Arlo|Smart Home Security|Wireless HD Security Cameras

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Shammy
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Star

Why does my camera night infrared come on when I have the camera set to off?

1,152 REPLIES 1,152
Wklovelace3
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
The field trial is not working for me. Mine have stayed at 100% since my field trial started. Over 100 videos battery should not still be at 100 days later
Pocohenna
Aspirant
Aspirant

I have the same issue with battery drain all of a sudden, even when I turned camera off.  Based on what I've seen from these posts, I will recharge my battery, turn the camera off and disarm it to see if that helps.  Otherwise, I hope Arlo gets this fixed as I've only had the system for a year.

Wklovelace3
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
Leave it on then disarm. Disarming is turning off the motion detection . when you turn off the problem is worse
ysu
Luminary
Luminary

Hi all, while we are waiting for Netgear to fix the bug, if you suffer from frequent battery charge, this workaround worked for me for last 2 weeks. I still have ~70% left after 2 weeks. I think it's still shorter than before they broke it, but if it lasts 6 weeks instead of a few days, you climb ladders less. Unless you are ready to lose a few hundred dollars of investment, this is practically what we can do while pushing Netgear to actually fix it.

 

I put some visual instructions for easier following as all other instructions were text only. Note that after all this is a hack so there might be inconsistency on the results so YMMV. If it helps at all, credit goes to whoever found this trick and recommended it to me.

 

Key steps:

 

1. Create a custom disarm mode that uses one "sacrifice" camera as the trigger (only for the purpose of letting the app setup the mode -- you need at least one trigger), and don't even mention any other camera. All cameras other than the sacrifice camera will be protected from excessive drain. So, choose the most easily reachable / least motion camera as your "sacrifice camera"

 

2. Now when you don't need monitoring, use this special disarm mode, not the standard disarm.

 

3. If you use schedule (potentially in conjunction with geofence), fill your blank/off hours with this special disarm mode too. And avoid whole hour bounday. Always do :01 and :59 (half hour seems to be OK, though I chose to do :29 and :31 sometimes, just to be paranoid). There is another schedule bug with whole hour boundary, which complicated the situation. If you check all days of a week, manually check each day to make sure the schedule is correct. With whole hour boundaries, some days are randomly missing. :01/:59 should help avoid that.

 

Good luck!

 

IMG_2189.jpg

 

 

 

joedex5715
Aspirant
Aspirant
I have the same battery problem!
paddos
Apprentice
Apprentice
Read today in different thread but same problem that the new field test did not work at least for customer using trial. Indicated that the battery readings were stuck on 100% after numerous recordings. The battery reading issue along with rapid drain on off, disarm and with night vision turned off is a carry over from the mid May change. He could not tell if the drain issue was resolved because of stuck battery reading. So, looks the long awaited fix may not be working. Any one else on the field trial having any "luck."
maxkatz
Aspirant
Aspirant

Looks like the same battery issue here (at least with one camera). I charged two cameras around May 31. One of them is at 43% today, but the other one is at 98%. I used to get good 5-6 months out of each camera/batery. 

 

Base station firmware: 1.10.0.4_20963

Camera firmware: 1.092.0.13_19715

 

Thyg0d
Apprentice
Apprentice

@pc2k17

Okay... That's even more odd.. 

The drain should be 100% worse with them on as they act as sensors all the time.. 😄
I'm running them in SmartThings though so I can't choose wether to turn them on or off, if they're on they record constantly. 

 

Wklovelace3
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
When disarmed there not really on. They are on but disarmed turns off the motion detection. Its kind of a stand by mode.
rtrembecki
Aspirant
Aspirant

Same here, two systems suffering extremely poor battery life since the firmware update.

pc2k17
Hero
Hero

@Thyg0d

 

Ya that's the problem, when off they are still acting as sensors.

 

I'm using the cameras in smartthings as well. You can turn the cameras on/off thru smartthings if you want. That's how I was using mine before this firmware bug. Smartthings see the cameras as a camera, a motion detector, and as a switch (just like a smart outlet, or a smart button, or a smart light), so you can use a routine to turn the swtich on/off when needed. I was leaving the Arlo mode in Armed and having smarthtings turn the cameras off.

 

Now with the firmware bug, you can't turn them off anymore, so I created a custom home mode in the Arlo app and then I use Arlo Pilot (a smartthings smart app) to change the Arlo mode thru smartthings. Now I leave the cameras on and have smarthings change my mode from Armed to Custom Home mode automatically.

secaz
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Here's another wonderful thing that started to happen, never did this until after 15 May update.

