive I see is the ease to which connect especially for DIY.

[Adro]

For your standard home, they are a very good low cost system. I'm not a fan of Cloud Based Security Products due to Australia's terribly unreliable internet. In terms of picture quality for the price, it is great. If they bring out a model in the future that can record to your home pc I can see it being a great product. One thing to note tho, I have had a friend using this system for the past 4 months, he had one external camera that was exposed to rain which they (Netgear) encourage. It died recently a couple of weeks back, So even tho they say the cameras are water resistant over exposure clearly is an issue.

[admin]

Thanks for the replies.

Probably 2 years ago, I was not a cloud fan in any way or form. Today I use it daily.

It has made a huge difference in regards to storage of photos for me. I no longer fork out money for a stand alone camera and put the money towards the best camera smart phone. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 at the moment and it really puts out SLR quality photos. As soon as I take a photo, it is auto uploaded to my cloud account. The problems of the past of continually losing photos is now gone. I think more people will warm to cloud storage once they see the benefits that it can provide. In contrast to MCman's comments about Australian's lazy attitudes, I expect it to actually benefit them as cloud storage removes the need for them to actually do anything

I agree with Adro in regards to our internet, but realistically I think the NBN will be sufficient. Having said that, I think you should have a choice as to wear your recordings go and thats something the Arlo doesnt provide and as per comments above, if they do end up allowing you a choice, then it will become a very popular DIY choice.

[Adro]

I agree with Adro in regards to our internet, but realistically I think the NBN will be sufficient. Having said that, I think you should have a choice as to wear your recordings go and thats something the Arlo doesnt provide and as per comments above, if they do end up allowing you a choice, then it will become a very popular DIY choice.

I must admit, I am running a 100/100 symetrical NBN FTTH connection and it is reliable as hell, I've had one outage in 2 years and I was pre-warned 6 months advance and the outage lasted 3 hours. Having NBN and an external arlo camera is a red flag. The NBN utility box warns offenders in advance to open the box on the side of my house and cut a cable and they can do whatever they like. NBN is great, but any Security system using NBN is very easily bypassed.