ARLO Go 2 LTE

[rdilauro]

We really like our new ARLO GO 2 Cellular LTE cameras.   We needed them to protect a large area where over 120 boats are stored.   That can represent a value of over $2 million dollars.  Up until this year, there was no camera monitoring.

I justified getting two cameras.   I have one monitoring who comes in the ballfield where the boats are stored.  Its a narrow 30' spot so I can see anyone coming in/out.  I also have a heavy duty cattle gate fence that secures the area.

I can view all of our boats, our wave runners and more through one of the cameras.  This is such a big plus for our community.

Now that I have had the cameras running for about a month and a half, I did find some little annoying problems.

1.  The battery drains very quickly.   Once a week we have to recharge the batteries

2. I have solar chargers on each of these, but when the temp goes below 32, they stop charging.   For the past two weeks it has been under 32 and the forecast indicates the same for the next week.

3. This will be so much better when the weather warms up.  In fact when I first put in the solar chargers, I did not have to worry about the batteries.

4. However, our cellular coverage is less than adequate.  I can get no more than 2 bars on the scale.  I understand from reading some articles, that its best to have at least 3 bars.  Less then that, the batteries work harder.

5. We have no electrical hookups in this area.  And only one indoor shed.  I've talked with our cellular provider and they said they can provide a booster.  It has to be away from any weather conditions and it needs power.   I can provide the indoor environment, but running electricity to this area may be costly.

So for now, we have to go on a weekly climb up the ladder, take the batteries out charge them, put them back in, again and again.

6. I have tweaked these cameras to little motion, no activity zone, low light, minimal brightness, all the things I read on how to improve battery life.

7.  Do I have options?

The point of this post is, first to say these cameras are great, but also to say that depending on where you are going to use them there are a lot of other considerations that you need to take into account.

[StephenB]

---

@rdilauro wrote:

1.  The battery drains very quickly.   Once a week we have to recharge the batteries

---

I have one Go 2, and mine also drains pretty quickly.

It is a new model, and I hope Arlo is still working on power optimization (e.g., that updated firmware will improve the battery life down the road).

[jguerdat]

(Semi-) interestingly, I also have a Go 2 that is not draining the battery much at all with a typical 1-2 bar of Verizon cell service. 

A possibility could be to use an external battery pack as if it was connected to AC power. You'd need to investigate the various models since you need one that will not stop supplying power when the current draw is minimal (the camera is sleeping).  There are probably some other aspects that would be important, too, but I'm not versed in this type of usage. Maybe someone else can jump in with suggestions.

[StephenB]

---

@jguerdat wrote:

(Semi-) interestingly, I also have a Go 2 that is not draining the battery much at all with a typical 1-2 bar of Verizon cell service. 

---

Mine was fully charged on 20 January, and is about 50% now.  Though at the moment it is connected with WiFi, not mobile data.  

[rdilauro]

I took them down since it was too cold for the solar charger to charge. Both we around 20% charge after 4 days. I brought them up to 100%, turn them off and still 2 days later that were at 85%. What was draining them? I have no clue.
As a side note I do have two batteries on order so we can just swap them out instead of taking the cameras down. I purchase a dual charger for our Ultra batteries which works great. I ordered a dual charger for the Go 2 camera only to find out they don’t fit! The paper work says it’s for the Go cameras. Is there a difference between the Go and Go2 battery sizes?

[StephenB]

---

@rdilauro wrote:
 I purchase a dual charger for our Ultra batteries which works great. I ordered a dual charger for the Go 2 camera only to find out they don’t fit! The paper work says it’s for the Go cameras. Is there a difference between the Go and Go2 battery sizes?

---

The Go 2 uses the Ultra's dual charger.

[rdilauro]

ThNks. That saves me time trying to find one
So tonight I took my two 100% charged ARLO Go2 batteries and put them in my Ultra charging station. They came up as 70% charged and are charging them now. Question I do have, what charge level should I trust? What’s indicated on the ARLO app or the charger? When I put ARLO Ultra batteries in the charger they represent what the app says. Ok when the app says 100% and when it first goes on the charger it says 99% . So that is consistent. But is the wide difference between app values and charger Led readout valid? Should I trust one over the other?

[StephenB]

---

@rdilauro wrote:
So tonight I took my two 100% charged ARLO Go2 batteries and put them in my Ultra charging station. They came up as 70% charged and are charging them now. 

