topic Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell in Arlo Video Doorbell Wire-Free

Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

Mick12 — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 12:42:38 GMT

Installed new wire free doorbell. Running on battery power.

First 24 hours installed battery discharged from 99% to 77%. After making some adjustments to the settings I recharged the battery on the second day.

Once the battery light turned green, I re-installed into camera. Battery read 98% when fully charged, 10 hours later the batter is at 93% with no activations or video recording.

Is this to be expected? Reason for replacing my ring video doorbell was due to very poor battery life.

Do not see how this doorbell will make it three months between charges with its current discharge rate.

Is there any other power saving options I am missing here?

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

jguerdat — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 14:17:24 GMT

Did the doorbell update firmware when installed? Battery life should be measured in weeks or months, depending on the amount of recording/live viewing as well as the network connection. What's the house construction? Distance to the router? WIreless devices near the doorbell?

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

JamesC — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 18:12:49 GMT

Mick12,

Are you using a mesh network? Is the doorbell synced to one of the satellites?

Jamesc

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

Mick12 — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 19:17:36 GMT

Standard wood construction/vinyl siding.

No wireless devices nearby. Router is on second floor near window in front of house, doorbell is below that window.

JamesC,

I do not know what a mesh network or synced to a satellite means...

I have four Arlo Pro 2 cameras on a base station, I set my doorbell up on my router/wifi. I can view my doorbell cam in the Arlo App along with the other cameras.

For reference, I recharged the battery to 98% last night. Today, less then 24 hours later with no live viewing or recording, the battery is at 81% already. At this rate it will not last 5 days before a recharge.

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

Mick12 — Sat, 12 Dec 2020 10:27:08 GMT

The firmware is current and I am now down 30% battery life in approximately 36 hours. Two video events recorded.

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

jguerdat — Sat, 12 Dec 2020 14:24:21 GMT

A new doorbell gets the trial subscription which always records but won't show them in the library depending on the Smart settings so you may have had many more recordings, just not displayed in the library.

What is the WiFi icon showing for signal strength? How far away is the router? It might be worth connecting the doorbell to your base as a test to see if that makes a difference. Bringing the doorbell closer to the router for a day would be useful to see if that helps. Otherwise, you may have a faulty device that swapping at the store would resolve.

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

Mick12 — Sat, 12 Dec 2020 15:31:42 GMT

How do I run it off my base station vs home router?

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

Mick12 — Sat, 12 Dec 2020 15:33:56 GMT

Disregard. It says it is connected to my base station.

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

dougblair — Sat, 12 Dec 2020 19:50:31 GMT

Hi...

You have touched on something I need to figure out. I too have a new wire free video doorbell, and I have been unable to connect it to my VMB4000 base station. I have 5 other Arlo cameras, a chime and a wired video doorbell connected to the base station, but the base station could not locate the new wire free video doorbell. The mobile app does not have a place for me to enter the user name for my local network (it uses Enterprise type security, which requires a user name and password. The mobile app allows me to select an SSID and the network password, but not a user name). I could pick the Arlo base station network SSID, but the password is unknown to me. So I have connected my video doorbell to a low-security wifi network directly on my cable company's router. It's outside my firewall, which bothers me. This allows my doorbell to send video and audio to my phone (with some lag time), but the doorbell cannot find my chime.

How did you manage to connect your wire free video doorbell to your base station?

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

JamesC — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 17:50:54 GMT

Mick12,

What is the make and model of your router?

Are you using the doorbell in battery operated mode or is it wired?

JamesC

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

Mick12 — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 19:20:10 GMT

Apple Airport Extreme Router

Doorbell is being used in battery mode. I do not have a power supply available on the front porch.

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

dougblair — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 18:46:55 GMT

Mick12,

I have some other issues with my wire free doorbell, discussed elsewhere in this forum, but on. the point of high battery usage I have a question: Was your wire free doorbell installed on an outside wall when you noticed the battery drain? The reason I ask is that after seeing this thread I let my wire free doorbell run while it was resting on a table overnight, and noticed similar high usage as you did. I then noticed that I had placed it camera-side down on a glass coffee table to avoid extra motion events while we moved around the living room, and I could see (from underneath) that the camera was repeatedly triggering. The LED on the front of the camera was RED, the ring of lights on white and the camera was making a clicking sound every 10 seconds or so. When I placed the camera lens-side up, but shielded with a book, the battery usage was much more reasonable - maybe 1-2% per day. Obviously the number of motion events and doorbell presses will affect battery life, but it appears that static reflections from nearby reflective objects might play a part too.

My doorbell has just received a firmware upgrade to version 1.2.0.0_421, and the iOS app was also updated yesterday, so perhaps things will be different?

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

Mick12 — Sat, 19 Dec 2020 10:49:35 GMT

Hello,

Yes, the drain was noticeable as soon as it was installed outside. I have an activity zone set up that is focused mostly on the concrete front porch and nothing else. I am not sure if this would increase/decrease battery life. I also only have the camera set up to notice people and animals.

My WIFI signal strength is a full three bars. I am down to 50% charge now after only a few days. Similar to my ring, which is why I replaced it with the Arlo doorbell stating three to six months on a single charge.

I have it set to geofence with my other Arlo Pro 2 cameras, so it has been disarmed for much of the time when the battery has been draining as well. Only 1 instance where the doorbell was activated and that was by me to test it out.

Firmware is up to date.

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

Mick12 — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 19:42:09 GMT

I am now at 38% battery remaining after 1 week.

How is this supposed to last 3-6 months?

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

Mick12 — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 17:53:36 GMT

19% remaining after 8 days of light use and being disarmed for most of the time.

Arlo support emailed me back and gave me instructions for battery life troubleshooting on my cameras and not video doorbell. Is anyone from Arlo watching here? This is nonsense.

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

JamesC — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 18:29:51 GMT

Mick12,

I've sent the details you've provided here to the dev team and they are currently investigating the issue. I don't have any new information currently but will provide an update as soon as I know more.

JamesC

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

Mick12 — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 18:42:46 GMT

Thank you James,

In speaking to tech support via phone, it is very hard to find someone who has any knowledge of this doorbell. I have been transferred three times.

Please keep me updated.

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

Mick12 — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 15:13:34 GMT

The battery died finally after eight days of being installed, to note, after charging it and the battery light illuminating green. I left it plugged in for several hours and reinstalled into the wireless video doorbell, it would only show a 96% charge as well

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

Mick12 — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 19:24:19 GMT

Battery is already down 10% after four hours of being set at my front door. It looks like the motion detection icon is amber in color a majority of the time I check the app. I have two activity zones set up on the front porch and walkway, so I do not get false alerts for vehicles or people on the sidewalk but it still seems to trigger the motion detection on the camera and perhaps that’s causing my battery issue. I have not had any updates to the cases opened with Arlo

Re: Poor Battery Life new Wire-Free Doorbell

JamesC — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 23:53:09 GMT

Mick12,

While activity zones will limit the number of recordings in your library, the doorbell will still detect motion that occurs outside the zone. For activity zones to work, motion must be detected and analyzed by the cloud to determine whether it occurred within the zone. If the motion was outside the zone, the recording is then discarded. If your doorbell is constantly detecting motion, this would explain the battery drain.

JamesC