topic Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night in Arlo Pro

Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

timber1111 — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 02:23:56 GMT

Anyone else have issue with the add-on skins/covers causing a haze at night when viewing cam under infra-red?

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

manofice — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 11:19:56 GMT

Post a picture for us to see what you're talking about.

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

TomMac — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 12:38:45 GMT

What I think your saying is the IR illuminators are reflecting off the extra skin section (??) causing light into lens.

Flat black rubbed on skin in that area , like burned cork

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

BigDennis57 — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 16:21:20 GMT

YES!! I didn't immediately put together two and two, but this has been an issue for me. My wife and I have been scratching our heads about why our cameras were pefectly clear and then started looking hazy or foggy. The only thing that changed was we installed skins on all of the cameras. I removed two of the hooded skins this past weekend and I now have the best video and still ever! The skins look great, but we prefer quallity video more! I may experiment more in the future, but for now I am a believer the skins do cause an issue. Thanks timber1111

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

BigDennis57 — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 16:27:02 GMT

TomMac,

That is my belief as well! I've not seen the same complaints from folks using the original Arlo cameras with skins. Those did not have the "visor" section and were behind the lens. We originally thought it was actually foggy nights or a reaction between the IR illuminators and water vapor. It is amazing how much better the video quality is without the skins! The wife may force me to "modify" a couple of skins, but she is definitely happier with the much improved video now. Thanks TomMac!

Dennis

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

jguerdat — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 17:11:34 GMT

Is it possible that the skin simply isn't installed properly, as in it's rotated so the top is too far forward? Maybe forcing the skin to rotate to raise the hood may help.

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

BigDennis57 — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 17:36:33 GMT

jguerdat,

The installation was correct for each of the outside cameras. Daylight video has always been very nice, but we first noticed the "foggy" appearance on a camera we have facing our grandson's playground. We tried everything and really thought it was a high humidity issue, as we live in Florida. HOWEVER, once the skin was completely removed, the video improved 200%. We had a similar issue on the other side of the house, so we removed that one as well and it cured the issue immediately as well. Several folks believe the IR is reflecting back from the "visor" section of the skins and causing the glare or foggy appearance. IF this is the case, a black skin might be the only option. We installed the blue ones to match the exterior of our home. More experimentation may be required! LOL

Dennis

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

timber1111 — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 18:49:28 GMT

Definately traced my issue to the "visor" portion of the skins....and doesn't seem to matter what color they are (mine are black). I finally had to settle with cutting the "visor" portion off of my skins in order to get them to not be hazy.

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

BigDennis57 — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 19:22:02 GMT

timber1111,

It sounds like you have done your share of experimentation and located the root cause of this issue! I know what the wife and I saw and it clearly pointed to the visor section of these new skins. We have seen the issue between blue and brown skins, but we had not tried black. Based on your post, it sounds like we either run skinless OR cut back the visors to use the skins for color blending. Thank you for your reply timber1111!

Dennis

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

BigDennis57 — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 19:24:26 GMT

timber1111,

I mentioned the haze issue on another forum and a few of the guys thought maybe I just didn't have the skins installed properly. I have definitely not found this to be the case and communicated that to that group as well. It did not matter how you installed the skins, the haze and fogginess existed. Once you removed the skins, quality video and still returned! Thanks once again for the information on the black skins!

Dennis

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

timber1111 — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 19:51:58 GMT

Really is no way of installing the skins "wrong".....they are form fit to the camera and will be really obvious if the skin is not installed to the camera correctly. People saying this clearly do not have the skins or they could see this. The skins even have holes on the bottom for the microphone and a cut-out at the rear to be able to replace the battery without removing the skin once installed, no way of installing these "incorrectly".

Thanks for your help BigDennis

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

BigDennis57 — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 21:14:59 GMT

timber1111,

I am fairly certain I will remove the remaining skins this weekend. IF the wife pitches a fit, I will attempt removing the visor sections and reinstall them, but suspect she prefers the quality video instead. One of these cameras is mounted to the facia, so I may need to move it to the soffit, but that's fine too! Take care and thanks again!

Dennis

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

BigDennis57 — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 17:22:04 GMT

timber,

I finally removed the skins from ALL of my Arlo Pro cameras! Since doing so, I have not experienced one bit of haziness, other than rain water getting on one lens. Interestingly enough, we had a "spider issue" with all of our outdoor Arlo Pros, but once the skins were removed they have not returned! I have no clue what that is about, but is refreshing not to see spider webs blocking the IR vsion at night! Thanks for your input on this one timber, it helped tremendously!

Dennis

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

nlokeva — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 11:25:51 GMT

Ugh. Didn't see this thread before I bought the skins. Going to try to trim off a portion and leave the upper lip as a rain shield. Hope it works.

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

timber1111 — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 15:32:47 GMT

Actually it is this "upper lip" that causes the hazing at night. Simply trim off the upper lip if you are having hazing problems with the IR bouncing off of it. Rain water on the lens won't hurt the camera, but makes it difficult to see anything if rain gets directly on the lens. Even with the downpours of Kansas, I haven't had much of an issue with rain drops obscuring the view.

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

nlokeva — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 19:57:36 GMT

I set up two cameras side by side and used different color skins for some tests. To summarize, the black color skin caused the least amount of IR hazing compared to brown skin. Of course no skin has no hazing issues. The skins I have are not OEM netgear. They are from Wasserstein. I also experimented with pulling the skin further back on the camera body (a.k.a. skin pulled back) to reduce the haze. Interestingly, the brown skin hood is actually shorter than the black skin hood. Even then, it looks like color has a greater effect on hazing versus hood size.

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

DaveWoj — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 15:38:08 GMT

I just came upon this thread.

I posted about this issue back in January and people didn't seem to believe there was an issue.

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Arlo-Pro/Arlo-Pro-Skins-Set-of-3-Black-Skins-VMA4200B/m-p/1246344#M9211

I'm a pro photographer so I do know something about lens hoods and reflection and that is exactly what was happening when the IR came on.

It would reflect off the hood.

https://www.facebook.com/Wojphoto/

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

Chillmiester — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 03:48:03 GMT

Anybody know how much of the upper lip of the skin to remove to eliminate the haze?

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

timber1111 — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 05:11:35 GMT

Trimmed mine flush with the camera and works fine, might get away with less but that's what I did.

Re: Arlo Pro skins causing haze at night

Chillmiester — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 16:55:53 GMT

Thanks for the tip. Trimming my silicone skin flush is not an option for me. Defeats the purpose of keeping the rain off my lens.