Solid Arlo Update ~ After The Shock Of EOL 25Jan23

Today I jumped the barrier from free Arlo multi-account subscriber to paid single-account subscriber. This was prompted when I was sent an EOL notice from Arlo suggesting significant deprecation and loss of functions in my camera-based security systems lest I buy subscription services of $10/mo/location... WTF? I am pissed because my initial analysis as to pricing (sure ~ 7 years ago) was based on free video storage in the cloud and real time motion detection notifications on my iPhone. BTW, it has worked very well in two locations (via 2 "free" accounts with <5 motion-detecting cams each) I've monitored for many years. Cam & hub hardware with free back end service was pretty unheard of and therefore a decent value on prior analyses... but that's over as back end does cost, and especially if not rightly amortized in the hardware costs; what's a product manager to do? Well, they implement an improved UI/service and tell me to jump off the boat or begin paying monthly ~ I would've done the same. I analyzed ~6 alternatives; I need multi-location security and my Arlo cams are sunk cost. The product manager knew this too and priced decently but not cheaply. My only other cheap alternative was to add drives to the Arlo hubs for local storage of the videos - which I've trialed in the past. The issue is that playback is by detaching the USB drive from Arlo and attaching it to a PC for playback - mostly a useless scheme. So...

The actual re-implementation took a call to tech support. I tried many permutations of "add location" but found nothing. I perused all the Arlo communities and FAQs, some written just this month, but nothing led me to the procedure recommended by Arlo's tech support on their chat. I quickly exhausted the chat-bot and was turned over to a human. To access a bunch of new capabilities and a new UI one needs to "upgrade" from the backend/account I was using to a new "security system" back end... getting to that point was not at all obvious. I had to login normally but then "add" the security system. Whatever, soon enough the system at the Nest was updated to the new "security system" and I had a new UI on the browser and the app. Fortunately no manual intervention was needed as I was in COS and therefore remote from the Nest. I was then able to "remove" all the COS-based cameras and their hub and associate them with a new location, Blodgett, under the upgraded account. I now have two locations all monitored comprehensively with a motion, people & package detection AI, cloud storage of recordings, and solid notifications on my phone.

It's $20/month more than $0 now though.