Pro 5S Battery Life

[DblA]

I recently upgraded from an original Arlo Pro to the Pro 5S. I'm finding that I only get about a week of battery life. Is this typical or did I get a bad battery?

The camera picks up my dog walking by, so it is activated 20-30 times per day generally for 30 seconds or less. The older Pro was able to go at least a couple of months between charges in this scenario.

[StephenB]

@DblA wrote: 
 

I recently upgraded from an original Arlo Pro to the Pro 5S. I'm finding that I only get about a week of battery life. Is this typical or did I get a bad battery?

It's not typical.  But not sure that it's the battery.

@DblA wrote: 
 

The camera picks up my dog walking by, so it is activated 20-30 times per day generally for 30 seconds or less. The older Pro was able to go at least a couple of months between charges in this scenario.

So 10-15 minutes of recording per day?

Do you have activity zones enabled?

[DblA]

Thinking about it some more, I have had some additional performance issues: occasional glitchy videos, missed recordings, and slow response times when trying to change settings in the app. So it's possible that there is a problem with the camera itself, and the battery drain is secondary to that.

10-15 minutes per day is about right; I just added up the last two days and each one was just under 14 minutes of total recording.

As for troubleshooting, I have already tried deleting and re-adding the camera to my base station. I was thinking about trying to connect the camera via wifi instead, but I have a Google Wifi mesh system which won't allow me to manually disable the 5 GHz band.

[StephenB]

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@DblA wrote:

but I have a Google Wifi mesh system which won't allow me to manually disable the 5 GHz band.

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My Orbi won't either, but that didn't prevent me from onboarding the Pro 5s to my wifi.  So you could try it.

Note the Pro 5s is dual-band.

[JamesC · Accepted solution]

DblA,

Poor battery life could also be an indication of a signal strength issue (WiFi interference or range). What does the signa strength icon show for your cameras?

JamesC

[DblA]

The camera is relatively far from the base station, but the strength is showing as strong. And my older camera worked fine in the exact same location.

[DblA]

The app told me I needed to be on 2.4 GHz to onboard the camera, but after that it could use 5 GHz. I was going to try going to the edge of my wifi's range where I'm more likely to pick up the 2.4 band. Was that what you did?

[StephenB]

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@DblA wrote:

The app told me I needed to be on 2.4 GHz to onboard the camera, but after that it could use 5 GHz. I was going to try going to the edge of my wifi's range where I'm more likely to pick up the 2.4 band. Was that what you did?

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No, I just ignored the message in the app.

The issue with dual band is that sometimes the packets that the app uses to find the camera during installation aren't forwarded by the router between the 2.4 ghz and 5 ghz networks.  But I didn't run into that problem with my Orbi router.  FWIW, Arlo really needs to deploy a better way of onboarding - the current methods have too much friction.

Have you tried onboarding from a PC (browsing to my.arlo.com)?  That sometimes works with the browser fails.

Another thing you could try is turning off the wifi in the router, and creating a phone hotspot that uses the same network name/password as the router does.  Then see if you can onboard to the hotspot.  After that works, you can switch back to the router wifi, and the doorbell should connect.

Note that

1. the wifi security needs to allow WPA2 (AES)
2. punctuation/special characters in the wifi name or password might not be accepted

Unfortunately the only workaround for (2) is to remove the characters from the wifi credentials.

[TomMac]

To work on the Orbi, you can LOWER the 5ghz side down to 25% IIRC, this was enough to allow me to onboard the Pro5...

(Telnet use to allow disabling the 5ghz side but in newer Orbi SW no longer works )

[StephenB]

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@TomMac wrote:

To work on the Orbi, you can LOWER the 5ghz side down to 25% IIRC, this was enough to allow me to onboard the Pro5...

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Interesting.  FWIW, I've never needed to do that with any Arlo camera, and have been using various Orbi routers since 2016.  I keep the transmit power for both bands at 100%.

The Pro 5s is dual band, so it seems to me that in most cases the phone and the camera will both end up connecting to the same radio anyway.

[DblA]

@StephenB thanks for the tips about onboarding from the web browser and ignoring the wifi band issue. Both of those worked well for me, and I was able to get the camera connected to my network. Now to watch what happens with battery life over the next few days...

[DblA]

Marking this as solved based on the battery lasting much longer after connecting to wifi instead of my base station. The battery still seems to run down significantly faster than the original Arlo Pro that I had in the same location, but overall it's acceptable. Adding a solar panel will probably the the ultimate solution for me.

[StephenB]

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@DblA wrote:

Adding a solar panel will probably the the ultimate solution for me.

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You should also be able to use the XL upgrade kit to increase the battery life.

[thesaint580]

I have the same problem. I wouldnt mark this as solved as connecting to wifi and not base station is a work around. If connected to Wifi, you cant live stream it in 2k. And during firmware updates, I have seen one of the cameras drop by 25% if its on Wifi. 

[JamesC]

thesaint580,

The development team is currently investigating a solution to further improve battery life. I will provide an update as soon as I have more information available.

JamesC

[thesaint580]

Thank you. Please keep us posted. I was using older Pros and it lasted 5-6 months. With 5S, with no change in recording length or frequency of recordings, I will be lucky if I get half this battery life. Definitely not what I was expecting with the newer cameras. Thanks. 

[RGF-AL]

I consider my purchase of the Pro 5 as a waste of my money - the battery life is abysmal, network connectivity fragmented, and it's in the same location as an essential spotlight camera that performs well in comparison.

[JamesC]

RGF-AL,

Poor connectivity can cause increased battery drain. This could be why you're experiencing poor battery life. If you temporarily relocate the camera closer to your router to test, do you still experience the same behavior?

JamesC

[thesaint580]

@JamesC  any update on the battery life when connected to base station and if the new firmware is of any help? As I previously mentioned, my older Pro's were in the same exact location and the battery was very good. I am not even getting 1/3 of the battery life with 5S when these are connected to base station. Strangely, the battery drain seems to be slower when connected to wifi. 

[JamesC]

While some battery life improvements were made with the most recent firmware release (yesterday), the unexpected battery usage you're experiencing may be due to a connectivity issue, if the performance is better when connected to WiFi. Now that this firmware is available, I encourage you to monitor to see if you experience better results.

JamesC

[RGF-AL]

I tried to update firmware, status states no firmware update available. my version is 1.040.26.2_56_6649b4f, hardware is VMC4060AerH4 and SN is A9M1297HD1449.  Still not very pleased with this camera.

[JamesC]

RGF-AL,

The firmware associated with the S/N you've provided is 1.040.27.4_48_e6ca6b3, which is the most recent firmware released on 6/12.

I encourage you to monitor your cameras behavior now that it has this firmware to see if you experience better battery life.

JamesC