Aarlo not picking up changes in Arlo Portal

[nickolas1969]

Having just moved houses and re-installed all my 7 cameras, I had to change the names to match the new locations. The account I use for HA sees these updates, and all 7 cameras. But the Integration does not. How do I get it to refresh that information so that I have all 7 camera's reading the correct names and entities (like battery left)?

[twrecked]

I honestly thought they would just appear. Can you double check the HA account on the Arlo web site? Make sure the names on the main screen match the ones in the config.

If that looks good we need to turn on some debug. In configuration.yaml add the following:

aarlo:
  verbose_debug: True

logger:
  default: info
  logs:
    custom_components.aarlo.camera: debug
    pyaarlo: debug

[pro-forma]

I am having similar issues.

I had left HA alone for quite awhile, and then recently returned and applied a bunch of HA system updates. I also updated Aarlo. The cameras that had been in good working order (and whose names had not changed) were all still working fine in Home Assistant, but a couple cameras that I had renamed (in Arlo's web portal / app) , were not having their entities appear in HA. (The newly named cameras appear just fine in the official Arlo web portal and app, and I can play video on those.)

The old entity names for those cameras were still listed in HA's Entity list, so I deleted them in hopes that the old entries were somehow blocking the newly named cameras from appearing correctly... but no joy after several restarts.

One other thing that changed between now and when everything worked: I was finally forced to enable Arlo's 2FA. I got Aarlo's 2FA support working just fine in HA, after creating a Google App Password to make the email 2FA work, I can now get video feeds of the un-renamed cameras in HA, using 2FA, no problem.

Aarlo logs into Arlo's servers with a Friend account that's been given complete access rights. (All devices are ticked, and Allow Access Rights is ticked, in Arlo's web interface.) I wonder if it's some weird interaction that resulted from enabling 2FA, in conjunction with the fact that I'm using a guest account in the aarlo configuration.

Assuming there is not an easy fix, what's the cleanest way to uninstall and then reinstall Aarlo? I'm guessing this should give me the best chance of seeing the renamed cameras.

[pro-forma]

Never mind! I am dumb.

Turns out that shared cameras that are renamed will fail to propagate to any Friend (guest) accounts that have access to the master account.

I had been using my master account whenever I checked the official Arlo website/apps. I had assumed, because my Settings showed all my devices as shared with the Friend account (all named with their most-current names, and properly check-marked), that those changes were being reflected in the Friend account. Nope! The Settings panel in the master account was lying to me. ;)

I had to remove the Friend account, and then resend a friend request, and give the Friend account fresh access to all the devices. Now, everything showed up fine in the guest account, both in Arlo's official apps, and in aarlo/Home Assistant.

So! Moral of the story is, I failed to suspect Arlo first. I should have. Their implementation of 2FA is a mess, especially given that it's not possible to set a PC as a trusted device... even after a billion requests for this in their official forum, stretching across well over a year. (Come on... really, Arlo?)

Twrecked, I'd like to add that you're doing an amazing job with this. You've allowed me to keep using these Arlo devices in a meaningful way, even as Arlo is actively crippling their usefulness on PC. Without aarlo in HA, I'd be stuck manually authenticating every single time I wanted to open a tab and glance at a camera. It may not sound like much, but it's enough friction that casual glances would become too much nuisance to bother with. So, thanks again!

[twrecked]

Not dumb; it's just an Arlo thing :)

I'd forgotten about this one, I think you can rename the cameras in the second account rather than have to re-share them, but it's been a while since I did that.

But the rest of the stuff is spot on, for a while (and it might still be the case) videos wouldn't play on a Mac in their web portal. I guess they really want us to use the app.

[nickolas1969]

I am back up and felling silly that there are static names in my yaml config and I need to match them when I change names 🤦‍♂️

So far, Arlo has not forced 2FA on my account. I’ll hold out as long as I can..

Nick Ellson - from iPhone (forgive typos) CCIE #20018; VCIX-NV, CNSE Network Hobbyist "Educating Layer 8, one user at a time."

On Apr 15, 2021, at 7:18 PM, Steve Herrell @.***> wrote:

 Not dumb; it's just an Arlo thing :)

I'd forgotten about this one, I think you can rename the cameras in the second account rather than have to re-share them, but it's been a while since I did that.

But the rest of the stuff is spot on, for a while (and it might still be the case) videos wouldn't play on a Mac in their web portal. I guess they really want us to use the app.

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