Arlo pro4 solar panel unfunctional

[MiataMx5]

Hi all, not sure anyone has the same issue with me or not. I just post it to anyone who may struggle in solar panel charging. First I have 4 pro4 camera and only have Arlo solar panel for front door camera. Everything was fine at the first a couple of months but there was a heavy rain one night and after that the panel would not charge and the camera would be offline and could not connect back with unpluging the battery (need to remove and add it again). I trouble shoot for a couple of hours and connected and disconnected the camera for many times. Finally I found there must be some issue with the solar panel. To be specific, when a working camera is connected to a uncharging solar panel (no sunlight, I tested at night and also with a cover to stop the sunlight), the camera would work normally. No offline issue. But when there was sunlight coming into the panel the indicator of camera would turn to orange and after a couple of minutes, the camera would become offline and would not connect back when connecting with a base hub (when connected to wifi directly, there was a chance that the camera might be back online). At the beginning I also thought my front door camera might be fualty so I changed a functional camera and connected the solar panel. The disconnection issue happened again on the new camera. I had raised this issue to the customer service but they did not think that the solar panel could have impact on the camera. Because the solar panel is within warranty so I insisted to get it replaced. After replacing it, everything is back to normal. However today, 3 months after the replacement, the same comes back this morning. Also bad weather these days, the camera are also offline and cannot sync it back. What surprises me is that when I remove the cable from camera the connector between camera and solar panel is wet. Not sure whether this sola panel can meet the water proof level as Arlo advertised. I get it replaced again and everything is back to normal again. I have purchased a third party solar panel last month (only 1/6 of Arlo's price). I wanna have a long time test to see whether the Arlo's solar panel is reliable or not.

[JamesC]

MiataMx5,

Have you tried testing the solar panel on any of your other cameras to see if you experience consistent behavior?

JamesC

[MiataMx5]

Yes. As I mentioned when my front door camera became unfunctional, I think my camera might become faulty so I exchanged my back yard camera which was working normally to front door. Once the solar panel was connected to the back yard camera, it went offline as well. That's why I did a further investigation on the solar panel. Every camera can work well with battery but once a faulty solar panel is connected, the camera will be offline.