Infrared light comes on when camera is off causing rapid battery drain

[Shammy]

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

[BGPunggol]

My Arlo Pro system has the exact firmware for both base station and camera as yours but the battery drain is still happening. Last Friday was 64% now 57% for less than 10 30secs videos over the pass 3 days. It is obvious if nothing being captured the battery power is stable but once there's detection, the drains starts. I still think Arlo should provide free cable of any length since their product is no longer what's it is suppose to be - a "wireless" camera.

[Chief-kir]

Finally after many calls and facebook massages I got a call from Arlo support now.
They don't have any issue regarding the battery drain ongoing so I had to explain and start all the basics before they see it as an issue.
First of all I have to change the battery's to new ones that they will send and after that start to monitor my system.
So for all you out there just complaining here and having your own suggestions regarding the issue, I recommend that you all start a ticket against the support for battery drain issue and try to follow up so Arlo actually gets a chance to see that this is a problem and start resolving it.
Again, they dont recognize this issue and the tech isn't working towards this issue.

[Stunew78]

My own view is that it may be a process to adhere internally at Netgear to achieve resolution on this problem, however it is completely unacceptable for a company to advertise ‘wire free’ security with 3 months of life span and not deliver on what is advertised. Further, this demonstrates a broken management on customer success/support within this business. It is unreasonable for Netgear to ignore this as an issue when this thread alone has nearly 900 replies.

[BGPunggol]

It's very strange why Arlo set up a community but does not care about what issue consumers are facing. This community is a valuable source of info for them to be in touch with their customers so as to built loyalty to the product. On the other hand, what may be contrary to ur ticket might just be a 3rd party Call Center rep and their job is just to sign tickets. The first time when I thought there's some issue with the battery, I was also given a ticket no. 40030407 to send the extra battery back to the store I bought it from. The store manager told me as Arlo has no direct agent in Singapore, they don't recognize the ticket number. So I don't put too much hope these people know anything about this issue.

[lohki82]

Add me to the list of disgruntled arlo pro users who are experiencing rapid battery drains. I had been getting MONTHS in between use easily. I recharged from winter at the end of May... noticed something wrong when they were dead in June.

This is ridiculous. There is no firmware fix despite the mods marking threads as solved. I just recharged again last Friday and already down 87%... 5 days.

[joedex5715]

Same here, I’ve been told that the filmware I have is up to date and has solved the battery drain problem. Unfortunately that is not the case! 1 1/2 years of this product was great now the past 3 months has been miserable with have to charge twice and about to charge a third time in 3 months. This is inexcusable!

[ysu]

For those who still experience battery drain issue after confirming you have the latest firmware on base station, can you try re-sync the cameras?

Here is my experience. I got battery drain fixed on 4 of 5 cameras on the day they released the new firmware (6/20 or something) but one kept draining fast.

Then I recharged and re-synced that one camera and it is working normally so far, for 1+ weeks.

To re-sync, delete the camera from the app. Then press add button in app and follow instructions. In fact you don’t need the app to add. Just press sync button on base station until sync led flashes, then press sync button on camera. After a few sec camera should flash blue dot rapidly and reappear in app, with previous settings retained. And it worked well for me since.

[paddos]

Have resynced as suggestion on three different base stations and five cams. Still have rapid battery drain of 3 to 5% per day. Seemed to be ok at first but returned to same 3 to 5% per day. Arlo still has an issue and if they bother to read all the comments they know it. You would think if it was as easy as just re syncing with latest firmware given all the bad comments they would communicate directly to us. Neither @JamesC or @DawnM have communicated a single word relative to this now 800+ thread since the first firmware release 6/21. I even exchanged emails with Arlo VP accountable for customer experience and copied him on this thread. Was a very professional exchange. Still hoping the adults take charge an address the issue.

[NetBox]

@paddos

I totally agree 100% with what you just wrote.

