Arlo wireless security cameras? Battery operated, night vision, motion detection, iph

[Color_of_Light]

Is the Arlo system the best for our needs? We need wireless, battery or solar operated, night vision, motion detection, iphone notification, and recordability. Can anyone help me to figure out if my ideas for hooking up a security camera system will work?

At least two cameras will mounted on the exterior wall of the 70 foot wide indoor arena. A third camera will be located 150-200 feet away from the outside of the arena, off the short end.
The arena has metal siding.
The wall between the tack room and the indoor arena is wood on the arena side, inside wall is 1 1/2" thick tongue and groove 6’ high, then sheet rock to the ceiling.
A DSL router is currently located all the way across the other side of the arena, 70+ feet from the outer exterior wall where cameras will be placed. It’s in the stall barn attached to the arena, and is currently in a tack room directly off of the arena.

Arlo has a base that needs to be plugged into your DSL router with an ethernet cable. Cameras can operate a max of 300’ from the base. I can get a 200’ long ethernet cable. I can place the base of the Arlo inside the arena end closest to where a camera will be located 150-200 feet away outside the end of the arena.

Is Arlo a good choice? In general, will this work or is there a better way to hook up the cameras?

[airhorse]

My experience has been nothing makes it through metal siding.

[PNWjumper]

I have the Arlo system and I love it! I have a booster in my house which is about 200 feet from my barn. I have several cameras outside that work great. I have one inside of my metal-sided barn. The connection can be tough at times, but usually that just means I have to hit the refresh button a few times if I want live feed.

[maunder]

I also have Arlo cameras. I don’t have experience with them being inside a metal building, but I have them at the house and a camera about halfway down my driveway that detects motion at the paddock gate. Depending on the sensitivity you have them set to detect the batteries can deplete somewhat quickly. Some trial and error as to that helps. Because mine is outside I do have some issues with wind and a pesky spider that liked to build a web on the camera every night.

[Dan]

I have the Arlo Pro and I love it. Works great for recording video in the barn.

I have not checked out yet whether it works in my arena.

The batteries last about a week for me. That is with continuos day/night monitoring of broodmare. Thinking about redoing my barn wiring so I can just plug it in outside.

Dan

[Color_of_Light]

Thank you. I’m glad I asked. This sounds like another one of those fun fun fun projects. On the back side of the arena, we’d have those cameras set up on motion detection only.

I have a few other ideas:
What are the dimensions of the base unit? In getting creative on dealing with the metal siding, I’m wondering if we could cut a hole in the sheet metal at the top of the arena wall so that part of the base unit would be sticking out under the eaves on the outside of the building? Cameras outside the arena would communicate with the base, as well as those on the inside? I seem to recall that there is some bird blocking mesh or some flashing at the top of the wall where the rafters extend to the other side that we also might be able to remove and have the base unit peep out to the other side right there. Now, getting the base unit all the way across the other side of the arena would be fun. This would require an ethernet cable longer than 200 feet. The tack room wall is placed at about the 35-40 foot point down the 200 foot wall, so 70 foot of cable to the corner. Then we’d need to travel across the 70 foot width and up the 16 foot wall to the top of the eaves. Oh. That’s only 156 feet in cable. That would work.

Do the cameras have the option of being hooked up to the base with a cable? That might be another way to get around the metal siding issue.

Is the base weatherproof and capable of being placed outside? (plastic bag or something covering the back where wires connect?)

I could almost use two base units. One for that side of the indoor, and one for the rest of the barn and the other side of the arena where the paddocks are. Because of the layout, I’d like to place cameras on all four sides of the arena. Horses are only on three sides. I can sacrifice one side if necessary because cameras in the barn could record horses going out into their paddocks on the side.

[maunder]

My base unit is about 6" high by 8" long.

The cameras I have are wireless only. The base is not waterproof. It’s like a little computer monitor.

[Color_of_Light]

Thank you, Maunder. Another thought: have cameras on the inside of the arena, but peeping through holes in the siding. I’ll have to look at that bird blocking area where rafters protrude. Looking more and more like we’ll need two base units unless by some miracle all the other cameras can still communicate with the base inside the arena. I can’t think of any other way to configure it. Maybe coffee will help?

[maunder]

I didn’t have to contact Arlo to set up my simple system, but they might be of help with this. They just came out with new cameras that have sound and other features, too.

[Dan]

In our arena, we set up a cabinet in the arena that holds a DVD player and speakers. If you had a similar setup, you could put the base station in the cabinet. You would only have to worry about routing the wire between the base station and the router.

FYI, each Arlo account supports up to 5 cameras.

Dan

[Color_of_Light]

Thank you! You all are so helpful! I was at Costco earlier, looked at the standard Arlo 2 camera package $269. Opened the box, inspected components. Arlo Pro on Amazon, 5 camera package sounds good.

I’ll give Arlo a call. Great idea, thanks!

I have a stereo system but it’s in the corner next to the mirrors, opposite from the side I need the Arlo base. From the stereo it’s 25ish feet of wall, then 14 foot aisle, then tack room wall. Router is in there, so Ethernet cable to the Arlo base. At least all the way down the wall and possibly down the other short side. That’s the wall that needs cameras on the exterior, then a camera 150-200 feet from that exterior wall will be another camera.

Hoping calling Arlo will come up solution. Still thinking might need two bases, due to metal siding and the need for cameras outside the other long side wall and inside the barn.

