topic Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors. in Arlo Pro 2

Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 17:53:21 GMT

I have a recurring issue with my three cameras when they are externally powered. I note that they loose connection after a few days of being externally powered with the chargers supplied. I also experience encoder faults with the video being repetitively smeared in a two second loop. The cameras work fine when operating on battery only. Does anyone know if these chargers are designed for the continuous operation of the cameras? Do I need some mains power filtering device or a ferrite on the cable to remove spikes? It gets annoying to have to reset the battery in the cameras eveytime it happens.

Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

TomMac — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 17:53:35 GMT

The supplied ac adapter is dual voltage ( 5v to run, 9v to charge ) there should be no issue leaving them plugged in all the time...they will not overcharge the battery.

Only thing I can think of ( yes you could try a ferrite core, couldn't hurt ) ;

1) try it without the battery

2 ) pull battery and try a regular USB adapter ( 5v ) with about 1.5a or more

Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 17:53:48 GMT

Hi Tommac,

Thanks for the advice, I have put a 30mm ferrite ring on the charger cable looped six turns on one of the cameras and removed the battery on the second camera to see if they make a difference. The third camera is externally positioned so it will be the control.

Re: Arlo pro 2 cam externally powered lockup’s and encoder errors.

Dannybear — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 23:34:37 GMT

Ok, the ferrite on the camera charger cable failed to fix the video smearing issue. See attached video. Will now try powering it with a standard USB charger. The camera with no battery is still working ok.

Re: Arlo pro 2 cam externally powered lockup’s and encoder errors.

Dannybear — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 00:09:05 GMT

Just tried powering a camera with a standard USB charger with 2.1amp capacity and will not power it with or without the battery. Anyone know why?

Re: Arlo pro 2 cam externally powered lockup’s and encoder errors.

jguerdat — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 00:35:00 GMT

The voltage output may be slightly low. I believe someone has tested some of these adapters and found that the camera requires a slightly higher voltage than the nominal 5.0v. Try a differetnt adapter.

Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 17:54:02 GMT

@jguerdat,
Good call, tried some other USB chargers and found that the iPhone one works. Strange that the 10W iPad charger would not nor some of the generic ones.
Now to see if the camera plays up.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Thu, 03 Jan 2019 23:10:39 GMT

Update to testing the camera with battery and externally powered with iPhone charger. Video smearing appeared again today and lost live view later. Just times out with error saying try again later. Was able to work the camera settings ok via the app such as on/off and motion test worked so it was just the encoder playing up. Removing the USB cable from the charger and reconnecting again got the live view back. This is different to using the oem charger where I have to remove the battery. No problems so far with camera that has the battery removed and externally powered with the oem charger.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 00:36:22 GMT

Update to camera pro2 battery and externally powered with iPhone charger. Video fail again today, was still able to talk to the camera and change settings. Repowering the charger restored the video ok. Have now changed back to the OEM charger to see if it behaves differently when it fails video again. The camera with no battery and externally powered with OEM charger has been working fine.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 04:37:47 GMT

Latest update to camera testing so far. Camera with battery and externally powered with OEM charger started smearing video again. Iframes are clean but digital pixelation smearing every few seconds. Tried setting the video to 180 then back again and this resolved the issue. Looking forward to the camera reboot functionality requested. The camera without the battery and externally powered with the OEM charger has been ok to date so will restore battery now that I have a easier remote fix than pulling the camera down to rese each time..

Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Fri, 25 Jan 2019 21:55:32 GMT

Well it’s been two weeks since the last video smearing issue occurred and it has returned.
This is on a camera with battery and externally powered. Toggling the rotation 180 in the video settings reset the camera encoder and smearing is gone again.
The plus side is that I have not lost comms to the camera since the latest firmware update.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 02:05:35 GMT

We it’s been five days since the last smearing issue on the externally powered camera occurred and it was back again. The usual work around of toggling the rotation in video settings would not fix it. I had to toggle the battery management settings to reset the camera’ Video encoder.
I have passed this onto the support team.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 09:25:49 GMT