There is still an issue which needs resolving urgently and I think Netgear know about it but as always just don't openly admit to it and the silence is probably because they don't know what to do to fix it.

800+ comments is certainly enough to prove it is a serious problem that needs resolving.

[paddos]

Of course they know. I believe they also know what caused it. Likely related to their "smart" freature adds which they have hyped in the market. Probably being caused by the added communications between base and servers to run new algorithms to detect people. So they are likely stuck. Can't back track on the hyped feature content and struggling to return performancec to advertised levels. Beginning to think only remedy is class action. Not to difficult to cause given false advertising of battery life and the number of folks impacted. Typically the only action that causes transparency in situations like this. Again I hope someone at a high enough level takes control because issue significant that someone on the customer side with deep pockets is going to get their attention. Arlo are you listening??????

[pc2k17]

Let me add a few comments here....

1) Don't sign up for that Arlo Smart feature. Doesn't seem like it's ready for primetime yet. I didn't, and have no issues at all right now. I've seen reported that others who did try the Smart have issues. Battery drain and motion detection are completely normal and functioning as advertised on my system. (I'm going to post my 7 day battery usage stats tonight).

2) While there may be a lot of posts in this forum on this issue, you have to remember people come here because they have an issue. They usually don't come and post if they are working good, so of course a support forum is going to look like there are hundreds of thousands of people with issues, when really it's just thousands. There are 1.3 million Arlo users and my guess is the last firmware fixed the battery drain for the vast majority of them (I'm fixed and I know a friend who is fixed). If 100,000 out of 1.3 million failed, that's actaully a pretty good success rate overall. However, it is unfortuneate for the people who it didn't fix.

What Arlo needs to do is work directly with a willing customer who still has the battery drain issue and try and determine why the new firmware did not work for them. This person can be a "beta tester" of sorts and hopefully Arlo can sort the issues out for them.

[secaz]

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@pc2k17 wrote:

Let me add a few comments here....

1) Don't sign up for that Arlo Smart feature. Doesn't seem like it's ready for primetime yet. I didn't, and have no issues at all right now. I've seen reported that others who did try the Smart have issues. Battery drain and motion detection are completely normal and functioning as advertised on my system. (I'm going to post my 7 day battery usage stats tonight).

2) While there may be a lot of posts in this forum on this issue, you have to remember people come here because they have an issue. They usually don't come and post if they are working good, so of course a support forum is going to look like there are hundreds of thousands of people with issues, when really it's just thousands. There are 1.3 million Arlo users and my guess is the last firmware fixed the battery drain for the vast majority of them (I'm fixed and I know a friend who is fixed). If 100,000 out of 1.3 million failed, that's actaully a pretty good success rate overall. However, it is unfortuneate for the people who it didn't fix.

What Arlo needs to do is work directly with a willing customer who still has the battery drain issue and try and determine why the new firmware did not work for them. This person can be a "beta tester" of sorts and hopefully Arlo can sort the issues out for them.

---

I can say that things had been much better for me, at least, but I do not use Arlo Smart.  I disabled the *free* feature.  There must have been a cam/base station firmware update recently, looks like it based on my firmware versions, and I started having different issues - cameras were triggering and not recording, the motion icon would stay on long after motion had stopped, as in hours - and I would not get videos for those cams until I rebooted base stations and also took the battereies out of the cams and put in fresh ones.

Since finding out that plugging the cams in to charger will only charge batteries to 80% of capacity, I make sure to not plug in cams to charge them, instead swapping batteries out which I have charged in my charging stations.  I now have 4 spare batteries and two charing stations.  Batteries in charging station charge to 100% and last FAR longer than batteries charged by plugging the cam into a charger.

[paddos]

Never asked for "smart" and have it turned off on the app. Was on 30 day pay level when pushed to me. Is there something else I can do to further remove smart?

As a side note, had product accountability for a global appliance manufacturer In my past life. Produced 43 million product per year. If I had 1000 customers with the same issue I my engineers would be 24/7 on this issue and every effected customer would be communicated to. i am glad ur system is working but suggesting 100,000 customers is ok ??? You really believe that????

