Batteries Draining Arlo Camera

[Shammy]

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

[JPC]

When Arlo Smart was 1st introduced, I read somewhere that it's a slow learning process of algorithms where it will eventually learn to categorize Humans, Pets, Cars and Things.. Who knows how long the process is.. But eventually it will be smarter.. It's prolly' why you guys are experiencing this hit and miss notifications?.. I could be wrong but then again the App itself is buggy too so it will throw everything off and may not learn at all... An endless issue indeed... Goodluck to all.. 

[Wklovelace3]

Yes. But usually if its in doubt it will ask arlo may have seen a person is this correct? And you click on yes or no. Not really sure.

[secaz]

Just an update of my experience with new firmware.

Motiong sensing is worse. 

Cameras are missing large vehicles, even set to 100% - doesn't matter time of day, either.  And its very hit-or-miss.  One of my garage cams is no further from street than the length of a mini pickup truck... I have a very short driveway.  It misses huge things like commercial vans.

Also, am getting some notifications of triggers where no video gets uploaded..

And my batteries are still stuck at 100%.

[Wklovelace3]

Did you try resetting base? That helped my batteries were stuck also until i reset it. Now there acting normal losing 2% a day. Not sure about the motion issues. I was having notification issues om friday . it would record a person but not notify me. It also missed my wife coming home and walking into house. It never usually misses my front entry. I tried duplicating this and it picks me up now every time. Saturday i had one more missed notification where a person walked by and it recorded but no notification. I only have it set for people. Sunday and today have been ok so far

[Wklovelace3]

I just wonder though if it will miss something when it counts. Like a burglar knocking on my door. I don't have alot of confidence in this arlo system. I dont feel secure and cant trust it. But i can trust my dobie and my wife can take care of herself. Shes always packin and a better shot than me by far

[Wklovelace3]

Just started something weird again. When i go to library it says no recordings but it there are videos and you can scroll but not click on one. Also the green dots over the days are gone. Then close app and reopen and its back to normal. Did it a few times today. Im on android

[secaz]

Wklovelace3 - do you mean reboot or actually do a full reset on the base station?  Paperclip in hole reset?

I've rebooted them - or actually, turned them off, unplugged power and ethernet, waited 30 seconds then plugged everything back in and powered them back up... no noticeable difference on batteries... but cams were more reliable about picking up vehicles... there was another burp during day where garage cam totally missed a car... but the second garage cam which is further away did catch it.  Go figure.  This system still isn't reliable...

One base station, 3 out of 4 cams did not want to come back on line after doing a hard start on the base station... I rebooted again, same issue... I went out to start yanking down cameras to resync, but when I brought the first cam inside, all 3 magically decided to start working again.  That's just creepy.  It was a good 10 minutes after last reboot that they decided to come back to life all by their lonesomes...

Thought about a paperclip reset on all three base stations, but that's just way more work than I feel like doing in the summer heat of Arizona... I whimper every time I have to do cam maintenance these days...  prefer to not have to mess with them unless the lenses get dirty... this is the time of year I don't want to mess with them at all unless the batteries get low or a monsoon storm dirties up the lenses...

[Wklovelace3]

Secaz- yes i meant just a power off reboot not a paperclip reset. It worked for mine but im still having issues with motion detection too. And notifications. Today i pulled in my driveway with phone in hand to see if it was going to notify me and it did not. It did pick me up but not till after i exited my vehicle. Usually it gets me pulling in driveway. And i come home roughly the same time every day. I dont even know what to think now. A month to get a firmware update and it only brought on more problems. My batteries are ok there at 85% since my firmware trial was done over a week ago. Cant believe yours are stuck at 100. But then again nothing surprises me now with this system

[HelloHelloP]

After installing update one camera is at 96%, which seems normal. The other one is draining a lot faster. Now att 87%. Full wifi cover and almost no recordings . 1 week of use.