---

I'm a bit confused here, as my own charging station just has red/green indicator lights, and doesn't show charge percentage.  Is this a third-party charger (Feirsh perhaps)?

---

@rdilauro wrote:
But is the wide difference between app values and charger Led readout valid? Should I trust one over the other?

---

No idea on the LCD readout of the charger - esp. since it isn't Arlo's.  The method used by a charger to estimate charge (which is providing voltage+current to the battery) would be different from the method used by the camera when a charger is not attached (since the camera is only drawing voltage+current).

But overall - 

1. my understanding is that the camera won't charge all the way to 100%.  That is part of the overcharge protection.  But the Arlo app will still report 100% charge status.  
2. The system doesn't always grab the charge status, so the info the app is sometimes stale.
3. estimating % charge of a lithium battery can be a bit tricky, and as far as I can tell none of the methods out there are very precise.  

Generally I want to recharge the batteries as soon as possible when the estimate charge drops below 20%.  That's a bit arbitrary, but the idea is to make sure they don't fully discharge.  When I do charge them, I charge them to 100% (or until the dual charger light changes to green). I don't pay that much attention to intermediate values (20-100%), as I don't think they are all that accurate, and there's no action needed anyway.

One of the other superusers ( @TomMac I think) edits the camera name whenever the battery is charged up (putting in the date of the charge).  That lets him keep track of the run time he is getting for each camera.

I don't do that myself, but I might start monitoring when I charge at least some of my cameras. 

[rdilauro]

The charger is from Amazon.  When I checked ARLO accessories, the charger was not available and I gave it my email to let me know when its ready.

I do like the percentage LED .... In fact I took two cameras down that havent been used in months.  They were at 5%.  I have them on the charger now for about 4 hours and they are up to 50%.  I can wait until the 99%.

Guys, again I need to apologize.   I am still learning things about ARLO.  I ask so many questions, but since I am going to be the one in charge now of over 18 cameras, I want to make sure I know everything I can.

Through your responses and pointers to knowledge articles, I am learning.   Please just dont think me as a pain.

I want to learn as much as I can.  We had a person who was in charge of all the ARLOs, ordered them, set them up and then walked away. I can not get an answer from him on what he did or why.

I will dig through all of this and get things working for our Lake Community.  I know I could not do this without your help.  I can not tell you how much I appreciate your support.

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

---

@rdilauro wrote:

I am still learning things about ARLO.  I ask so many questions, but since I am going to be the one in charge now of over 18 cameras, I want to make sure I know everything I can.

Through your responses and pointers to knowledge articles, I am learning.   Please just dont think me as a pain.

---

Don't worry about the questions - we are here to help.

[rdilauro]

Steven. I’ve discussed the Go2 battery problem with you before. I am now working with our local Verizon rep who is selling these cameras to local companies. He has been receiving the same complaint, the batteries drain too quickly. Since he is recommending this camera to local businesses, he wants to understand the problems. He is working with his design staff to look into the different battery capacities between the ARLO Go and ARLO Go2, plus any GPS impacts. I’m going to continue to tweak my camera to see what configurations settings might do. There are some clear ones, Spotlight brightness, motion sensitivity,, etc
I would just live if someone in ARLO design would look at all if this and investigate. Our Verizon rep is super concerned. Can he still recommend the ARLO Go2 camera to his customers understanding the problems. We all agree that the ARLO Go2 camera is great and should become the norm for companies that want to monitor and patrol their large outdoor assets,

[E-Zip]

I have 1 Arlo Go2 camera purchased mid-Dec.  On initial 1st charge, battery lasted 3-4 weeks, I wasn't paying too close attention, it seemed great.  Since then, I can't seem to get more than 5 days.  I did add Activity Zones, recording schedule, etc after a 2 or 3 weeks of use, so after reading posts, I assumed that was it.  I've removed ALL additional features, set Power Management to "Best Battery Life" instead of "Optimized", and even disabled WiFi so it won't look for a network that isn't there.  I now only use this as a Live-View camera that I access about 10-times a day for 30-60 seconds...  still drains about 20% per day (10% overnight while I sleep).  Every time I go to the App, it shows 3 or 4 bars of Verizon LTE (no WiFi nearby).  I am at a loss for why the initial charge lasted so much longer, but would really like to get back there.

[rdilauro]

I had the same experience.  First installed back in December using WiFi.  I did this from my home network and configured the camera the way I thought it should be.  