[pc2k17]

When Arlo Smart was presented to me in the app, asking to sign up for the free trial, I simply closed out of the pop up and that was it. Never asked to try it again. My fear is that even trying it out and turning it off is affecting peoples cameras. (just a guess, I have no proof).

100,000 out of 1.3 million......... that's over a 90% success rate. Yes that is good. I believe ITIL standards state that a 70% success rate for deployment of software/updates is acceptable. At my company, we strive for a 90% success rate when pushing software/updates. The other 10% or less that fail are treated as one offs and are fixed by the level 1 and level 2 techs. If 90% are successful then the software and/or update works just fine and it's most likely something went wrong during install or it's something with the end users specific setup that is causing the failure.

Perfect example.......... I'm sure we have all had a windows update (or apple or android update) that failed. That doesn't mean the update is broken since it worked for millions of others, it just means something went wrong in your setup. You would then troubleshoot, google or bing the issue, and hopefully fix it. Unfortunately in this case, besides restarting and resyncing there isn't much "fixing" to be done. This is why I said someone with the problem needs to work with Arlo, because my guess is they believe this issue is resolved.

[NetBox]

You only have to read through these forums to see that since the recent updates the Arlo system is not as it used to be and a whole host of new bugs have appeared which were not there before.

There are multiple issues which have occurred since the recent firmware updates which simply did not exist before.

I have updated, reset, taken batteries out, resynced etc but it makes no difference.

The Android app and Arlo is now very sluggish and freezes sometimes, videos, buffer and are unwatchable, two way audio is IMPOSSIBLE, movement is sometimes simply not picked up and the Arlo system is unreliable as a security camera system, higher than usual battery drain, videos over a certain length are not able to be viewed, black screen when trying to connect, scheduled not working and sometimes when it is armed it actually isn't.

There is a long list but I can say none of these issue were present a few months ago and my Arlo system worked "perfectly" or certainly without those mentioned extra new issues.

Can I ask, I think I must have been living in a cave but this new "smart" feature, where about do you see this? As I have not seen anything in my Android app about it. I remember seeing some PR into a while ago but never signed up for anything as my cameras and system worked perfectly so I didn't want to change anything (take note Netgear - don't change something that works fine). I see no mention of this or change in my Arlo Android app. Am I missing something or just blind?

[paddos]

I hear you. Just disagree. And, hope you are not involved writing software that critical hardware depends on to function like security systems, the fringe setting in your kitchen or the planes you fly on. 10% failure rate in any consumer durables which this is would never except that as ok.

[NetBox]

Going back to what has been said many times before with regards to firmware updates.....

We should have the option to choose whether we automatically received firmware updates or not. Netgear should not "force" updates upon us. Especially when they ruin our perfectly working camera systems.

Ideally we should have the option to turn off automatic updates and in an ideal world have the capacity to manually update our systems and cameras from a downloaded file. This way if an update does not install correctly or does something erratic we can reflash again to see if that fixes the issue. Or try an older firmware that we know works fine.

That way WE the user would have more control of OUR systems. Not allow some half cooked messed up update to be forced upon us.

If my system works fine as long as there is not a serious security issue I would rather not update it as it could bring in new problems.

Certainly with something as important as cctv security systems. The total inability to be able to "self fix" or fault find is ludicrous and makes no sense.

1, Allow us to turn off automatic updates

2, Allow us to manually flash our systems with downloaded firmware

3, Give us access to previous firmware releases.

4, Give us detailed knowledge beforehand of what a new firmware does or fixes so we can choose whether we install it.

These are all reasonable things and most other manufacturers do this as standard practice, it seems Netgear want to take full control of "their" system which WE own as is the case for many of their routers, but as it has been pointed out not everyone's system takes to a new update the same so results are mixed and patchy but if WE have the option of would be so much better.

