Help with Pro 2 camera support?

[AmRacingGreen]

I have for 2 months been raising through quite a few different case numbers a sudden drop in performance in the rechargeable batteries in my Arlo Pro 2 wireless cameras. I have three of them installed now for about a year, all on optimised settings so as not to burn the battery and in compliance of the user instructions viz positioning. They have until 6-8 weeks ago held their charge and depreciated their energy stores at about the same rate, requiring a re-charge from about 10% every 10-12 days. Although I don't receive a warning (email or other form of alert), I know every 10 days I need to check the battery levels and take action. Since 6-8 weeks ago, the charge drop off has been sudden and dramatic; within 5 days the camera is 0% - no change made to any settings, or locations. With no warnings, I only became aware 5 days after the battery had depleted. Great! Anyway, following advice, all cameras have been re-synced to the base station, settings checked etc. Having called Arlo support in the US (from Singapore) to take consultation, I am further advised to check all firmware and software is up to date, move camera locations (notwithstanding they are in their current location for a reason), switch cameras around, re-boot base station, switch batteries around, buy new batteries etc. All have been tried including acquisition of new batteries at a cost of over SGD 300 which now drain faster than the old original batteries. The same problem persists today and I have given a tonne of evidence and analysis to Arlo Support for them to help but they have in fact, not helped at all since the start other than to send me off on wild goose chases. Furthermore, since the recent IOS upgrade, the iPhone app now takes at least 30 secs to power up and is extremely slow to navigate when interacting with it.

My questions to the community is this: is it usual for Arlo Support to

1) not update cases;

2) shut cases indiscriminately (issue has not been resolved at all satisfactorily)

3) claim not to have received updates through their only on-line support portal despite the user receiving an on-screen message to confirm the update has been passed to the officer managing the case, which itself has been screen shotted and sent (via email);

4) not respond to emails sent to the customer support email address providing requested information they denied receiving through the only on-line portal;

5) to expect clients to call US numbers from the other side of the world, spend half an hour explain everything again with no perceivable and useful advice given while incurring considerable telephone company costs;

6) not take responsibility for providing expensive and ineffective advice to clients; and

7) to generally seem not to care about the quality, usefulness and effectiveness of their products - which aren't cheap to acquire in the first place.

I'm pretty much done with this quality of service as you can tell and will not be acquiring Netgear products in future.

[ertriad]

I sent my first support request a few days ago reporting the exact same problem as you have. In my case, I normally have all my cameras DEACTIVATED to use only when I go away on holiday. Even so, in a deactivated stae, batteries were draining to 15-20% within about 5 days. Before the start of this year, they would hold their charge at 100% for weeks because they were deactivated !!

After 2-3 days, I received an answer from ARLO support which to my mind was an attempt to fob me off.  They were simply blind to the fact I had typed in capital letters, the word DEACTIVATED and replied on the basis my cameras are usually on all the time - which they are not !

Anyway, after having been made aware of a recent base station update beginning of this year, I RESTARTED my base station (two days ago) and so far my batteries are still at 100% with cameras deactivated. Looks promising, but does suggest we have some sort of dormant software bug in the base station !

I will give it a few more days to make sure the workaround works, before informing ARLO support. Though I have little confidence they will do anything about the underlying problem !

[StephenB]

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@ertriad wrote:

I had typed in capital letters, the word DEACTIVATED and replied on the basis my cameras are usually on all the time - which they are not !

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Though the problem appears resolved, I'd like to point out that if you DEACTIVATED the cameras by turning them "off" in the device settings or by disarming them, they are in fact still on and are communicating to the base station.  Firmware updates are still being applied, etc.

The two main causes of power drain are (a) video streaming from the camera and (b) the camera attempting to resync to the base.  Video streaming isn't happening when the camera is "off" or disarmed, but the camera will attempt to re-discover and re-connect to the base whenever its connection to the base is lost.  Those resyncs can drain power very quickly.