Arlo|Smart Home Security|Wireless HD Security Cameras
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Samj
Follower
Follower

When using AC power should you remove the battery?

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steve_t
Master Master
Master

I don't. I figure if there's a power cut, the camera will still run on battery power while the base station is on a UPS and can record to the USB backup drive if the internet connection is down

easykeys88
Aspirant
Aspirant

In my recent experience, the internal battery does not appear to be used at all if the camera is plugged into AC power.

 

A couple weeks ago I bought an Arlo Pro 2 system after my house was broken into, and currently am using only two of the four included cameras. Initially, I had one running wirelessly in my kitchen/living room, and another in the guest room (where the burglar's point of entry was). A couple days later, I decided to add the included power supply for the kitchen camera. With the camera still running on battery, I plugged in the charging cable (which was not yet plugged into the wall charger), and the camera immediately turned off. To test whether this was a one-time fluke, I later unplugged the charger from the wall with the camera still attached and powered on at the other end (verified via the live feed), and the camera again shut off. Both of these instances happened with a fully-charged internal battery!

 

Unfortunately, due to the way this happened with just the physical plug attached, it seems like a hardware design flaw that prevents the camera from falling back to the internal battery if there is AC power loss. I'm increasingly getting the impression (after reading numerous forum posts here) that this system is designed for convenient and easy monitoring, but not for any sort of security. As such, I will most likely be returning mine to Best Buy and exchanging it for a different vendor's product.

jguerdat
Guru Guru
Guru

That's very unusual behavior. I'd suspect a bad charger since no one has ever had an issue like that reported here.

 

I would swap at the store.

AncientGeek
Hero
Hero

I also use my Pro 2 cameras that are plugged in as battery chargers at my father-in-laws home.  I keep one spare battery and when a battery powered camera battery gets low, I swap the spare into the battery powered camera and swap the full battery in the powered camera with the depleated battery...then the fully charged battery becomes the spare and I just keep rotating them around.

 

I also like the automatic battery backup for the cameras and have not noticed a camera failure during a power outage, but then all of my Pro 2 cameras that are connected to power are also on a backup generator, so I'd have to look during that 30 second gap between the start of the power outage and the start of the generator, in order to notice the problem.

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