Arlo solar icon not showing.

[Carioca88]

Hello all. Just got my Arlo Pro 5, and the the Arlo solar panel pro. (To replace my old Arlos)
The solar panel is Model 

‎VMA5600B-20000S

I charged the battery, with regular power, and it charged fine. I stopped at 95%. 
As of now, the battery is down to 92%. And since I installed the solar panel, I’m not getting the solar panel icon, and I’m getting an error as soon as I connect. The error says: “unable to charge battery. Connect a compatible Arlo charger to the device”—-

I read about the firmware update fix. The camera did a firmware update when I did the set up. The current firmware is 1.040.26.1_48_00482f9. 
Any troubleshooting ideas?
Many thanks!

[ShayneS]

There has been a firmware update: 1.040.26.2_56_6649b4f that should help resolve this issue. Please let me know if you are still experiencing this after your cameras have updated. 

Thank you 

[Carioca88]

No progress.  I still have a camera connected to a solar panel and not charging. 
When you call tech support tomorrow, make sure they get your phone number, in case you get disconnected.

I confess that by now, I was expecting a couple words added to my ticket.  

[jguerdat]

Nothing new to report. Yup, it's broke.

[Carioca88]

Thanks for testing it again.

I have some promising news. 
Tech Level Support 3 just called me, and discussed the issue. He requested some pictures of my setup, some screen shots of the app, and also a dump of the OS Arlo Log.  I provided all the requested material as I was on the phone with him. 
He raised a level 3 support ticket and will be attending a meeting with the engineers today and this issue will be discussed.  

He believes that it might be a firmware issue. I mentioned that on my ticket several times and to all the level 1 support techs. I might be right. I hope I am, and we get a fix for this issue, and all users will benefit from it. 

As soon as I have more news, I will report back here. 

[Arlo-help2]

That sounds encouraging…..hopefully they can figure it out and get a fix that resolves it.  Really wrong that they have a solar panel that doesn’t work with the pro 5s camera.  Meanwhile my battery continues to drain…

[ShayneS]

Hi,

Thank you for all your feedback. The Arlo development team is currently investigating this issue. We will provide an update as soon as we have more information to share with the community.

[Carioca88]

I have some very good news to report. A few minutes ago, I got the grey icon!
I disconnected the solar from the camera and connected again, and I got a green icon and it shows as charging!!!!!

I exchanged emails with level 3 support and he believes a fix was made. But he will confirme it and get back to me. And of course, I will come back here to report….

[ShayneS]

@Carioca88 

Thank you for the update. I am monitoring these reports as well. 

[Carioca88]

Not too soon.
Went to check the camera, and the ‘sun’ icon was gray. I disconnected the solar panel and connected back and it changed to green. But I don’t think it’s charging, despite the icon saying that it is.
Since when I connected the solar panel to the camera today, the battery was at about 45%, and I read that we should have the battery at or above 95% before connecting the panel, I’m giving it another chance.
So I’m currently charging the battery at home, up to 100%, then I will connect the solar panel 
We should have some sun in NY this weekend. I will leave it on solar, and report back.  

[Arlo-help2]

Mine still isn’t working.  I have a gray solar icon…..so not charging.  (The camera was charged to 100% 4 days ago but now at 68%)  I haven’t had a green solar icon in 4-5 days.  Up its like it doesn’t recognize that it is connected to a solar panel to charge it.  
I haven’t  had a chance to disconnect the solar cable from the pro 5s camera and reconnect it.  it’s raining right now so not a good time to disconnect and reconnect since no sun is present.

[Carioca88]

Yeah.  Definitely not fixed yet. My sun icon changed from green to gray after an hour or so, and back to green if remove the cable and put it back. But the charge does not appear to be happening, looks a lot like the firmware issue from two months ago, affecting the lower models. Or related to a new issue I just discovered. 
The battery level stays the same, when connected to power. After several relaunches, it changed from 45% to 65%.  But for the last 45 minutes, it has not moved up not even 1%.  Despite the several restarts. My internet connection is pretty stable. So not sure what’s happening. 

[Arlo-help2]

This is what mine was doing.  From 3-19-23 it was charging with a green icon and keeping battery levels between 98%-100%.  
Then on around 4-3-23 it had a green solar icon like it was charging but the battery was showing 87% and didn’t change at all even after hours of a green icon showing it was charging.  Then the icon turned to gray and still only charged to 87%.  Unplugged solar cable and green solar icon back on and did charge for a few hours and got up to 99% but then the icon changed and has not charged since.  Icon has been gray or missing.  Battery level is now 68%.

Both the brand new pro 5s camera and brand new Solar panel installed on 3-19-23.

just not working…..

please  Arlo fix this issue.  

My past experience is with a pro 2 camera with a solar panel that was in the same location as this pro 5s camera. It worked flawlessly in keeping the camera charged at 100%….( I replaced my pro 2 camera with this new 5s camera)

[Carioca88]

I’m exchanging many emails with the Level 3 support (same as this morning) as we speak. 
They acknowledge that we have an issue. I sent them all logs and screen shots. 
This was pretty much my full time job today. 
I will keep posting here, as I get more information. 

