Arlo pro battery drain issue since 5/14 update

[Shammy]

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

[JPC]

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@secaz wrote:

No prompt to update firmware here for cams...

Yesterday had two of my cams which I had plugged in to charge tell me I needed to use the charger that came with the cams... which I always use, so didn't know what to make of that...

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An error with a green button saying "Ok, Got it"? even though you're actually using the original Arlo cable/adapter? If you got this error, I do too randomly.. I mentioned this before here but the answer is always points to defective cable/adapter/camera since no one else is experiencing it.. Now, it's getting noticed a bit widespread.. Never had this error before until mid Feb. when Arlo had the service downtime and all the following updates after that.. I believe this is a bug the talented Arlo Engineers intentionally implemented to filter out the non-Arlo products to be used.. Sadly, it's also affecting theirs.. 

[secaz]

JPC - yes, that's it, and I didn't start getting this charing message until after the latest firmware upgrade.  These two chargers I use, they never get moved around, I have them plugged in to an outlet and haven't touched them since, so no wear or tear there on the charger... and I don't often plug in cams, I usually just swap batteries, so its not like there is a lot of wear and tear on the cable connectors, either.

Another thing I noticed, after I got it charging, is that when I viewed device details, reported battery was 100% charged, but blue LED light did not activate on the camera to indicate it was fully charged.  So, I just disconnected it, logged back into Arlo, and the cam details reported that it was STILL charging.  No joke.  So I just waited until a battery in my charging station was full then put it in the cam, then the cam reported battery 100%, and no longer showed that it was charging.

There are just so many quirks with this system recently, its unbelievable.  And I can't recreate them, either - complete inconsistency.

[DawnM]

@pc2k17 it seems you were on field trial firmware at some point and were not removed from that group. I have set you back to production, so you should get an update within the next 24 hours.

[pc2k17]

@DawnM

I'd rather not go back if I don't have to. For the first time in months my system is working perfectly. I don't want to change anything. Besides people have been complaining that the older version firmware (production version) coupled with the new base station firmware that came out on June 21st is causing motion detection issues. Mine is currently working flawlessly and motion detection is great, I don't want that to change. Please leave my camera firmware where it is if possible.

Also forgot to mention, I never asked to be on a field trial for camera firmware, but that's ok if I was. I did see someone else mention today in another thread that they took there camera battery out today, put it back in, and got their camera updated to the same firmware version I have. Why would theirs update now if a field trial was done long before? Are we sure this is a field trial version? Seems to work fine.

[Nancy_L]

Hi DawnM,

I have the Arlo Wire-free cameras that currently have firmware 1.2.16720 HW version HW11.  Is this the current version of firmware for these cameras?

Thanks.

[ustgirl]

EVERYONE go and flood Arlo's facebook page with questions/comments/complaints and maybe they will do something. They have been horrible!  I posted twice on their facebook page the last week and asked for a response and got nothing. Maybe if their page gets flooded, they will start doing something about it to avoid the negative attention. 

https://www.facebook.com/arlosmarthome/

[DocCJC]

Thanks for you advice. I have been charging my cams through their USB ports. Looks like I might have to invest in a charging station.

[paddos]

Question on swaping batteries? Always have just plugged in cameras. Have a separate charger so will try as suggested here. If I swap battery's do have to re sync or reset anything? Just paranoid about trying anything new given performance issues.

[BGPunggol]

I always being using a charging station as I bought an extra battery to swap with the one in the camera. Nothing u need to do except repositioning if you have mounted your camera.
My believe is that Netgear is trying to figure out how to get the system humming again and it's normal that they don't respond to every query. We'll just have to be patient and see what happens in the coming days.

[secaz]

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@paddos wrote:
Question on swaping batteries? Always have just plugged in cameras. Have a separate charger so will try as suggested here. If I swap battery's do have to re sync or reset anything? Just paranoid about trying anything new given performance issues.

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paddos - I swap all the time, no problem, do not have to resync.

I just turn off the cam BEFORE I open the battery compartment.  Pop out battery and put in a fresh one (from my Arlo charging station).  Make sure the battery compartment closes securely then turn cam back on.  It will flash the blue LED for several seconds as it reconnects to the base station.

Battery life is much bettery if you have ones that are charged to 100%, naturally, lol.

[paddos]

@secaz

Got it thanks. Will give that a try. Battery drain or sensitivity not back to where it was so will give the charger a try. Also did not see conclusion to earlier cam firmware update. I have the same update you have but sounded like there was a newer version being used by some.

[paddos]

Piece of info for those using arlo smart. I have both person and motion selected. Also have both push and email selected for notification. Noticed I was not always receiving a push notification when motion was sensed and video recorded. After looking at a week's worth of triggers can confirm that the emails sent always match what the camera records regardless of person or motion detected. However, the push notifications to not always match what was recorded. Random pattern where 1 in 3 or 4 are not pushed if motion is recorded. Rarely misses a person trigger. Not sure if there is a reason Arlo has decided not to always push as requested anytime the camera is triggered but I started pushing all emails as my signal due the the "missing" push notifications.

@JamesC. @DawnM

[Redmoonstar]

I also haven't had an update to my camera's and have reset the base station (hard reset) and still no update. Mine may be due to malfunctioning Base Station that I am waiting for the RMA to be completed for though.

[BGPunggol]

Hi Redmoonstar, in an earlier post it was confirmed the .16 camera firmware is under field testing. Most of us won't get it till it's been mass released. Meantime, reboot ur base station and see whether it helps on the battery drain after getting the latest firmware. It does seems to slow down power outage.

