Internet outage battery drains

[Byedvob]

We just had an internet outage for 24 hours, and all three battery powered cameras either lost all battery power or drained about 50% in the case with the better battery on the Pro5s camera. There has been a discussion of this for years on the Arlo community. Does anyone know of a solution, or if Arlo is working on a solution? Strangely, this is first time the batteries drained during an internet outage, though we’ve had some outages like this before… just internet , not power outages. 

thanks,

Barry

[StephenB]

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@Byedvob wrote:

We just had an internet outage for 24 hours, and all three battery powered cameras either lost all battery power or drained about 50% in the case with the better battery on the Pro5s camera.

Was your wifi powered down during the outage?

Or was it still running (just not able to reach the internet)?

[Byedvob]

WiFi was powered up but signal was not reaching our house due to issue at main box at entrance to our neighborhood.

[StephenB]

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@Byedvob wrote:

WiFi was powered up but signal was not reaching our house due to issue at main box at entrance to our neighborhood.

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I'm surprised that resulted in rapid battery drain - usually that happens when the camera is actively searching for the wifi network. 

[Byedvob]

I think the cameras must have been searching because all three drained. When I looked at settings on my iPhone the network name was still present, but wifi  was not working at all. Seems like an easy fix to just have camera shutdown after an hour or so with no WiFi signal. Again,it’s  strange that this has never happened before during internet/wifi outage. Maybe it had something to do with the source of the outage?

[StephenB]

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@Byedvob wrote:

Seems like an easy fix to just have camera shutdown after an hour or so with no WiFi signal. 

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Once done, you also need a way to bring the cameras back on-line.  That would require physical access to the cameras (since the only other way to tell the cameras to do something is through the WiFi link).

I think it would be possible to reduce the polling rate of the reconnection attempts as the time goes on.  That would slow down the power drain, but it also would take longer for the cameras to come back up when the WiFi starting working again.

[Byedvob]

The polling rate for reconnection must be very high for all the cameras to drain in 24 hours. Arlo should offer an App option to slow that down. I would imagine once every 30 minutes would be reasonable for most users and not KO the battery.

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

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@Byedvob wrote:

I would imagine once every 30 minutes would be reasonable for most users and not KO the battery.

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That would mean that when you reboot the router for any reason, the cameras would be off-line for up to half an hour.

I'd consider using a more rapid rate at the beginning of the outage, to handle short disconnects.   Then slow it down if the wifi doesn't re-appear after a while.

[Byedvob]

I'd consider using a more rapid rate at the beginning of the outage, to handle short disconnects.   Then slow it down if the wifi doesn't re-appear after a while.

Good idea. If it happens again I’ll contact Arlo and see if they’ll consider giving users control over that with the App.