[Arlo-help2]

Thanks for your all your efforts with level 3 Technical support to get them to resolve this issue ……thanks for keeping us updated

[Carioca88]

As mentioned above, I charged my camera via regular power all the way to 100%, and placed it outside last night. 
This morning was very cloudy. The app had the grey sun icon (for me that is already a great improvement). At about 12pm, the camera battery level was at 94%. The solar panel did not have direct sun light at this time.

At about 1pm, the icon changed to green and the camera started to charge via the solar panel. 
In about an hour or so, the camera battery level jumped to 100%. And after that, the icon changed back to grey. As expected. 
Did we get it fixed? 
Can you guys do a quick test, before we celebrate the accomplishment? 

[jguerdat]

Just tried it here. I didn't get the gray sun icon but when I moved the panel into direct sunlight I did get the charging indication (lightning bolt through the battery) so it appears to have been fixed. 

My camera firmware is the same as noted here:

https://community.arlo.com/t5/Firmware-Release-Notes/Arlo-Pro-5s-2K-VMC4060-1-040-26-1-48-00482f9-23...

which was back at the end of March (a week and half or so ago) so I tend to doubt it was a firmware update as opposed to something in the backend. 

[Carioca88]

One thing I noticed is that the gray icon is so light, that if you don’t look very close it is almost just a space between two icons. 
It’s so light that I went back to my screen shots from last week just to make sure the icon was really not there as I was reporting. And I confirmed that last week the camera was definitely not connecting.  
When I woke up today, the camera was at 95%. 
No direct sunlight but the grey icon was there. At 12:30pm, with direct sunlight, still not charging. But at about 1pm, it started to charge. So I guess it not only need sunlight, but strong, continuous sunlight. 
In about 20 minutes, it went from 95% to 98%.  So good, promising news. 
This is the first day that I have not done a disconnect and connect back. 
One interesting unrelated thing happened yesterday. The video started to flicker at a very high speed. I was afraid that another issue was starting…but I moved the camera’s direction a little bit, restarted it, and that fixed the problem. 

[Arlo-help2]

I disconnected my yesterday and reconnected.  The green solar icon came on when I reconnected the cable and appeared to be charging but it only went from 63% to 66% then went to grey when the sun went down.   Today it is charging but it is cloudy sun and it is now charged to 83%.  So moving in the right direction.  I know it may take a while since the solar panel is a trickle charger and I don’t have full sun today.  We will see if it continues to charge and gets to 100%.  Hopefully this is working better now foe whatever reason….

[Arlo-help2]

Update:

so it’s been three days since I unplugged the cable and plugged it back in.  It was charging and went from 63% to 83% on the first day, the second day charged from 80% to 90% and today it charged to 100% and the icon went to gray as it should when the camera is charged to 100% so it seems to be working at the moment.  A size note is it has been very cloudy for the last 8 days and today is the first “sunny”.  So the camera not charging began about 9 days ago.  Not sure if something was fixed or if this solar panel for the pro 5s camera just has to have full sun or it just drains the battery and doesn’t charge even though the icon is green and it indicates it is charging when in fact it is draining the battery.  .  Sun is not usually an issue in my location but we do have periods of cloudy/rainy days but it doesn’t seem to affect my solar panel that is connected to my pro 2 camera.  (It got down to 90-92% during this same time)

So this newer panel with 5s camera perform differently for sure…

[Carioca88]

Great news. It looks like they believed us and did fix the problem. I’m pretty happy about it, since it took over two weeks of phone calls and emails,

a large number of messages here, + 2 cameras, 3 solar panels, and having to return 1 camera and 2 solar panels via FEDEX and UPS, just to prove that I have the skills to install a camera and the problem was not hardware nor software.

Since this weekend, my camera goes down to 95% at night and during the day, the solar panel brings it to 100%. 

I would love to know how they fixed it, if anyone here has the info.

[ShayneS]

There has been a firmware update: 1.040.26.2_56_6649b4f that should help resolve this issue. Please let me know if you are still experiencing this after your cameras have updated. 

Thank you 

[Arlo-help2]

Shayne S…..That is the current firmware I have on my Pro 5s cameras. So it appears that the firmware was updated on all my 5s cameras.   I currently only have a solar panel on one 5s camera but will be adding solar panels to my other pro 5s cameras.  Thank you for implementing a fix by updating the firmware to get these solar panel working properly.  
[It has been very frustrating with dealing with the solar panel not working and keeping the camera charged ( actually it was draining the battery)] 

[Carioca88]

@ShayneS  The firmware update to

1.040.26.2_56_6649b4f fixed the problem. 

The firmware that my camera was running during this whole issue was 

1.040.26.1_48_00482f9. 

[Arlo-help2]

Carioca88……….Yes my pro 5s cameras had firmware (1.040.26.2_56_6649b4f) that you listed in your original post but now they all have the new firmware (1.040.26.2_56_6649b4f).  which seems to be working.  Thank you for your perseverance with Arlo Technical 3 support to get this resolved.  
I’m not sure when the firmware updated but I’m guessing about 4 days ago

[Carioca88 · Accepted solution]

A week passed, and I think we can consider this issue resolved. 
The new firmware, without any changes on our side (hardware and software) fixed the problem.  

[Arlo-help2]

Mine is still working correctly.  Added another solar panel to a second 5s camera.  Both are keeping the cameras charged.  So yes I think the firmware update fixed the issue.