Arlo Pro with a permeant charge cord

[DonM122]

I have an Arlo Pro on outside of my house. I drilled a hole to run power cord from outside to inside the house. I ordered a longer charge cord made for outdoors. I have it all hooked up and it is working. I was wondering if it is better to leave the

battery in the camera or take the battery out ? I would assume better to take it out since it does not need the battery as I am using a charge cord. Your thoughts ?

[jguerdat · Accepted solution]

Personal preference. Leaving the battery in would allow the cam to work in a power outage although you'd also need a UPS to keep the modem, router and base alive, too.

[pc2k17]

I would leave the battery in and get a UPS for your internet modem, router, and the Arlo base. That way, if the power goes out, your cameras and internet will still work (as long as the internet didn't go down too for something like a storm, ect). And even if the internet also went down, if you hook a usb thumb drive to the Arlo base and turn on recording to the thumb drive as well as the cloud, then your cameras still work without power and internet. Battery in, UPS, thumb drive and your good to go.

[JPC]

Also to add, if someone wants to steal your cam, if you don't have your battery, cam will go offline right away by cutting/unplugging the cord  and recording is ended. If you have your battery, it will have time to record that person getting the cam in close up action hopefully.. 

[firetitan]

I did exactly the same thing as you, I left the batteries in and plugged the outdoor cable into power.

What was interesting was the battery percentage did not go up , it went down and once one of the cameras

got to 1% the camera was disabled the message being "It's time to charge your bateries"

So not sure if its just the one camera as all the others were over 50% , I just took all the batteries out as I did not want 

to be caught out when the battery charge went to 0% and the camera got disabled.

I am suspicious that the software algorithm might be wonky and disable the camera when the charge is low even if it is connected to power

I have 6 high up below the roof so its a pain to go up there.

Good luck, maybe a good idea to test indoors first, let the battery go very low till 3% and then plug the power in and see if

your camera gets disabled like mine at 1%, hopefully not.

The symbol I have when the battery is in , is the battery symbol with a lightinng bolt inside

When I take the battery out and plug into power the symbol changed to a black plug symbol

So my advice is take the battery out as you dont want to get caught out like I did

Another thing if you have the cylindrical mount you need to take the tightening wheel off as you wont be able to get the power plug in the camera , but I bought a later model mount and it fit ok without taking it off, so make sure you get the new model mount not sure how you can tell though

Also when you are high up on a ladder its difficult to insert that power plug into the camera so make sure you do a trial run before you go up on the ladder !!

Good Luck and let me know how you go

Cheers

Firetitan

[firetitan]

An update , my one webcam which was disabled due to battery being at 1% after a few days started suddenly charging and charged back to 100%
So now it shows a battery symbol with a lighting bolt inside but in a black color