 

USB drives won't overwrite even if you have it set to do so.

 

Last week, I had a basestation where this happened, and I had no choice but to reformat the USB drive, since Arlo had apparently borked it.. reformatting with Arlo worked, and it started to record to USB stick again (I don'tuse cheap USB sticks, either).

 

Yesteday the SAME THING happened on one of my other basestations - showed a few megs of memory left, I had it set to overwrite... it wasn't overwriting.  I toggled settings back and forth - no go... so set them back to default OFF... reinserted drive, would not accept it, I had to reformat it since Arlo said it needed to be formatted.  Funny - nothing wrong with it before, Arlo had, up to that point, been saving videos to it... and the brand of USB stick is different from the one in the other basestation, so can't blame it on a particular brand.

 

Granted, anything important that gets caught on cam, I download immediately so not too peeved that I lost all those videos on TWO USB disks, but does anyone find it a bit suspicious that Arlo should, all by its lonesome, bork the USB drives, no longer accepting them so the user has no choice but to reformat the USB stick?

 

I have a third basestation - I set it up a few weeks back, and there are only a couple of cams on it... will be a long while before that USB stick gets full... I'm certain will probably do the same thing when it does...

 

Nice *feature*, Netgear!

pc2k17
Hero
Hero

I had the problem with the app telling me everyday I had to reformat my usb drive a few months ago (march or april). I would let the app format it and the next day it says it needed to be formatted again. It was a old drive so I just chalked it up to bad sectors or something and put a new drive in. No problems since.

secaz
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

These are new dirves - designed for rugged conditions, waterproof pretty much... rated for combat zones, lol... not cheap drives and BOTH are less than 6 months old.

 

I've never had either brand of these sticks go bad... and I have some truly ancient ones... but for reliability, I put brand new ones in Arlo.

 

I except tech to break on occasion, but its really suspect to have two base stations within a week do this... and they are happily recording to the drives again...

 

At the risk of sounding dark... if there was unauthorized access and activity with our systems, and videos were being recorded to our USB devices only (not cloud), without our knowledge... someone would want to clean up after themselves...

 

Some may say that sounds crazy - and as crazy as that sounds, it is totally doable for motivated parties.  Someone (read: organized group) would have to be truly motivated to want access to the security cams of millions of Americans... I can think of quite a few scenarios... especially access to cams for Arlo users who are in stategic locations...

 

Never discount the improbable...

cnk2343
Aspirant
Aspirant

In 'My Devices' > Camera > 'Camera On/Off'  > Toggled to Off.

But when anything moves in front of the Camera, infrared LEDs turn on for 10 seconds. There is no recording as camera is off. But batteries are getting drained. I read in another thread that this bug has been fixed. But looks like it is back. Any fix for this issue?

Router Info:
Netgear Model VMB3000

HW Version VMB3010r2
Firmware 1.10.0.4_20963
 
Camera Info:
HW Version H7
Firmware 1.2.16720

 

 
 
pc2k17
Hero
Hero

Ya anything is possible. Probably just another bug.

Shazi
Aspirant
Aspirant

Having same issue and its draining batteries within days.

secaz
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Does anyone have issues with motion sensing?  Its unreal what Arlo misses.  A huge street sweeper just went by and Arlo missed it in BOTH of my street facing cams... how is that possible?  Know it was the street sweeper, I could hear and see it... but Arlo was BLIND to it...

 

I'd turn on audio sensing, but we get so much wind here this feature is pretty much useless unless its at night, even then not practical most of the time...

Wklovelace3
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
Its been fixed in the sense that they figured it out. If youre not on the field trial new firmware then your batteries will drain still.
Shazi
Aspirant
Aspirant

Thanks for the info.  So are you saying the goal is that the field trial firmware is going to be the fix after its trialed?  I.e is a formal and final fix coming?

Strangly, they never used to do this and started doing it recently.

 

Wklovelace3
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
Secaz- my motion detection is much better with the "field trial". Batteries back to normal as well. Im losing about 3% a day which is normal for me. I get quite a few cars so probably 70+ videos a day
Wklovelace3
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
Correct. Once approved and who knows when that is but it will be updated to your base station and the issues should resolve. Mine have returned to normal ive had trial since thursday. Im losing about 3% a day which is normal for me. Was losing about 10% before
Shazi
Aspirant
Aspirant

Thank you so much!

Wklovelace3
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
May 15th is when everything went bezerk. They did several major releases at once and thats when all the issues started.
Wklovelace3
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
Your welcome. Its hard to get real info these days. You can ask for field trial or just wait. Private message jamesc and ask about field trial