Arlo Pro Battery Dead On Arrival

[jasonEm]

All,

Looking for some advice here:

1. Bought a new, 3 camera Arlo Pro kit with base station over Black Friday from Amazon
2. Finally got around to setting it up this past weekend
3. One of the batteries was dead out of the box
4. This obviously had me a little concerned about whether or not I got a "bad batch" 
5. The other 2 batteries showed full battery on the app after installation, so i figured they were good to go. This was Saturday
6. I put them in my kitchen temporarily while I figured out precisely where I wanted to place them
7. This is a fairly high traffic area right now
8. By Wednesday (5 days after setup) both batteries were down to 15% life

So, a couple questions

1. Is the battery life in high traffic areas really poor? Is it worth setting these up in high traffic areas?
2. Or do you guys think I received a bad set of batteries?
3. Should I return to Amazon and get a replacement, a refund, or should i try to work through Arlo customer service/support? 

Thank you!

[pc2k17]

When I bought my system in summer 2017 the specs for the batteries were 2-4 months of life with 5 minutes or less of video recording and live viewing per day. They later changed that to 4-6 months. How long the batteries last depends on how many minutes of recording and live viewing your doing. How many minutes do you do when the batteries dropped quickly?

My busiest camera gets 20-30 minutes per day and lasts about 60 days or so. My least busiest camera gets equal to or less than 5 minutes per day and that one lasted 118 days on the last charge. Signla strength and interference play a part as well.

If your looking at hours of recordings a day, I'd just plug the camera in (if your able to). 

[jasonEm]

So how can I determine how many hours any given device has recorded? I just realized that one device had 1000+ alerts over the course of those days...looks look about 30 sec per recording so a little over 8hours per camera if my math is correct. This is all default factory settings...kind of blown away by that number of alerts though. Again this was like 5days, so we are getting 200 alerts a day. Again I had parked these in the corner of the kitchen. We do have family in town so I am sure they are setting it off but still...

[pc2k17]

Only way to guesstimate is to do as you did, just kind of add it up. Just look in the library for a given day and camera (use the filter) and add them up. So if you averaged 200 alerts a day and each time it recorded 30 secs, you'd have 100 minutes per day at that would be why the batteries drained so quickly. That's 20 times the recommended recording time to get 4-6 months out of the batteries. Most people just disarm interior cameras while home, maybe turn them back on when they go to bed, so if this is the location your going to leave the camera in just use modes and either schedule arm disarm times or disarm while home or have it alert you but not record. Whatever you decide, on batteries, you'll have to cut down on the time its currently recording.

[jasonEm]

Alright I have found the likely source of battery drain. The camera motion gets triggered repeatedly. For example one night it was triggered at 6:03 for 23 seconds then again at 6:03 for 30 seconds again at 6:04 for 14 seconds and again at 6:04 for 48 seconds. In other words 4 triggers in the span of 2 minutes. I see multiple instances of this...this has got to be killing the battery, I imagine?

[pc2k17]

Was it triggered by people or pets or seemingly nothing at all? You may need to adjust the sensitivity because something is setting it off. I have all my cameras record for 45 seconds or 1 minute. I feel it's better to have one longer video if there's constant motion, rather than five 20 second videos. I also disarn interior cameras and turn then off automatically when I'm home using smartthings and arlo pilot.

For example in the kitchen one might walk in and open the frig and camera starts recording, then you stand and stare wondering what do I want, at which time the camera stops detecting motion and stops recording, then you move a bit and it starts again, then stops, then starts again, until you finally grab some food. Constant waking up of the cameras and starting of recording drains batteries qucker too (yes the cameras sleep when inactive). If record length was 1 minute the camera would have only woken up and started reording once.

[jasonEm]

Ha! Yeah it is definitely something like that. We have family in town and just scanning the recordings, I can see someone in the kitchen in most, if not all recordings. Thanks so much for helping me sleuth this out a bit. I really like the cameras themselves, just have to figure out how to make them work for me.

Clearly leaving the motion detection on in the kitchen is not the right move. I also have Smartthings and didn't know I could link them with Arlo, that is a nice bit of news I will investigate further. Sounds like you are saying you can use smart things and Arlo Pilot (what is this?) to turn off motion detection when you are home and turn it back on when you are out or maybe at night when you goto sleep?

What is your take on the one battery that showed up dead? Should I just charge it and be content or do you think i should pressure Arlo to give me a new battery (with the thought that if it showed up dead, there might be something wrong with it?)

[pc2k17]

Glad to help.

Arlo (Connect) lets you add your base and cameras as things in SmartThings. ST will see them as cameras, switches, and motion sensors. You can then use those sensors in your routines, smart lighting, etc. Here is the link to connect Arlo cameras.

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/209529506-Netgear-Arlo-Wire-Free-Camera/?cid=us-ar...

Arlo Pilot is a custom smart app that was created by a smartthings developer. It allows you to have smarthings change the Arlo mode automatically based on the smartthings Smart Home Monitor state or by a "things" state. For example when I get home I have a trigger that changes Smart Home Monitor to disarmed. When Arlo Pilot detects the disarm state it then changes the Arlo mode to disarmed. No need to go into the Arlo app. I also have routines to turn off the cameras in SmartThings, since it see them as switches (like a light switch). The on/off state is based on the same trigger I use to change the SHM state. I set up home and away custom modes in Arlo and use those is Arlo Pilot. You can use geofencing or an arrival sensor or maybe an open/close sensor on a garage door to trigger the SHM to switch to arm/disarm which then changes the Arlo mode. It's pretty slick. I am using it in the SmartThings Classic app. Not sure if it works in the new ST app. Link...

https://community.smartthings.com/t/release-arlopilot-enhanced-arlo-system-integration/117581