Just another update to keep the thread active. Have had a few more recurrences of pixelation on the problem camera and toggling the power management settings recovered the video each time.
I was asked by support to swap out the camera with another of mine, and after this the swapped out camera played up also. This confirms that it is related to the location and being externally powered.
As the camera’s position is the furthest from the base with two out of three signal bars, I wonder if the camera internals are overheating due to the camera’s wifi adapter trying to compensate for poor signal levels.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 09:02:56 GMT

Another update to the thread,
Support suggested that I look at changing the modem wifi channel to a more quieter channel in the spectrum. I used a wifi scanner to do this and moved the modem to midband ch6. Restarted the arlo base and confirmed it followed the change. Still no joy, the camera in same location played up again with same symptoms. Support has been updated.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Gen8bigup — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 13:31:56 GMT

I have exactly this issue. The issue is if it externally mains powered. This only been happening last 3 months. It was not happening for first 3 months. Usually works after resetting the base station. But this is now a daily occurance.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 06:45:01 GMT

@Gen8bigup
I still have no permanent fix for the issue.

All I can suggest is to use the workaround of toggling the power management settings in the camera’s video setting page. You should be able to do this remotely when away from home or if it is up a ladder.

The more users that raise a case with support the more likely a fix will ensue.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 13:46:51 GMT

The pixelation problem has appeared again tonight so just keeping this thread active for the support team.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 09:09:17 GMT

Well with nothing on the horizon from the level 2 support team even after keeping them updated with case emails and using their own update portal, I can only imagine they must be very busy.

So I have gone back to basic fault finding techniques to confirm what is not faulty.

I swapped out the camera’s charger and cable to start with last night.
The camera was checked again this morning and was found to be pixelating as before.
So the issue is not related to one of these components as they were fresh out of the box. Same as the camera and battery swapped previously.

Ok while the camera is pixelated, I confirmed that the camera motion detection still worked ( I.e. walked in front of camera) and that cloud recordings were also pixelated.

I waited an hour and live viewed the camera again and it would no longer display on the dashboard. Just says it was connecting with the rotating icon. This is a common outcome with this fault after multiple previous observations made.
Ok so I again checked the motion detection and yes it worked but this time no recording was uploaded to the cloud library.

I know I can resolve the issue temporarily via the camera’s video settings but can now appreciate why owners are missing recordings and complain of live viewing not working.

Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

Dannybear — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 09:41:25 GMT

Well I got a update call from my case worker in level 2 support to say that they were intending to escalate the problem to their team. Although this was a repeat of what they said in their prior updates, I am optimistic that wheels will eventually turn.

Anyway back to the investigation, I moved the problem camera closer to the base station by about 10ft and waited a few days for the pixelation to return.

Ah I thought, I live viewed the camera again, unplugged the camera cable from the mains adapter and moved the camera to within 6ft of the base station and I was still able to observe the pixelation.
Once I stopped live viewing with the camera in this position, close to the base unit then, restarted live viewing again and observed that the pixelation issue had gone.

All I can deduce so far is that the camera internal video encoding process gets corrupted and remains in that corrupted state until some further communication is made with the base station that resets the camera . ( I wonder if this is why they sometimes tell you to move the camera next to the base station so that you will go away.)

Re: Arlo Pro 2 Cam Externally Powered Lockup’s & Encoder Errors.

firesec — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 15:01:40 GMT

having the exact same problem with my arlo pro 2 camera plugged in, it just ghosts and pixelates, its really bad and it seems this has been happening for allot of people for a long time now with no official fix.

I shouldn't have to remove the battery to get this to work as intended while plugged in but I'm currently testing to see if that makes it behave as it should.

Will post back if it works for me.

edit: just for the record, based on experience with graphics processing units, overheating is nortorious for causing hardware to malfunction like this, and my best guess is that with a combination of battery and mains power it generates way too much heat and this is the result.

I have read that with the battery in the camera and the camera connected to the mains at the same time, the cameras heat tolerances are much lower and with the battery not in the camera its heat tolerances are much higher.