Have restarted base station several times but no change.

Ideas?

[FrankDedo]

I have 5 cameras and I’m really getting tired of charging and changing batteries, I purchased Netgear becouse wire free capability and battery life, but Netgear really screwed up big time

[________]

Hi,

Just wanted to add my findings on the rapid drain / suspected firmware bug. 

I have 3 cameras, all outside, with two at door frame height, and one about 4 metres high on the side of a house. Now, the two cameras at the lower level now drain a little faster than before, and the sensitivty to movement is clearly not as sharp as the pre May-18 software, however, the camera at height on the house drains at a ridiculous speed; it used to be 4-5 weeks between charges, but now it's 4-5 days!

Since charging on Saturday I'm at:

Camera 1 (door frame height) 67%

Camera 2 (door frame height) 77%

Camera 3 (side of house) 27%

But, and this where it gets interesting, I've swapped out the camera at height with the other two cameras over the past couple of weeks and the result is the same. i.e. which ever camera is, of the 3 I have,  positioned on the side of the house, it suffers the fast drain issue. 

Like others have reported, even if it's turned off, the battery still continues to drain, whoich of course lends itself to the theory in this thread that the IR is switching on day and night regardless of whether the camera is on or not. 

Hopefully this is of help to someone.

In the mean time I shall continue to wait for a firmware update and will do my best to avoid posting replies in this thread and RANDOMLY capitalising WORDS and making unsubstantiated claims of HACKS

[secaz]

Wklovelace3 - I had also rebooted the base stations last week right after the firmware upgrade, so nothing much has changed for me except the IR lights no longer come on when cam status is off.

I am still having issues with schedules.  I check them every day because I've had problems wih them... and last night, Arlo did what it often does after Monday... disarms the base stations.  Did it to ALL THREE this time.  The slot I have for night it disarmed for every day of the week except Monday - did the exact same thing for all three bases stations.  So I had to go into each schedule and tick the other 6 days where Arlo felt it would be acceptable to disarm them for those days for that time slot.

I finally had one cam drop battery percentage to 98% after the battery had been in there a week and a half... and there were an apprceciable amount of videos during that time period.

System is as unreliable as ever.  I would say Arlo delivers 70 to 80 percent of the time - that's a pretty bad score for a security system.

[JoeCymru]

Regarding cameras staying at 100% for a while, I have found in my circumstance that if I charge the batteries out of the camera on a charging station, the then installed batteries will linger at 100% for quite a while before starting to show decrease. The same is not true if I charge them in the camera. Not to say, of course, this is everyone's experience, but I believe the batteries cut off charging in the cameras sooner than outside, meaning there actually is extra capacity that could be filled when the charging is done in camera, but the cameras report 100%.However, decrease is not indicated for out of camera charged batteries until the batteries reach the point where the camera firmware would indicate 100% or less. This may have something to do with camera firmware compensating for other means of charging and power such as solar panels or direct wire. That's a guess. Out of camera charging actually charges batteries to their full 100% capacity potential and the in battery charging does not but reports the less that full capacity at 100%.

[secaz]

JoeCymru - you could be on to something there.  99% of the time, I use batteries from my charging station.  Never would plug them in, and didn't do that until the fatal firmware upgrade that made battery life tank very quickly.  I only have two spare batteries, so after using them up, I'd start plugging in cams.  This could be why I was getting wildly inconsistent results across my cameras in regards to rate of battery drain... good observation!

[Chase84]

I charged mine 5 days ago. They haven't moved from100%. And they've been on. I've streamed live a few times, etc. Rebooted the base. Nadda.

[JoeCymru]

I have out of camera charged batteries that linger at 100% for a week or more. Then they start dropping in a regular manner. I began charging my batteries out of camera about a month after I got my system (four cameras) and noticed this beginning to happen. However, the usage has remained constant and it is only an initial period where the cameras continue to stay at 100%. After months of this phenomena, I now consider this SOP for batteries charged outside the camera, and that it does not indicate any battery usage problem. As noted, when they do start to decrease they decrease at a rate consistent with usage.