[paddos]

Smart was presented as a 30 day free trial if you were using free storage. I am on the paid 30 day subscription so they didn't ask. Just pushed it to all my systems and iOS apps. If you have it you will be receiving motion detection notices when the smart algorithm detects a person. There was a new line put into the website and app that lets you select smart options. Can select people noticed only or all motion. I turned the people off on all my cameras and selected all motion assuming this was none "smart."

Same 3 to 5%/day battery drain.

For folks who are seeing "normal" battery drain is that 1% or less per day which is the low side of spec?

[secaz]

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@NetBox wrote:
Going back to what has been said many times before with regards to firmware updates.....

We should have the option to choose whether we automatically received firmware updates or not. Netgear should not "force" updates upon us. Especially when they ruin our perfectly working camera systems.

Ideally we should have the option to turn off automatic updates and in an ideal world have the capacity to manually update our systems and cameras from a downloaded file. This way if an update does not install correctly or does something erratic we can reflash again to see if that fixes the issue. Or try an older firmware that we know works fine.

That way WE the user would have more control of OUR systems. Not allow some half cooked messed up update to be forced upon us.

If my system works fine as long as there is not a serious security issue I would rather not update it as it could bring in new problems.

Certainly with something as important as cctv security systems. The total inability to be able to "self fix" or fault find is ludicrous and makes no sense.

1, Allow us to turn off automatic updates

2, Allow us to manually flash our systems with downloaded firmware

3, Give us access to previous firmware releases.

4, Give us detailed knowledge beforehand of what a new firmware does or fixes so we can choose whether we install it.

These are all reasonable things and most other manufacturers do this as standard practice, it seems Netgear want to take full control of "their" system which WE own as is the case for many of their routers, but as it has been pointed out not everyone's system takes to a new update the same so results are mixed and patchy but if WE have the option of would be so much better.

---

Excellent suggestions.

And there are a whole new host of bugs that have cropped up as time goes on.  System used to work flawlessly when I first got it spring of 2017, but has steadily gone down hill from there... only got a couple of months of near prefection before things started to slide...

As far as I am concerned, one unhappy client is too many for me - and with my clients, if their issue is something over which I have no control (because I don't write the code, I just implement the system) then I strive to find workarounds for them to mitigate their unhappiness.  Sometimes the workarounds I come up with are better than if the actual function, well, functioned in the first place.

With consumer products such as Arlo, manufaturers don't give a rat's a** about the few, they only care about the many...

[NetBox]

Thanks for that info.

I am not in a paid subscription but do remember seeing something about the smart features a while back, but can't remember exactly where I saw it or if I was offered any free trial, but I didn't have an interest anyway as I thought it might effect battery life etc so will have dismissed that.

I just thought everyone had some new feature built into their system which I hadn't noticed, but that clears that up so thanks for that.

I therefore am just on the std free plan and nothing on my system has changed except it does not work or function anywhere near as good as it did before. The whole system just seems to have too many "new" problem which were not there before.

I think maybe as you said they have rewritten the backend and now can't go back so we are stuck with it until someone with some actual programming knowledge can fix it, which is a shame as it worked so well before.

I have a mix of Arlo Q, Arlo HD and Arlo Pro, with 1 x original base station and 1 x Arlo Pro base station.

I am seeing the problems seemingly only (or at least more noticeable) on the Arlo Pro base station and with the Arlo Pro cameras. I have one positioned outside and another in the same room as the base station. I am not seeing "massive" battery drain like some users are seeing but my cameras are certainly draining far worse than before, even when they are not armed or do not make any recordings. It can be 3-5% some days for no apparent reason. I use rechargeable batteries in my Arlo HD cameras which are only 650mAh and they are lasting longer than my Arlo Pro 2400mAh batteries.

I am fed up of messing and trying to fix and fault find so just put it down to the fact Netgear have messed them up and hopefully at some point will fix the many issues they have caused.

