topic Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h in Arlo Pro 2

Arlo Pro 2 With Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): Batteries Drained In <24h

NeuFred — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 22:05:45 GMT

I'm using 2 Arlo Pro 2 with the Netgear Mobile Router MR1000 (also called Netgear Nighthawk M1) which has an internal Arlo Base Station. The recent installation and sync worked fine and I can watch the monitored scenes. My big problem ist concerning the batteries which are draining within <24h. I rebooted the router and recharged the Arlo 2-3 times during a whole night and can not notice any increase in the autonomy of the batteries. The cameras are less than 10 meteres distance from the router and the signal is strong. I also checked the latest firmwares on router and Alro ... I set the battery optimization to "optimized" ... nothing helped so far ...

In comparison I also have another installation in a second home with the Arlo Base-Station (VMB4000) and one Arlo Pro 2 and this works fine, sufficient autonomy ... nothing to complain about.

My theory : is the Mobile Router the source of my problem ? Has anybody experienced Arlo with this Netgear Mobile Router with Arlo Station integrated ? Shall I activate the warranty of the 2 draining cameras batteries ?

Thanks for any suggestion or advice !

Cheers, Rick

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

TomMac — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 18:50:39 GMT

First question I always ask.... How much live viewing/recording are you doing??

Spec is about 5 min per day

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

AncientGeek — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 18:51:38 GMT

@NeuFred wrote:

I'm using 2 Arlo Pro 2 with the Netgear Mobile Router MR1000 (also called Netgear Nighthawk M1) which has an internal Arlo Base Station. The recent installation and sync worked fine and I can watch the monitored scenes. My big problem ist concerning the batteries which are draining within <24h. I rebooted the router and recharged the Arlo 2-3 times during a whole night and can not notice any increase in the autonomy of the batteries. The cameras are less than 10 meteres distance from the router and the signal is strong. I also checked the latest firmwares on router and Alro ... I set the battery optimization to "optimized" ... nothing helped so far ...

In comparison I also have another installation in a second home with the Arlo Base-Station (VMB4000) and one Arlo Pro 2 and this works fine, sufficient autonomy ... nothing to complain about.

My theory : is the Mobile Router the source of my problem ? Has anybody experienced Arlo with this Netgear Mobile Router with Arlo Station integrated ? Shall I activate the warranty of the 2 draining cameras batteries ?

Thanks for any suggestion or advice !

Cheers, Rick

Several months ago, another poster reported the same experience as you. I don’t recall if he resolved it or not. I bought an MR1100, but have not used it enough to know if I have the same issue. I ran my router connected to Ethernet so I didn’t use my data plan during testing. That could also be a difference.

Be sure you are running the latest version of the firmware on both devices.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

TomMac — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 18:56:11 GMT

Along those line of it being the mobile router, the unit and the cameras may be overly pinging each other... that does drain faster

Other than that unknown here, not many have gone that route

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

jguerdat — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 20:30:25 GMT

It may also be that the Arlo side of the firmware is outdated relative to that used by a base. A recurring issue is that the M11 gets its updates with less frequency than the base so there may be a big mismatch in versions. I don't know that you can compare versions between the M1 and a base - I'd bet that the version numbers are different. The date may give a clue, though.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

NeuFred — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 20:41:22 GMT

Both devices (mobile router + arlo) are running with latest firmwares and were rebooted afterwards. Live viewing less than 5 minutes a day.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

NeuFred — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 20:42:07 GMT

Less than 5 minutes daily

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

NeuFred — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 20:49:37 GMT

Therefore you suggest me to buy an additional base ? That means if using a base (instead of activating the built in Arlo base) could solve my issue ? ... but Netgear is supposed to guarantee the compability/functionality as described in the product description ... hmmm ... that keeps me perplex ?

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

jguerdat — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 20:53:12 GMT

A base would likely solve the issues bit I'd call support for guidance. Dunno if you should start with Netgear for the M1 or Arlo for the built-in base part.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

AncientGeek — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 20:51:34 GMT

I set up my MR1100 again this morning. I have had it on for six hours now and the camera battery is still reporting 100%. It is worth noting, the camera and MR1100 are only about eight feet apart and I’ve only triggered three or four recordings as I walk past them in my dining area. I’ll leave them setup overnight to see how the camera battery holds up.

I also added a second camera to this configuration, so I can see how that works. I bought the MR1100 to use as a travel Arlo system, so I’m eager to see if it will work as I hope it will.

One interesting discovery for me today...I went to add the second camera the the MR1100 and forgot that my MR1100 is owned by the Arlo account I have on my iPhone and shared with the account on my iPad. I tried adding the new camera to the MR1100 from my iPad and the app allowed me to go through all of the steps, but it never synced up. While the wheel was spinning, it occurred to me what I had done and I started the add process on my iPhone. That worked just fine. I’m surprised the app allowed me to try syncing the new device to that MR1100 since it is only shared...though, I do have admin (limited as they are) rights to the shared devices...one would think the app would only allow what would actually work, so either it should have worked, or I should not have been walked through the steps to add the device to a base I didn’t own.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

AncientGeek — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 18:05:15 GMT

I've had two Pro 2 cameras hooked up to my MR1100 now for over 24 hours and both still show 100% battery. I have intentionally not triggered recording more than a few times, in order to see if it was some sort of heartbeat that was dragging down batteries in this configuration. So far, that does not appear to be the case with my system.

