Off Grid Charging for Arlo Go

[Stever4]

I know that the  subject of powering/charging the Arlo Go from 12V has been beaten to death but after a lot of experimentation and frustrations, I would like to share what I finally got to work.

Many have stated that a QC3 charger would work and I found one that I powered on my benchtop power supply for weeks without any problems but when I deployed it in the field I received incompatible charger errors within a week.

Sometimes you just need to go big.

I built a 30W solar charging system containing:

30 watt solar panel form Amazon and pole mounting bracket.

Victron solar charge controller with Bluetooth adapter (for monitoring via their phone app)

10AH LiFePO4 battery

75W inverter (the type that is just an oversized cigarette light plug)

Plastic enclosure designed for pole mounting

I used the official Arlo outdoor charging plug/cable connected to the inverter output.

The Victron Bluetooth app provides data about the solar panel output, battery state and load current (inverter).

It also shows daily history of how many Watt-Hours are generated by the panel and used by the load.

I found that the inverter is using about 40 Watt-Hours/day which is about 1/3 the capacity of the 10AH battery so there is plenty of reserve for cloudy or rainy days.

The Arlo has shown 100% battery now for the last 6 weeks.

I am very pleased to announce this is a success as all previous attempts have been failures including the Arlo Solar panel.

If anyone would like more details, feel free to message me.