topic Battery Life in Arlo

Battery Life

Gower — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 09:51:00 GMT

I'm having a similar problem, as some other users, with one camera having a substantially shorter battery life than the others.

I bought a 3 camera system and installed one outside the front door and two inside the house. The batteries in each camera are at 92%, 90%, and 84% after a week despite regularly viewing from my iPad and iPhone because the novelty was so much fun and so many friends and family wanted to see how it worked.

Much encouraged, I bought a fourth camera which arrived yesterday and last night I installed it outside at the back of the house. This morning the batteries are at 22% life remaining. This seems to be abnormally fast battery drainage especially after my experience with the first three cameras.

All the cameras are on the same setting: optimize battery life and viewing, trigger when motion is detected. All the cameras are disarmed most of the day and armed for no more than pthree hours a day when I am out of the house. All the cameras required an update downloaded from the internet when I first activated them. All the cameras are a similar distance from the base station; the camera outside the back door, with 22% battery life remaining after one night, has line-of-sight through a window to the base station; the camera outside the front door is furthest from the base station and the battery life is at 84%.

Has anyone found a cause and reliable fix for this issue?

Re: Battery Life

jguerdat — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 15:24:00 GMT

That's certainly abnormal. However, it's still possible that the WiFi signal between teh base and camera has an issue. An easy way to troubleshoot this is to swap cameras to see if the problem remains with the camera or the position.

Re: Battery Life

x-man — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 19:03:25 GMT

I will write my post in the german forum here. I hope its understandable because its google translatd. 😉

Now after about a year of diligent reading here (now with a new account) and with 3 different base stations and a total of 9 cameras in 3 different places / environments, I would like to share my experience with the topic batteries. Because the posts on the topic in the forum are piling up and some of the support is not said here.

I can say that the battery display of the cameras is often not reliable. The batteries nevertheless last a long time (4-6 months), as specified by the manufacturer.

I do not understand why from the support such tips are given as: "Please take out the batteries and insert again". Because in this case, the display is always reset and the battery display always shows a very high value. Also with batteries which are quite empty.

I had already had cases where cameras shortly after inserting new batteries, after only a few days, only about 20% have indicated. These batteries ran as long as the others (4-6 months).

I also had cases where I at almost leeen batteries the cover opened and closed again and the display was then by the "reset" again over 90%. (However, the batteries have not been held for a long time).

So I can give everyone only the tip first wait and the display not to be led astray. So regardless of the display to look how long the batteries actually hold overall before you get into despair.

Unexplained high battery consumption is only known to me in the following cases:

- Camera is very far from the base station and the reception accordingly very bad

- Camera defect (very rare)

Re: Battery Life

DonBow — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 20:09:19 GMT

They state that temperture can affect battery life. The warmer the better.

Re: Battery Life

x-man — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 20:28:38 GMT

yes, there is an effect of temperature, but not so high that it makes big problems..

Re: Battery Life

TomMac — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 15:03:55 GMT

x-man wrote:

The main reason is that it is the only way to reset the cameras... secondary is sometimes, more often than thought, the install of batteries is incorrect.

Yes it does reset the battery gauge at times so the gauge is incorrect, but I have found it does settle down after a week or so.

There are other minor factors in battery levels such as cold weather, but I have seen the cameras continue to run even if low ( provided battereis were good going into cold weather ) readings are given.