Then I brought it out to where it is now, disabled WiFi, but in reality when I look at the device, it indicated WiFi is in  Standby mode.   So, right now , I am not sure if it is still looking for WiFi.

Now its using Verizon cellular services.  No problems first two weeks, the camera did everything I expected it to do. The we hit our first cold spell in the Danbury, CT area.   The camera batteries then started to drain quickly.   I took the cameras down, charge the battery to 100%, put the cameras back up and within 2 or 3 days, the battery indicator was at 45%.  We purchased solar chargers for the two cameras.  Again, took the cameras down, charge them to 100%, connected them with the solar charging and the charge hovered around 90% for about a week.

Then we started getting below 32 degree weather, and at the temperature, the chargers will not charge (by design and documented)  So, between the lower temp, snow, no sun, the camera batteries drained quickly.  I took them down for about a week because the weather forecast was not good.  I put them back up 2 days ago.   They are at 79% and 77% respectively.   But based on previous experiences, I expect that to drop quickly in a couple of days.

I've discussed this problem with our Verizon rep who was initially at a loss.  Then he called me a couple of days ago and said he now has 3 customers with ARLO Go2 cameras experiencing the same thing!   Too coincidental!

I went over my setting with him since he told me the new customers were at a loss for setting configurations

My Go2 Cameras are:

1.  Lower motion detection (went from 80% now at 25%.
2.  Lower the brightness.
3.  Switched the Spotlight to Constant to Flash and brightness from 90% to 20%.
4.  Set Power management to Best Battery Life.
5.  Deleted any Activity zone.
6.  GPS off
7.  Smart notifications set ON for all Alerts
8.  Alerts based on Motion, Video taken, email sent to master email address

None of his customers had these type of settings.

The rep is now helping me by looking into the battery capacities between the ARLO Go and Go2 cameras.

He told me he has many customers with the Go cameras and have never experienced battery draining problems.

He is also looking into what impact GPS may have.  I told him, I have mine set to OFF.

But he has a higher stake in this, since his company is recommending customers who need this type of camera monitoring to go with the ARLO Go2 cameras.   But if the battery draining problem persist, as he said, he is going to have a lot of unhappy customers.

The ARLO community (StephenB) has been more than helpful in looking into this situation.  I do not believe this problem is going to be resolved by a member, a super (ARLO) user, etc.   This camera is so new, I think that the ARLO Design and Development team needs to look into this situation.  Perhaps and hopefully a firmware update will come out soon to remedy this.

Good luck with your Go2 cameras.   They are great while working!

[JamesC]

For those of you experiencing issues with excessive battery drain with your Arlo Go 2 cameras, please reach out to the Arlo support team using the Arlo mobile app and open a ticket. The the dev team is investigating these support tickets to better understand these battery drain concerns.

JamesC

[rdilauro]

James,

How do you get to ARLO Support?

When I bring up Support all I get is a search and Q&A.

I know, my last post I wanted to get to Design and Development, I just dont know how to do that

[JamesC]

rdilauro,

Take a look here for instructions on how to contact Arlo support: What is the Support Center in the Arlo App?

JamesC

[E-Zip]

"The rep is now helping me by looking into the battery capacities between the ARLO Go and Go2 cameras.

He told me he has many customers with the Go cameras and have never experienced battery draining problems."

I concur, have a friend at the same barn with the first Arlo Go (he told me about the camera)...  his battery lasts 6-8 weeks on LTE.  The batteries are different in voltage and capacity.  Very challenging to find actual specs on the batteries, but I found a pic of the VMA4410 Arlo Go battery label on Amazon, and it uses a 2 series-cell battery configuration, for 7.2V nominal, and 3660mAh rating.  Capacity is 26.3Wh.  The Go 2 VMA5420 battery (looking at my battery label) uses single series-cell for 3.6V nominal, and 13,000mAh rating for 46.8Wh Capacity...  75% more energy in the Go 2 battery pack.   Clearly, the Go 2 should last longer, certainly hoping the support team can figure out why it's consuming about 14x the daily energy as the original model. 

I agree the camera is really great when working correctly, but having to charge this massive battery every 5-6 days is unreasonable.   I do have an open case with the Arlo Support Team, hoping we all can sort this out.

[rdilauro]

E-Zip,

I appreciated your response and have forwarded to our rep.   You would think that the Go2 battery should last longer!

Just makes me think more and more that there is a design flaw with the camera.    I am sure that the ARLO teams will look into this matter and come up with a solution.

