Single email, multiple cameras and users?

[DevonTT]

My volunteer team has five Arlo Go cameras on the free plan. Each camera is assigned to a different volunteer, who needs to be able to adjust settings for their camera.

When we bought these cameras, my assumption was that we would be able to have a single login for the entire team, and we could all follow each other's cameras (this is how our trailcam plan works). Instead, it seems only one person can be logged in at a time on that email address.

If I'm reading previous threads correctly, I could grant access to each team member's email address. Then they can view what's on the team account. However, they would not be able to manage their own camera.

If we were to upgrade to the $99/year account, would we be able to have multiple people logging in using the same common credentials? Without bumping each other off whenever a new person logs in?

The only other way I could see this working is for each camera to have its own account, and only that person can control that camera's setting. But then we would have to add five cameras to five separate accounts in order for everyone to see each other's camera.

Surely there's a better way to handle groups using Arlo cameras...

[jguerdat]

The subscription plan has no bearing here. Each owner can share with all the others while maintaining control of their own camera. Whether it's useful to also allow the additional access privileges is up to each owner.

[DevonTT]

And this can be done with a single login?

[jguerdat]

Maybe I'm not understanding fully. Does each camera have a unique login or are all set up under one? For the former each user would simply share with the others. With the latter, you'll need to share with each other, granting the additional privileges (Access Rights) in Grant Access for the appropriate person.

If all cameras are set up in one account, anyone using the master account will log out a previous person. Using Grant Access gets around that although it's not quite the same.

[brh]

@DevonTT

Here are some articles about sharing friends on your Arlo account:

https://kb.arlo.com/000039106/How-can-multiple-people-access-the-same-Arlo-account

https://kb.arlo.com/1103229/What-privileges-do-my-friends-have-when-I-grant-them-access-rights-in-my...

Under the Settings > Grant Access if you grant access to one of the members they can accept and login without knocking the other people off, (simplified answer).

Brian

[DevonTT]

Currently, all the cameras are under the same account, which is causing the logout problem. In order to "share," each of the cameras needs to have a separate account, correct?

[brh]

@DevonTT

I believe that is incorrect. I shared my cameras with my wife on her email address and granted her certain priviledges. She can still log in using her email address and her own password and can see everything. But if I remember correctly she did not have to create an account with Arlo as the system is in My account.

Clear as mud?

They should not need to set up any account with Arlo. They just need to accept your invitation and download the app. (I set my system up two years ago so I am not being too specific here). to open the app all they need is their email address and their own password, (most likely their email password).

Hope that helps.

Brian

[DevonTT]

Clear as mud! 🙂

I'm trying to keep things simple for my team, especially since people come and go and I don't want this to become an admin nightmare.  If I created a single email address for everyone to use and shared it with that address, would we still have issues of people being logged off if they sign in with the same address?

[brh]

@DevonTT

I don't believe so, but you can try. If someone leaves, unless you want them to continue to see the cameras you will need to delete them from the shared account. Depending on the number of people involved, once you get the hang of it it should only take a couple of minutes to delete the person leaving and add the new person.

Don't forget I have only shared my Arlo account with my wife and that was two years ago.

Brian

[brh]

@DevonTT

Think of it this way. You own your house and you have guests coming over and staying with you for a few days. Let's say you have one of the Smart door locks. You don't want to give them the master code. What you do is to grant each guest his/her own passcode for the door. When they leave, you delete their passcode and when new guests arrive you set them up with their passwords. 

Brian

[brh]

@DevonTT

Let me know how it works out. I have been thinking, if you make one email account you will be granting access to everyone that logs onto that address. You won't be able to assign different cameras to each person. Also I am not sure if more than one person can log onto that email address without knocking someone else off. Try it and see.

Brian

[steve_t]

Each camera should be on its own account and each account can grant access to the other 4 user accounts. Each user can then log into one account and always see all of the cameras without being logged out

[DevonTT]

Is there a limit to how many friends can be added to a camera?

[brh]

@steve_t

Hi Steve, how do you accomplish this? I really don't know how as the base unit can only be registered to one account. Or are we talking something different here?

Brian

[DevonTT]

I'm sorry, but when I created this post, the Arlo Go was not in the dropdown as an option and I had to choose a different camera. We have Arlo Go's. I thought the app would work the same for all the models...?

[brh]

@DevonTT

Actually you did mention it in the first post and I missed that. I was looking at the bottom where the camera type was listed. The Arlo Go does not need a base station. Each camera will have its own SIM card, (which is really a cellular phone number). They are controlled with the app though. I don't own one of these, so at this point I am going to back out and let someone more familiar with this camera answer before I say something stupid.

Brian

[steve_t]

---

wrote:

@steve_t

Hi Steve, how do you accomplish this? I really don't know how as the base unit can only be registered to one account. Or are we talking something different here?

Brian

---

Yep. As clarified, this is about the Arlo Go camera

[jguerdat]

Ok, you own all the cameras using one account, right?  Not a problem - you can still share them with everyone else using their own personal email addresses. If one person per camera is more or less the admin for that camera, use the Access Rights selection to give them enhanced privileges relative to the other folks. You, as the actual owner, have full rights. Those without  the Access Rights are much more limited as to what can be done while the individuals you designate to have those rights can do about 90% of what you can do.  Check this out:

https://kb.arlo.com/1103229/What-privileges-do-my-friends-have-when-I-grant-them-access-rights-in-my...

Is the mud clearing up?

[DevonTT]

This is definitely the way to go. Do we know if there's a limit to the number of friends that can share a camera? I'm thinking the five camera "owners" in our team will get full access, but we can give viewing privileges to everyone else. That could be up to 40 people.

[jguerdat]

There's no known limitation for sharing. If there is, no one's hit it yet.

[DevonTT]

Thank you! Problem solved.

[DevonTT]

OK, bad news. There IS a limit to how many friends you can share with, and that's 10. This is not going to work as a solution for us after all.

We are willing to subscribe to a paid account if this will give us more sharing capacity. Does anyone know if there are limits there too?

[jguerdat]

@JamesC? AFAIK, using a paid subscription won't change that value.

[DevonTT]

So this means if we have 15 cameras on a paid account, we won't be able to assign access rights to all 15 people who are actually operating the cameras.

I know Netgear wasn't thinking of our use case scenario, but it sure is limiting when these cameras are used by organizations. 

[jguerdat]

Depending on the exact needs, having each camera owned by a different email address may be needed or possibly putting only a few on one account with a few accounts to assign all cameras. I don't know that this would fit your situation but maybe?