[Color_of_Light]

AHHHHHH! Not even Arlo customer service seems to know anything. I got rerouted from area code 408 to who knows where. I was very patient, repeated “cameras mounted on metal siding (spelled out m-e-t-a-l, so she knew what I was talking about), is not communicating properly with base”, at least 7 times throughout the call.

I asked to speak with someone else, a technical specialist. I said it would be easier on her and I could quickly get my questions answered. Nope, everyone is busy. I asked to speak with a supervisor. Nope, all supervisors are busy helping other customers. Amidst my call, she put me on hold more than 6-12 times (I lost track), so she could speak with someone else to find out the answer. She kept repeating specs like, maximum of 300 feet cameras to base, and the motion detection range. Thanks, but I already now that.

She finally figured out that I was talking about “meetal siding”. Then she told me I needed Arlo Q or Arlo Q10, not Arlo Pro. ??? I thought Arlo Pro is there top model? BTW, Arlo Q and Arlo Q10 (I cannot find info on Q10) are still wireless, but not battery powered. They are AC. I asked WHY Arlo Q over Arlo Pro. I never did get the answer. I cannot imagine the AC power makes the cameral communicate any better wirelessly to the base, right?

And…she said I need a wi-fi extender, place close to the camera. ??? Er, I said the base unit is what communicates with the camera, not the wi-fi extender. She kept putting me on hold to get the answer. Towards the end, I was beginning to lose my patience. I again asked if I could just speak directly to a technical specialist. No. The is a technical specialist.

Questions for people with Arlo’s: Which model do you have? What kind of siding do you have (if cameras are on outside)? Do you have a Wi-Fi extender? I did not even bother getting into asking about having two base units, one for back and second for other side of arena, where stalls, paddocks, main entry is.

[maunder]

Try going on the Arlo community and searching there. I think the link to that is on the main Arlo site? I can’t recall now. What I do recall is that some very good answers to questions from consumers using the product were there.

[Dan]

I decided to take my Arlo Pro wireless camera and see if it would pick up as I walked around my Indoor Riding arena. The signal got thru to ~ 100 foot back from the near side of the Arena. This is over 200 foot from my house where the base station is located!

The sides of my Arena are metal. The big front door of the Arena was left open which is the way I usually leave it.

FYI, the night vision mixed with the yellow sodium lighting comes out as a very greenish color. Just so you know.

Dan

[Color_of_Light]

[QUOTE=maunder;9028292]
Try going on the Arlo community and searching there. I think the link to that is on the main Arlo site? I can’t recall now. What I do recall is that some very good answers to questions from consumers using the product were there. :)[/QUOTE]

Thank you! I’ll look into that. Great idea.

[Color_of_Light]

[QUOTE=Dan;9028984]
I decided to take my Arlo Pro wireless camera and see if it would pick up as I walked around my Indoor Riding arena. The signal got thru to ~ 100 foot back from the near side of the Arena. This is over 200 foot from my house where the base station is located!

The sides of my Arena are metal. The big front door of the Arena was left open which is the way I usually leave it.

FYI, the night vision mixed with the yellow sodium lighting comes out as a very greenish color. Just so you know.

Dan[/QUOTE]

Uh huh. I thought what that CS person said made no sense. Dan, thanks for doing that! I’m trying to picture your layout. There was sheet metal siding directly between the base and the camera? We had a yellow sodium light. Took it down years back. I didn’t like the yellow. We’ve got lights in the back that only come on by switch. Some sort of yard light type light that casts a wide net of light on the ends of the building. Can’t recall the type of bulb we last installed. Something different than the standard bulb. The light is whitish.

[Dan]

Yes, the sheet metal siding was directly between the base and the tower. The signal must have been able to get thru the open door.

Dan

[Dan]

Added a link to a photo.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=867713136705209&set=a.270198166456712.1073741826.100003995928258&type=3&theater

Dan

[Dan]

Just in case anyone is looking for a barn camera setup, I wanted to give an update.

I totally redid everything. Instead of the wireless powered camera’s, I switched to the Arlo Q wired power (but still wireless video). The advantage of using Arlo is they store the data free for up to 5 cameras for 1 week.
https://www.arlo.com/en-us/products/arlo-q/default.aspx

The signal to my barn was not really powerful enough for the amount of data coming from the cameras so I had a 200 foot ethernet cable put in. The cable is shielded with aluminum on the outside. It also has weatherproof fittings at both ends. It only cost $100 to pay someone to route the cable from my house to the barn and that included drilling under a 6 foot section of pavers.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0…?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I connected the Ethernet cable to a Ubiquiti indoor/outdoor access point (Ubiquiti Networks UAP-AC-M-US UniFi AC Mesh Wide-Area Indoor/Outdoor Dual-Band Access Point). This unit has a quoted range of 600 foot - I did this in case I want to install additional cameras on the property in the future. Once setup, I was getting the same data rate in the barn as my house (20Mbps). Warning, there was a learning process with this setup. You will want someone tech savvy for this.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ…PV_D_BwE&smp=y

Hope this helps someone. I was totally clueless before I started this. I didn’t even know what an Access Point was.

Regards,
Dan

[MsM]

Doesnt give you much hope for customer service when the post allegedly from the company is garbled!

Edited to say this doesn’t make sense because a garbled spam message was removed!