topic Re: Power outage behavior in Arlo Ultra 2

Power outage behavior

Stevewins — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 20:36:07 GMT

Last night the major ice storm here in the Midwest knocked out power for 7 hours. Transformers were blowing up and lighting up the sky all night long, it was like the Fourth of July. I have a battery backup on my Arlo base station but not on my router. I expected that my VMB 5000 base station with SD card would continue to record clips during the outage, even though I couldn’t view them yet without the wifi connection for the base. However, the base did not record anything during the outage. Shouldn’t it have?

Re: Power outage behavior

StephenB — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 22:40:29 GMT

@Stevewins wrote:

Last night the major ice storm here in the Midwest knocked out power for 7 hours. Transformers were blowing up and lighting up the sky all night long, it was like the Fourth of July. I have a battery backup on my Arlo base station but not on my router. I expected that my VMB 5000 base station with SD card would continue to record clips during the outage, even though I couldn’t view them yet without the wifi connection for the base. However, the base did not record anything during the outage. Shouldn’t it have?

If motion was detected by one of your cameras, it should have recorded on the microSD card.

Re: Power outage behavior

Stevewins — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 06:18:30 GMT

That’s what I thought. Maybe my battery is worn out. I’ll do a power outage simulation and see what happens.

Re: Power outage behavior

jguerdat — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 13:30:24 GMT

We happen to have few power outages of major length but my 750VA UPS died much quicker than I had anticipated a couple of years ago. I had figured on at least a few hours but got less than 1 hour. I have my modem, router and hub connected to it so I guess I need to revisit power consumption.

Re: Power outage behavior

StephenB — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 13:53:45 GMT

@jguerdat wrote:

We happen to have few power outages of major length but my 750VA UPS died much quicker than I had anticipated a couple of years ago. I had figured on at least a few hours but got less than 1 hour. I have my modem, router and hub connected to it so I guess I need to revisit power consumption.

The UPS battery does degrade over time, so you might want to check if it is user-replaceable.

Re: Power outage behavior

jguerdat — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 13:55:51 GMT

It's been changed. I have APC UPSes which all have replaceable batteries. I have no idea at this point how old the battery was - could have been recent or old then.

Re: Power outage behavior

StephenB — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 14:02:48 GMT

@jguerdat wrote:

It's been changed. I have APC UPSes which all have replaceable batteries. I have no idea at this point how old the battery was - could have been recent or old then.

Power use does vary quite a bit for different routers (and perhaps modems). But I think 30 watts total is a reasonable estimate of what a modem+router+base would use. A 750VA UPS should give at least 2 hours at that load (per the APC calculator).

Re: Power outage behavior

Stevewins — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 20:12:26 GMT

Mine stopped recording immediately, right after the outage began.

Re: Power outage behavior

jguerdat — Sat, 25 Feb 2023 15:40:28 GMT

Did you try the power outage simulation you mentioned earlier?