Rechargable batteries that don't work

[Kimdevoncorgi]

I have had Arlo cameras for about 3 years now and are very happy with them. When I heard that rechargeable batteries were coming I thought "why does it need to take so long - just buy any 3 volt rechargables and put them in". I bought 4 cells from Jaycar, put them straight in and they worked. What I discovered later, was that they were not fully charged straight from the packet, and the next lot I bought (all 20 of them!), when charged properly caused errors at startup and battery reading of 0% in red and the camera did not work. Having had a career in electronics since the 1970's and reading these forums about others having the same problem, I decided to investigate why this is. The reasons are - The ordinary non-rechargable batteries have a reasonably low internal resistance and stable voltage output under load. Rechargables by there very nature are 3.7 volts. The manufacturers consider this may be too high for some devices (4 of them instead of 12 volts would be 14.8 volts). To counter this they have internal electronics which prevents over discharge and drops the voltage to 3 when loaded. The Arlo cameras do not draw current at a steady rate at start up, in fact the current fluctuates severely, causing the battery voltage to go up and down so much that the camera sees it as a flat or faulty battery and rejects it. Once going though, the current draw is 50uA quiescent, 50 mA while panning and 250 mA at night with the infra red LED's on. I found that if I fully charge a set of batteries, then discharge them at 50 mA for an hour, they then work in most cases as the voltage deviations are tolerated by the camera. 

The next logical thing to do was try artificially loading a set of fully charged batteries with resistors so that the voltage is held down and stable, then remove the resistors once the camera is going - the result was the camera starts up and works OK. Although this is cumbersome and involved, I have found a way to do this and use the batteries I have bought.

Obviously, the cameras were originally designed to be used with non-rechargeable batteries which have stable voltage characteristics anyway. I notice many people who have had similar problems simply being told to use the recommended batteries, which I would have done anyway, had I known. One would conclude from all this that Arlo engineers have liased with a battery manufacturer to produce batteries with a voltage characteristic that is tolerated by the camera's fluctuating current draw, and hence marked "Works with Arlo", and these are the ones to use. 

[TomMac]

One thing of note... the cameras don't work on 12v. The cameras use 2 set of parallel batteries and then flip-flop the pairs for equal drain

Also 123 type rechargeables come in 3.7v, 3.6v and 3v .... depends on chemistry too

the Arlo cams work best and the power meter has been optimized for OEM 123 cells ( 3.2v when new ) and 3.7v li-ion rechargables ( 4.2 v off charger ) *The Arlo cams do not work well with LiFePO4 cells*

BTW, have tested many types of the 3.7 li-ion 123/16340 cells and never had an issue like you describe

( this is going back to the start of Arlo cameras )