[secaz]

Arlo never ceases to amaze me.  Every day I have to chase something with this damn system - this time, last night, one of my three base stations decided to go offline all by its lonesome, the internet light wasn't on.  Turned it off/on, connected just fine, so why had it gone offline?

Additionally, with two of my three base stations the schedules blew up, AGAIN... so cams were disarmed last night, AGAIN.

Nice security system.

Does Netgear consider all these issues to be NON-issues?  Never had so many problems or ones as awful until that May update... and the recent firmware update really didn't fix anythng for me other than the IR lights...

[Wklovelace3]

Yep its always something. Not sure how it c.an work perfectly for some and others still have issues. This morning i tried to open the app as i always do just to see how many videos are in the library and it said access token expired. I then tried to log in and it said my password was not correct. 10 minutes later. I was able to log in. So i logged out and back in ro see if it would take my password and it did. I think there are other things going on not related to the firmware update. Motion detection still iffy for me. Came home to find a package from ups . it did not pick it up. How does it miss a big brown truck but when a moped drives by it gets it. The camera is 10 feet literally from where he would habe had to walk to drop it off. And its at an angle.

[secaz]

Wklovelace3 - exactly!  I've had my garage cams miss the UPS truck rolling by as well, in one cam typically, sometimes BOTH garage cams miss big vehicles at same time.  How does it miss something that big?  Usually will catch it on return trip since I live on a cul de sac, but still...

Have you noticed that the audio quality is awful now, especially on live feeds?  Audio quality always used to be great but since May update its been truly awful.  It sputters and stutters and is pretty much useless and annoying now.  and its not just one cam where the audio quality is poor, its ALL 10 cams... used to be flawless, the audio...

[Wklovelace3]

Secaz- yes my audio sometimes doesnt even match the video. Like watching one of those old movies. Also noticed the push to talk speaker sounds muffled. I used to be able to talk to people now they cant understand or hear me well. I had my wife try to talk to me and it sounded like charie brown on the phone. Wah wah wah. Not sure if the humidity plays a role down here in fla. But the speaker even at full volume is very muffled .

[secaz]

Wklovelace3 - ok, so yours is not up to par either, the audio.

I don't know how many people depend on it, but I do... sometimes just to figure out if whatever triggered a cam is just birds... often times I get videos with nothing going on, but if the audio is workng well, I can often hear the calls of birds close by, or the noise they make hopping around on the gutters - so can assume trigger was just a bird... but now its really hard to tell the audio is choppy and indistinguishable most times...

[Wklovelace3]

Correct. Choppy is a good word. When my dog barks or something loud happens it seems to be choppy and in playback it will stop briefly and say buffering. But if car drives by and not much noise it wont buffer and is normal

[secaz]

Wklovelace3 - doesn't seem to matter here... but typically there's always background noise, like the hum of air conditioners close by, there's one on either side of my house, one's my own on west side, the east side is a neighbor's unit.  It's AZ so you can imagine these cycle on and off frequently... and we have very small lots...

I'll have to pay more attention to see if its worse with audible background noise than on the odd occasion when I don't hear an air conditioning running.

It sounds like input overload... would be nice to have an attenuator, so we can turn down the input level... can't imagine that would be so hard to do... there's an attenuator for the microphone for setting DB sensitivity of audio triggeres...

[Fy27]

Is anyone still experiencing usual battery drain since the update? My cameras seems to be working great since the June update to production, however, the last few days, the batteries are starting to drain Unusually fast again. About 10% in the last 4 days with only 2 motion clips of 10 seconds each. Is this **bleep** broke again? I have another 3 months to pull this pos system down and return it to Costco. My indoor system is Blink and although not as much features as arlo, it has worked flawlessly and reliable for the last 9 months.

[BGPunggol]

Hi Fy27 Star
Yes. It's acting up again for the past few days when power drain is faster than usual. What I did was to reboot by turning off the power of base station for 30 secs than on again. Now the camera is behaving properly at 2% drain a day. Very annoying but until they update the camera firmware, seems only thing to do. I even switched off night vision as the camera is in a well lit area.

[Bob_B]

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@Fy27 wrote:
Is anyone still experiencing usual battery drain since the update? My cameras seems to be working great since the June update to production, however, the last few days, the batteries are starting to drain Unusually fast again. About 10% in the last 4 days with only 2 motion clips of 10 seconds each. Is this **bleep** broke again? I have another 3 months to pull this pos system down and return it to Costco. My indoor system is Blink and although not as much features as arlo, it has worked flawlessly and reliable for the last 9 months.

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The battery drain has decreased somewhat since the update, but my cam battery useage is still much greater than it was 2 or 3 months ago, prior to the firmware update of mid May. There was a time when I recharged once every two months or more. Now, it's more like once every 10-14 days; better than once every 5-7 days, but not by much.

I had planned to buy a second Arlo cam, but have curtailed that purchase, since the battery useage is simply unacceptable.

[NetBox]

Still having battery drain issues so updating firmware has not fixed the issue.

I have noticed however that it seems more apparent on my Arlo Pro cameras than on my original Arlo HD cameras.

I have a mix of Arlo HD and Arlo Pro cameras connected to my Arlo Pro base station and it appears that the Arlo Pro cameras defiantly have a severe battery drain issue. They were fully charged quite recently and one is already down to 63% and dropping rapidly daily with very few activations, another Arlo Pro camera has drained to 71% in a very short space of time but that is barely ever triggered nor armed. Usually that would not move other than the odd percent every week or two. My original Arlo HD cameras however are fairing a little better and still up at 83% and this is with them being "trigger" event cameras so the ones using the PIRs, so you would think they would be lower than the pro cameras.

Something is certainly not right and I imaging I will be back up that ladder pretty soon again to charge the cameras so I hope Netgear get a fix for this problem pretty quickly.