topic Re: High battery drain (Solar) in Arlo Ultra

High battery drain (Solar)

chrisngrod — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 13:23:36 GMT

One of my cameras is hooked to a solar charger.

It has been warm enough to get it to 100 percent before night.

We had a lightning storm last night and to my surprise it depleted the batteries by morning with only a few recordings.

See attached.

Re: High battery drain (Solar)

chrisngrod — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 13:24:01 GMT

Additional picture attached

Re: High battery drain (Solar)

TomMac — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 13:32:33 GMT

I could see that if the lighting caused some sort of glitch and the IR illuminators/ light stayed on all night... and/or I would check the seal on the solar panel input.

Re: High battery drain (Solar)

chrisngrod — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 16:30:43 GMT

Was thinking maybe it sent a lot of images to the cloud for processing.

Maybe it was what you said though.

Re: High battery drain (Solar)

JamesC — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 17:33:50 GMT

chrisngrod,

Is the solar panel charging the battery now that it's daylight or is it still depleting?

JamesC

Re: High battery drain (Solar)

chrisngrod — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 19:07:16 GMT

Too much cloud coverage today I think.

Probably should keep it on the solar to see if it recovers vs rushing to charge it?

We have to go on a trip soon so I might be forced to charge it in a couple days.

Re: High battery drain (Solar)

st_shaw — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 19:43:34 GMT

Do you have an activity zone set on the camera? One possibility is the rain storm caused lots of motion detections, which depleted your battery by sending clips to the cloud for analysis.

Re: High battery drain (Solar)

chrisngrod — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 20:07:24 GMT

No activity zones because it's winter and the trees can't affect it.

Trying to keep the sensitivity high because it is much lower than the Pro 2 it replaced 😟

Re: High battery drain (Solar)

chrisngrod — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 13:43:42 GMT

Update:

We got sunlight for a few hours and the camera stayed pinned to 2% with no charging. It was warm enough to charge too.

Put it on a real charger and it started to charge. Camera said connecting / connected when I tried to view the image from it, but it would not update from the last picture. Rebooted the system but no success.

Had to take the camera down, take the battery out and put it back in. Image finally started to work. Charged it up to 90% and put it back where it was supposed to be. Hooked up the solar charger and before nightfall it gained a couple more percent.

High today will be in the 40s so I think it will start charging again in a bit (solar).

Re: High battery drain (Solar)

JamesC — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 15:52:48 GMT

chrisngrod,

Please let me know if anything strange happens again, I'm reviewing your report with the engineering team currently and any additional information would be helpful.

Thanks,

JamesC