[paddos]

Now this is strange. Had all three of my base stations armed went I went to bed. Woke up and there was nothing clicked on mode settings. ... nada! Can't even do that with the app???? You have to have a mode selected. Had to happen via Arlo. Clicked disarm and things seem to be working. Things clearly not right with the latest release.

@JamesC. @DawnM

Another strange issue ...

[secaz]

---

@paddos wrote:
Now this is strange. Had all three of my base stations armed went I went to bed. Woke up and there was nothing clicked on mode settings. ... nada! Can't even do that with the app???? You have to have a mode selected. Had to happen via Arlo. Clicked disarm and things seem to be working. Things clearly not right with the latest release.

@JamesC. @DawnM

Another strange issue ...

---

paddos - that's exactly what happened to me when I woke up this morning... all three of my base stations were disarmed...

[paddos]

Just to be clear and why it is strange. ... they were snot diasarmed.

There was nothing set!!!! No mode was selected which you cannot do from the app ... you must select a mode in the app. So did not go from arm to disarm. Went from arm to literally no mode selected ... tried to cause again by unselecting all modes but can't. Have to select via app so clearly something is going on Arlo side.

[secaz]

---

@JoeCymru wrote:

Regarding cameras staying at 100% for a while, I have found in my circumstance that if I charge the batteries out of the camera on a charging station, the then installed batteries will linger at 100% for quite a while before starting to show decrease. The same is not true if I charge them in the camera. Not to say, of course, this is everyone's experience, but I believe the batteries cut off charging in the cameras sooner than outside, meaning there actually is extra capacity that could be filled when the charging is done in camera, but the cameras report 100%.However, decrease is not indicated for out of camera charged batteries until the batteries reach the point where the camera firmware would indicate 100% or less. This may have something to do with camera firmware compensating for other means of charging and power such as solar panels or direct wire. That's a guess. Out of camera charging actually charges batteries to their full 100% capacity potential and the in battery charging does not but reports the less that full capacity at 100%.

---

JoeCymru - here's some more interesting info regarding batteries.  This morning I went out and took down my cam that was at 98% (after a week and a half up there, which i find hard to believe that's all it used, 2%).  I plugged the cam into a charger instead of swapping with fresh battery.  Within a minute the blue light activated on the cam to indicate fully charged.  I took a different cam and popped out the battery, said 100% in the cam (which I know that can't be right since it is another cam that had the battery in a long time with a bunch of videos) and I took THAT battery and put it in the charging station... its STILL charing away after half hour so far, so there's no way it was really at 100% when it was in the cam.

So we are still having inconsistencies with battery charge remaining and having it accurately reported, as well as being accurately reported as full charge when our cams are plugged into a charger... when cam is plugged into charger, battery charges too quickly, blue light comes on way too fast, doesn't fully charge is my guess.  But put that battery into a charging station and it takes quite a while before the green light activates on the charging station.

There are clearly still issues with the firmware - the only thing that got fixed for me was the IR lights, which are now off when cam status is off.  And now I am having issues with motion sensitivity, worse than I did before the new firmware.

And Arlo deciding to disarm my base stations in the middle of the night is a continuing problem.  Always seems to happen, the schedules blowing up, AFTER Monday... once Tuesday hits, schedules blow up... and that, too, is inconsustent... sometimes it happens with just ONE of my base stations, or two, this time all three...

[secaz]

---

@paddos wrote:
Just to be clear and why it is strange. ... they were snot diasarmed.

There was nothing set!!!! No mode was selected which you cannot do from the app ... you must select a mode in the app. So did not go from arm to disarm. Went from arm to literally no mode selected ... tried to cause again by unselecting all modes but can't. Have to select via app so clearly something is going on Arlo side.