I found a direct path to an ARLO support member and have forwarded him all the posts regarding this matter.

I appreciate all the responses from the ARLO community team members (Superuser, Moderator, etc), but I realize also that this is something that they can only comment on, make suggestions but cannot fix.

I am constantly tweaking my Go2 camera to see what configuration settings help me the most.  One thing I've been doing is using the schedule MODE so that the camera is only armed during certain times of the day and days of the week.

[StephenB]

---

@rdilauro wrote:

Just makes me think more and more that there is a design flaw with the camera.  

---

Hopefully not, as that would be impossible to fix (assuming you mean a hardware flaw).

I've seen this play out before with other cameras.  Power optimization isn't something localized, and generally can't be completed until the bugs are largely fixed (no point in optimizing broken code).  So it's not that unusual for a new camera to have poor battery life for a while after release.  FWIW, I agree it'd be better if the battery life met expectations before the camera was released.

Anyway, if this follows the same pattern as before, there will be firmware updates that will improve the battery life.  Creating cases with support is a good way to make sure it's prioritized correctly.

[E-Zip]

I hear ya, @StephenB .   The problem in my example with the theory that it's just buggy SW because it's so new, is that on the 1st charge, it lasted for ~4-Weeks.   However, I think I may have discovered the culprit, and have updated Arlo via my support case so they can validate.  I had changed all my settings back to original, or even more conservative (I never armed it, no recording, no activity zones, power setting optimized for battery life, etc, etc).  Literally ONLY logged on to use it as a live-view camera, about 10 times/day, and still drained about 20% of my battery per day.  I was about to try "reset to factory defaults", when I remembered 1 other change...  after the first use, I added an SD Card for local storage.   Yesterday, I had to charge the battery.  I removed the SD Card (wasn't recording anymore anyway) using the instructions to safely eject the card, so the SW would be sure to know it was removed.   I re-installed the camera late afternoon with fully charged battery, and about 20-hours later, battery is reading 98%.   This is MUCH more in line with my 1st charge, and more like what I would expect.

For some reason, having SD Card installed "appears" to be what causes the excess battery drain.  If you all have SD Cards installed as well, try removing them, and report back if this resolves the problem for you, too.   It shouldn't make a big difference anyway, you can't even view the contents of the SD Card unless you remove the card and view on an external computer.  (another issue I find strange).   Hopefully this resolves the immediate battery-life issues for others as well, and perhaps Arlo Team will investigate further on why the presence of the SD Card causes such high power usage (original Arlo Go has SD storage capability as well, and doesn't seem to affect battery life).  Ultimately, they should be able to confirm if this is the root-cause, and hopefully fix this with a FW update.  Good luck to you, I hope it works!

[rdilauro]

E-Zip
Thanks for your insight. I never had an SD card, so I am ruling that out (at least in my situation ). I have factory reset the camera several time. With and without the SIM card. So far I am not seeing any improvements. Its a shame we have to go through all these different scenarios to optimize these cameras.
Its a bug in their design and hope that they are working in a way to fix it.
I will continue to try different settings to see any impacts. I’m glad that we’ve touched, so now we both can do things that may help the situation. For now, I have my two ARLOS OFF and DISARMED. Waiting for a sunny warm day so hopefully the charger will keep the battery from draining more.

[StephenB]

---

@E-Zip wrote:

If you all have SD Cards installed as well, try removing them, and report back if this resolves the problem for you, too.   

---

I do have an SD card installed, so this is something I can test.

[rdilauro]

Stephen
I do not have any SD cards installed.

[StephenB]

---

@StephenB wrote:

---

@E-Zip wrote:

If you all have SD Cards installed as well, try removing them, and report back if this resolves the problem for you, too.   

---

I do have an SD card installed, so this is something I can test.

---

FWIW, removing the microSD card from my Go 2 made no difference in the battery drain. 

[E-Zip]

Quick update on my situation…. It’s been 3-weeks since my last post, and my battery is still reading 64%. I’m sorry the SD Card wasn’t the answer for others, I’m really happy to have battery life going well.

I’m done debugging on my camera cause I don’t want to mess up a good thing, but I was thinking back and when I removed SD Card, I also changed Power Management setting (under Video Settings) back to “Optimized”, which was the original default. Would be silly if the power-save setting was the problem, but may be worth trying if your camera is currently set to “Best Battery Life”… change it to “Optimized”. Sorry, that’s all I’ve got for suggestions. Best of luck