I also noticed the second Pro 2 has an older firmware version than the first Pro 2 I hooked up (months ago), but the system has not updated the firmware on that second camera. I thought after 24 hours, it would download and update the firmware.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

jguerdat — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 20:29:31 GMT

Although ti would seem to have already been done, reboot the M1 and reinsert the camera battery to see if that forces the update. If not, remove the camera from Settings, My Devices and resync - that should cause the update to happen.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

AncientGeek — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 20:34:58 GMT

Thanks. I thought it was odd because the camera was new, straight out of the box and I just installed it yesterday.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

NeuFred — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 20:41:13 GMT

@AncientGeek and @jguerdat : thank you so much for your precious advices !

In the meantime, I "de-registered" the Arlo-Base from the MR1100 and removed the batteries from both cameras for about 10 minutes. I re-inserted them afterwards and restarted with the registration process from the beginning. I've just done it an hour ago and therefore can not tell if the battery-life will be better ... i'll keep you posted tomorrow.

Just to make sure : my MR1100 is running without the battery since it is hooked on permanence on the wired electricity. I also join the firmware versions to compare with AncientGeek's experience. All devices tell me to be on the latest firmware ... I noticed that the Arlo P2 on the VMB4000 (my other Arlo Base) has a more recent FW that the one hooked on the MR1100 ...

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

NeuFred — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 20:47:38 GMT

Since I couldn't find out how to insert multiple screenshots I write down the FW versions:

MR1100r0 on Netgear= 1.9.8.0_16666

Netgear itself = NTG9X50C_12.04.02.00 (could not find any indication of a date of release)

Arlo Pro 2 H3 = 1.124.0.0_14570 (2x)

my other installation (without battery issue):

VMB4000r3 = 1.12.0.0_27099

Arlo Pro 2 H3 = 1.125.11.3_26229 (1x)

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

AncientGeek — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 21:07:23 GMT

@NeuFred wrote:

Since I couldn't find out how to insert multiple screenshots I write down the FW versions:

MR1100r0 on Netgear= 1.9.8.0_16666

Netgear itself = NTG9X50C_12.04.02.00 (could not find any indication of a date of release)

Arlo Pro 2 H3 = 1.124.0.0_14570 (2x)

my other installation (without battery issue):

VMB4000r3 = 1.12.0.0_27099

Arlo Pro 2 H3 = 1.125.11.3_26229 (1x)

My Pro 2 cameras are at 1.125.8.0.19174 and 1.124.0.0.14570. Rebooting the base and pulling out the battery did not help initiate a firmware upgrade. I may try tethering the MR1100 to see if that makes a difference. Cameras are still at 100 battery.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

jguerdat — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 21:47:32 GMT

The camera firmware versions are tied to the base version, AFAIK. Since the M1 uses a different version of firmware from the base (unless they've managed to coordinate them), the camera version would be different from those connected to the base.

Arlo Pro 2 With Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): Batteries Drained In <24h

AncientGeek — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 22:06:08 GMT

@jguerdat wrote:

The camera firmware versions are tied to the base version, AFAIK. Since the M1 uses a different version of firmware from the base (unless they've managed to coordinate them), the camera version would be different from those connected to the base.

Ok. That could explain my different versions. I believe I originally connected the camera with the newer version of firmware to a standard Arlo base and then connected it to the MR1100. The camera with the older version was connected to the MR1100 immediately after the camera came out of the box for a four camera kit about month ago. Perhaps the old version is the current version for the MR1100, but the new version works anyway.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

NeuFred — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 14:55:50 GMT

I confirm ! Even after de-registering and re-initiating the sync of cameras, one through the iOS-app and once through web-based from computer, the result is the same ... my cameras are drained within less than 24h !!! That is usless for me and very disappointing ... I guess I tried everything your hints suggested so far. What shall I do next guys ?

I will take my 2 cameras with me and hook them on my other installation (with a dedicated Arlo Base) and observe if they drain as fast ... if so, it may be a problem of the battery. If not, I might buy an additional dedicated Arlo Base to hook behind my MR1100 (even it's supposed to be built in ...). Other advice welcome ...

Re: Arlo Pro 2 with Mobile Router Nighthawk M1 (MR1100r0): batteries drained in <24h

AncientGeek — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 15:25:43 GMT

Wow. I just checked my camera battery levels and both cameras attached to my MR1100 are at 100%. They are in my dining room and only gget triggered when we happen to walk past them, so...rarely...but they have been attached to the MR1100 for several days now...perhaps close to a week? Also, my Arlo Q Plus in the kitchen catches theses cameras doing an IR flash from time to time. I have reported previously here that I see an IR flash from my Pro/Pro 2 cameras every time I log into the mobile app. It seems to be part of the “getting status” routine. The best way to see it is to have two cameras more or less facing each other or at lease positioned such that camera A can detect a flash from camera B in the dark. But I digress.