---

paddos - in my Android app, on Mode tab, all three base stations reported DISARMED.  When I looked, SCHEDULE was ticked, when I went in to verify schedule, every day for that time slot except Monday was UN-ticked.  Exact same on all three base stations.  Nice to know while I'm sleeping away, Arlo just disarmed all my base stations.

[FrankDedo]

Can we do something about this problem like Consumer Report or even class action lawsuit for false advertising regarding battery life, to force Netgear to fix this software problem. Battery’s on Arlo Pro, per Netgear advertise, should last 3-6 moths. I’m reading on this forum and guys are posting about Netgear customers support telling them that THEY ARE WORKING ON THIS ISSUE but so far no results

[secaz]

---

@FrankDedo wrote:
Can we do something about this problem like Consumer Report or even class action lawsuit for false advertising regarding battery life, to force Netgear to fix this software problem. Battery’s on Arlo Pro, per Netgear advertise, should last 3-6 moths. I’m reading on this forum and guys are posting about Netgear customers support telling them that THEY ARE WORKING ON THIS ISSUE but so far no results

---

FrankDedo - try this link... as a consumer, you have a right to voice a complaint...

https://www.usa.gov/consumer-complaints

The only thing I can count on with Arlo is for it to not work when I really need it to work... missed a critical trigger yesterday, someone snooping around by my RV gate, within less than 10 feet from a camera... sensitivity was set 100% and Arlo missed it, completely, in broad daylight... I only know because I happened to be in my back yard and saw the intruder with my own eyes... and you can imagine how shocked I was that there was NO trigger notification and NO video...

In my opinion, its false advertising to call Arlo a *security system*... a *security aid* maybe, but even that's a stretch.  It used to work so well when I first got it over a year ago, but then after a couple of months it slowly started to degradade and become a real pain in the butt as time went on.  I spend more time chasing it around than anything else, and trying to figure out why something didn't work, was it Arlo's fault? Mine?  Freak of nature?  But it's always Arlo...

At the risk of sounding *conspiratorial*, does anyone find it odd this enormous mess the past few months comes right at the time of Arlo's IPO?  The update earlier this year caused problems, but the one in May, I still can't figure how Netgear could have gotten it SO WRONG... maybe a third party or disgruntled insiders wanted to make sure to keep the initial stock price down...???  There's no such thing as coincidence, not in my book... and my profession is to evaluate clients' data, looking for patterns... have never stumbled across a *coincidence* that was truly a coincidence... there is a reason behand all things, great and small alike... and most often NOT benevolent actions, either...

[pc2k17]

For anyone hwo doesn't know, as I seen a few posts recently that seem to indicate they didn't know........... Arlo did push out a firmware fix and for myself and a few people I know who have Arlo cameras, the new firmware fixed the issues the accouncement says it does. My system currently working perfect. If anyone hasn't gotten the new firmware yet, restart your base.

For battery status indicator or battery staying at 100%, here is some info for you:

My understanding is..........

--- Charging the battery while in the camera only charges the battery to 80% even though the app will tell you 100%. This is to prevent over charging.

--- Charging the battery in the arlo charging station charges the battery to 100%.

--- Even though the arlo app says 100% it's is really 80%. If you charged in the camera the percentage number starts dropping right away. If you charged in the charging station the battery has to get down to 80% before the arlo app starts showing the percentage number dropping. This is why it will sit at 100% for a while.

For people with motion dectection issues.......... more than likely it is the Arlo Smart trial that's affecting motion detection. It wants to only record people, which means until it gets "smarter" it's going to miss some stuff too. I did not sign up for the Arlo Smart trial and my motion detection is the same as it's always been.

Hope this helps.

[________]

Thanks for the post. 

Have you got a link to the post regarding the new firmware? 

Also, are you able to post up what firmware you're running on the base station please?

I've checked mine (following a reboot) and it's still the same as before. 

Thanks