I have only owned Arlos for background, so I am interested on your feedback, what are good alternatives in your opinion? I have read that Arlo are some of the best due to their recording features such as motion detection to recording latency as well as "cooldown" between recordings. For example, I read that Eufy has cooldown periods between 4 to 34 seconds between recordings and Blink cameras having a cooldown of 11 seconds between recordings. Does that metric actually matter in your experience? Or if not, what do you look for in a wireless outdoor camera?
I don't run any outdoor cameras. I find it sufficient to have a few strategically placed on the inside of some windows looking out. Of course this does not do any favours for aesthetics but I'm ok with that. As I said before a mix of cheap wyze and pi cameras.
As far as the arlos are concerned I only have the first gen ones . The positive for these cams is that they are mostly intergenerationally compatible so far and their free plan is all I need, I bought a pro on special a while ago and it connected without issues to the first gen base station.
If I were to do any outside cameras I'd definitely make sure they have solar power options, onvif/rtsp streaming so I can record locally. That opens up a whole range of camera options (eg reolink) as everything can be held locally and you can block them from sending your footage to some server in who knows where.
I have the first gen arlos. I found the latency to be horrid. On motion detection of a mail/ups delivery for instance, I would get a video of the truck leaving and a package on my porch. So, yes, latency matters. The porch is about 20 feet from the driveway. So, in the time between the motion being triggered, the delivery guy was abe to walk half the distance between the driveway and porch, drop the box off, turn around, get in his vehicle, and start driving before the recording actually started.
I moved on to Nest with Nest aware and power them on a battery UPS. So, although not local, I have the ability to scroll back in time 3 days and not miss a thing. (Motion events are held for 10 days I believe) With my modem, router, hub, and PC's on UPS's, I do not have any issues. I have not actually lost internet for more than an hour in the past two years. And even that has only happened twice that I can recall.
While I would prefer local storage, I prefer the 24/7 recording even more.
Personally I found my Amcrest setup to be solid. Used to have Arlo, couldn't stand the latency and I had issues with the solar panels on the outdoor cameras. Plus I absolutely despise paying for cloud recoding. I've got a few wireless amcrest cams, but mostly POE and enjoy solid performance and 24/7 recording.
I found this Home Assistant integration with arlo that is currently beta testing their 2FA compatibility using IMAP servers and reading your email temporarily, at least I hope temporarily. I wonder if the dev for the node red arlo nodes could implement a similar system.
