I need to update everyone on my Arlo Pro camera offline massive frustrations, now SOLVED!

[RustyLittle]

So I created a discussion about cameras going offline frequently more than a month ago. The worst offender would stay online for about 30 hours before going offline again. I was about to throw the whole system in the trash. I got no useful information from others or from Netgear support. To review, I had the system for 10 months, and everything worked perfectly. I made no changes to my house, no changes to the equipment, including position of the base, etc. Nothing changed, except, I assume, a software update. Boom! Problems gallore!!!!!! I discovered the reason for going offline was the batteries were now suddenly draining quickly. They used to last a month or more and were now lasting a day or two. The batteries draining so rapidly, I did not see a low battery warning. I only saw cameras had gone offline with no explanation. 

I have been a low level, machine level and medical imaging, software developer for 28 years, and have my opinion what the Arlo engineers did to cause this change in behavior. But I won't get into that. What I surmised is that what I believed they did was now causing this very rapid battery drain. I made a settings change to my worst offending camera based on my hunch. I reduced the Motion Sensitivity value for the camera. I reduced it by more than half. It still picks up people and records with no problems. It works like it used to before. That camera has now been online, with a battery that currently has more than 75% charge, for 3 weeks. This is the camera that wouldn't stay online for more than a day or two. I have now changed the Motion Sensitivity value for all of my cameras. Everything is back to normal. Cameras record what they should. Batteries aren't draining quickly. Back to a no hassle system. So if you are having this problem, and you have default sensitivity, I recommend reducing this setting. It is found by selecting the Mode where cameras are active. The default is "Armed." Edit a camera you are having issues with by finding the setting in "Motion is detected", assuming you have that checked.

I really hope my solution helps others that have been struggling with this issue.

[pc2k17]

Interesting......... I have my sensitivity set to 90% on 2 cameras and 100% on two and my batteries last 2-3 months recording 40-75 1 minute long videos per day. I wonder if one of the firmware updates didn't install correctly on your base. I do know last night after the second missing Mode tab fix was implemented that all my cameras started detecting motion even though 3 of them were turned off (disabled). Doing this for several hours drained the batteries from over 50% to under 5%. No videos were recorded because the cameras were turned off, but the IR lights lite up everytime they detected motion even though they were off, and being inside the cameras were liting up every few seconds. Two reboots of the base and my router fixed the issue.

I wonder if your experienceing a simliar event where the cameras are constantly detecting motion even when disarmed or off and that drains the battery. Turning the sensitivity down would lower the dection thus extending battery life for you. Idk, just throwing some info out there for you. At least your working good now.

[RustyLittle]

I rebooted many times. I removed all devices and re-setup the whole system - more than once. I checked firmware versions of cameras and base. Believe me, I tried everything considered standard solutions. And a few others. I spent weeks trying to get my investment working properly again.

My cameras are all outdoor. It's almost always windy were I am. Shadows are moving constantly, as well as a few items that flap, move or ripple in the wind. I firmly believe a software update changed the way motion is detected and analyzed. My problems with my Arlo Pro coincided with the release of the Arlo Pro 2 system. As you may know, it has motion regions and other new advanced features. To use the advanced features, cameras have to be plugged into an electrical outlet, because they require a lot of power to process. I believe the Arlo engineers changed their algorithms as part of the development of the Arlo Pro 2. These new and improved basic algorithms made their way into updates of the Arlo Pro. Not the new features, but the foundation that makes the new faetures tick when turned on. So both systems have the same foundation. It makes maintenance and productivity much better for Netgear to do so. Believe me, I live in this world. A common source base. I have absolutely no proof of this. But it's what I would do. It's what everyone I know in this type of business would do.

All of my cameras have a field of view that is not mainly stagnant. I do not mean people walking around like a commercial location. I mean, as stated above, lots of little movements like shadows changing shapes. For someone that has mainly stagnant images, my solution would not apply. But I have seen many make the exact same complaint about cameras suddenly changing behavior and going offline, just like me. My solution could apply, and I hope that I help others. I doubt we all suddenly had a simulataneous bad update. It's much more likely the update changed the behavior, affecting people with similar circumstances. Time will tell if I hear from others that benefited from my experience.

[pc2k17]

I remember your posts and followed everything you did. I know you tried everything and none of it helped. I just wanted to add info on what happened to me which drained the batteries on my cameras. I'm an engineer myself (working in IT) and it certainly plausable that Arlo changed something that affected cameras in certain situations. It's also plausable that many, maybe thousands, got a update that didn't install right. Perfect example.....

Today as I walk into work I'm greeted by the Executive Director of IT telling me there is a major problem. It seems the engineering team in Spain (global headquarters) decided to push out a McAfee DLP update to USA computers without telling us and letting us test first. They pushed it to about 6000 computers and on about 2000 of them we find out the update broke all USB functionality, which meant the end users mouse and keyboard stopped working. Without those, 2000 computers were dead in the water. We still haven't figured out yet why 4000 updated fine and 2000 didn't. I was too busy writing a custom script to push out to fix the 2000 that were broke, we'll investigate more on Monday. But it just goes to show how an update can go right for many and wrong for others. And those situations usually happen because not enough testing was done, as was the case at my work, and could be the case with Arlo.

As I mentioned my cameras are all inside the house and inside the garage so only people and pets can set them off, no wind or shawdows or anything like you have, so my situaton is different, but I'm hoping what you believe happened isn't the case as I'm considering outside cameras now as well and I have lots of woods/trees on my property. Either way thanks for coming back and posting what you found out and what worked for you. Keep us updated on how it goes.