Arlo 3 battery life <24 hours

[LordNelson]

I have two Arlo Pro 3 cameras installed in the front of my house.  They have been in place for well over a year.  There's a lot of activity so I generally only get a few weeks battery life out of them, which is fine.  About 2 weeks ago both cameras started going through batteries in less than 24 hours.  No changes were made to the camera configurations - in fact we weren't even home at the time.  Both cameras have excellent signal strength to the hub.  I have tried different batteries in the cameras to no avail.  I then took the cameras down, brought them inside to within 6' of the hub and each other, and shut off motion detection.  They detected nothing for 24 hours, just sat there, and they STILL ran through the batteries in 24 hours.  In the mean time I took two spare Arlo 3s and put them on the same hub, with the same batteries, in the same location, and they are working fine.  

I opened a case with Support and they have determined that both cameras spontaneously developed a hardware problem that is causing them to eat batteries.  They suggest I either hard-wire the power or replace the cameras.  I find it somewhat hard to believe that both cameras would develop the same exact issue at the same exact time.  I asked them if there was a firmware update they pushed to the cameras but of course I got no for an answer.  Their suggestion to replace the two Arlos seems to be a cop-out and frankly given my experience with these two any replacement will probably be another brand.

Any suggestions before I toss them and go with something else?

[jguerdat]

Move a camera closer to the hub to see if there's a difference. There may be 2.4GHz interference going on that wasn't there before so check for any new/moved wireless devices that use that band. You can also try moving the hub away from the router.

[StephenB]

Maybe also try swapping batteries between a camera that has the problem and one that doesn't.   Then see if the problem moves with the battery or not.

[LordNelson]

<<Move a camera closer to the hub to see if there's a difference. There may be 2.4GHz interference going on that wasn't there before so check for any new/moved wireless devices that use that band. You can also try moving the hub away from the router.>>

Good suggestion, already tried that.  I move the cameras right next to the hub for 24 hours, no change.  Then I moved them about 6 feet away from the hub and 6 feet away from each other, no change.  And the two replacement cameras in the original position do not suffer from the same issue.

[LordNelson]

<<Maybe also try swapping batteries between a camera that has the problem and one that doesn't.   Then see if the problem moves with the battery or not.>>

Yup, tried that too.  Three different batteries in each camera.  No change.   And the batteries work fine in other cameras.

[ajtz]

Experiencing the same with my Essential XL Spotlight - after going offline, recharging to full, the device again goes offline within 18-24 hours. I've factory reset the device, removed/re-added to the account..

I suspect a firmware update in mid-August led to the device constantly pinging the network (and thus draining its battery), but Arlo Support instead blames the router (no settings have been changed and troubleshooting there does not yield any new results). Interestingly, the device still pings the network when turned off via the app (so 'Offline' does not actually mean offline.) Support mentioned that a firmware rollback was impossible so my device is virtually left unusable.

[LordNelson]

That's roughly the same time my two cameras started acting up.   Mine both use their proprietary wifi hubs, not my wifi network, so I have no visibility to what is going on with them.  After a couple of factory resets I can't even get these guys to pair correctly.  They try and appear to re-pair but any time I try to view the camera it times out.  So... thanks, Arlo.  You just bricked two $250 cameras for me.

They were nice enough to offer me a 30% discount on a new pair... I asked if they applied toward the purchase of Ring cameras instead.

[ajtz]

I have a small update - the camera goes offline within TWO hours actually. Placed face down literally inches away from the router. Let me know what ecosystem you end up migrating to please!

[LordNelson]

I've got a lot invested in Arlo... I may just call my security company and have them put in the real thing instead of playing around with these pseudo-security cameras.

I actually found a list of firmware updates online and it does look like the last firmware update was last May... but there was an update to the hub itself on 9/1.  I bet that's what did it.