I have also actually purchased a brand new other brand cctv system which is hard wired as I simply don't trust this Arlo system to protect my home.

I would be happy to sell my Arlo Pro system and keep the original Arlo HD system as the image quality of that is far better than the Pro, but I can't return my Arlo Pro system as I bought it from Maplin in the UK who have gone bust.

I have spent over £1000 on Arlo goods and wish I had not, nor do I have any trust in Netgear products any more. My new CCTV system cost under £400 for a 4 camera set up, with 2TB HD and 5MP cameras so that will be my main system now.

[secaz]

NetBox - I hear you... I have 10 Arlo Pro cameras, three base stations and have put more money than I care to admit into Arlo and accessories...

On your Arlo Pro cameras, what is the hardware version?  I have a mix, most are H8, but I have several H11 and these H11 cams are the most problematic... the H8 cams function better on the whole...

[NetBox]

My original Arlo HD cameras are all

Hardware Version H11

Currently running FW 1.2.21616

My Arlo Pro cameras are

Hardware Version H8

Currently running FW 1.092.0.16_21159

When I got my Arlo Pro cameras I was not as impressed with the image quality as I thought my Arlo HD cameras were a better quality image and certainly the contrast at night.

I have a security flood light in my back yard and my Arlo Pro cameras have a "lighter" contrast presumably to help make dark areas brighter and clearer on night vision but this totally make anything under the flood light so bright you can't make a face out and everything is just white/high contrast. Its just the way the camera image sensor is I presume but I was never bothered with that as the battery was better and the audio was a good feature too. But now the Pro cameras need charging way more than they ever did and they certainly are not the same as they were a few months ago and the two way audio no longer is usable, the delay in the video feed is terrible and the whole system if trying to use 2 way audio is very jerky and stuttery.

I think Netgear need to do some serious work on their firmware to resolve some of the issues they caused as I am totally let down by Arlo at the moment and would get rid of it if I could. I would just not feel comfortable selling it on to someone in the poor working (or none working) state it is in at the moment
I will just keep it for now as a back up.

[Redmoonstar]

From what I understand the "smart" features are only available in the USA, I'm in Australia so don't have this feature and there was no 30 day trial.  I got this system in November and took awhile to get it set up the way I wanted and was working fine. Since the May upgrade my set recording times no longer work , motion detection is terrible,  any employee can be getting into and driving away in one of our vehicles and the camera doesn't  pick it up or record ( camera is 12 feet from vehicle). I have had 2 different cameras and batteries go from 75% to 0 in 1 - 4 hours and camera was disarmed, I have a solar panel connected to another camera that will show 100% and with the camera disarmed once the sun goes it will drop by 6%. I can't use the audio on My android phone or tablet, the live feed takes forever to upload if it does most times I get " request timed out" or 'this device is not streaming" the video that has been recorded is now 70% of the time so pixilated after 10 secs so you can't see anything and then it will stop recording. My cameras were going offline from around 6.00pm to 11/ 12am and when I removed all camera's and base and reset base cameras wouldn't sync.I have had 3 cases open with support that have just "disappeared ' my  netgear account and they are not resolved.  I have had 2 replacement base stations in 1 month which hasn't fixed any of my issues.  Both my camera's (H8) and base are on the latest firmware and haven't fixed the issues. I didn't have any of these problems before May, nothing has changed with my internet and no new wireless devices have been added this has all started since the May upgrade. 

[NetBox]

It seems whatever took place in May totally wrecked the Arlo system and it needs fixing.

The recent updates might have worked for some people but certainly there are a large number of people still with big SERIOUS issues. Security equipment should just work and be 99.99% reliable. Arlo used to be great and work wonderfully but now it is just a buggy system with too many issues.

Please listen to your customers Netgear and FIX these genuine issues, they DO exist and are NOT a minority of cases.

[paddos]

@JamesC. @DawnM

Are u guys reading this feedback????

Is it asking too much to get you to at least acknowledge you have engineering working on this.