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?

[NetBox]

Confirmed tge Arlo system is down in the UK too.

They probably separated Arlo from Netgear so they could bankrupt the Arlo company, the took all the money out that they got from customers now they can turn the servers off and shut the whole company down, leaving us idiots who actually bought their systems and trusted them left without a working service.

[Wklovelace3]

Perfect timimg and how ironic. Truely comical this so called security system. Looks like its just the dog then. He never goes offline. Arlo is a joke

[NetBox]

Hahaha, I've no dog unfortunately but I do have two kids and an alarm, but my daughter is far louder than the house alarm so anyone attempting a break in better bring some earmuffs! And now I have 6 Arlo cameras to throw and any wannabe burglars as that's about as much use as they are at the moment.

[pc2k17]

Good thing I have Simplisafe and Smartthings protecting my home. I mostly use the camera to monitor my pets and soon the deer outside once I put the last cam up. Just no motivation to put it up with all these issues. Unlike others I was working fine after the firmware "updates", but now the database or whatever went down. Really! Even I was working good this is getting to be too much.

Down since about 4:10pm today. Cameras detect motion, record videos, but won't connect to database on app or website, no Modes at all, says base offline. Smartthings app, Arlo Pilot, also could not connect to Arlo. Smartthings could however turn the cameras on and off.

Just now as I type everything came back up. Hopefully it stays back up.

[Wklovelace3]

Mine back up too. My cameras were working fine after the trail firmware then they did more updates and now im back to fast drain. It even drains overnight while not armed. About 7% a night . checked ir lights they dont come on so i guess its another issue.

[pc2k17]

Maybe Arlo is finally starting to listen to customers............ Months ago I posted multiple times how SmartThings, LIFX, and Amazon have status pages.

I even showed examples:

http://status.lifx.com/

https://status.smartthings.com/

Now I see Arlo has a status page, same web interface as the other two status pages I posted. Looks like it went live on 7-23-18. Coincidence or did they take my advice?

https://status.arlo.com/

Either way, it's a needed and welcomed festure.

[RaylanC]

And yet, they kept that a secret too! But, based on past experiences, I will not be quick to trust what they post there. I have more cameras falling victim to the poor video quality, B&W, pixelation and the audio won’t shut off. Looks like I’ll be up on the ladder again swapping batteries today too. Lasted almost two weeks! Awesome!

[pc2k17]

Ya, not sure why the status page wasn't posted as a link in the forum. They did send it in an email after the outage. I found the link from some old Area 51 documents. 

[RaylanC]

Never received that email. Yesterday was the first I heard of it.

[pc2k17]

Here is the email for anyone who didn't get it:

Dear Arlo Customer,
 
Earlier today between 1:00PM - 3:30PM PT some Arlo users noticed that they were unable to access their accounts.
 
We wanted to let you know that all Arlo systems are operational and that you may always check the status of Arlo systems by visiting: https://status.arlo.com/.
 
We're sorry if you were impacted by this service interruption and we want you to know that our team continues to closely monitor our systems to ensure they function as expected.
 
Thank you,
 
Arlo Team

[secaz]

Everything Netgear does is too little, too late, and too lame...

[RaylanC]

Yep.  Got that one but that was the first notification of that type I have ever received.  I misunderstood and thought there was something sent out a while ago.

In any event, things are still not working as they used to.

[DocCJC]

Having the same issue with disarmed cameras running down the battery. Lost almost 10% in two days. Nothing to do with signal strength or IR lights being on all the time. One camera has one WiFi click and is still 100%. Some other cameras with 3 clicks have dropped 10%. 

I am gathering all this data and getting Alro support to log it with Engineering. I suggest everyone else do the same. Only way Engineering is going to put focus on the problem is if there are numerous cases in their escalated support queue. They don't seem to be taking much notice of the Community Forums.

[dhung]

Hope, I did not get that email too (I'm in Australia)

But I did get an email promptly about my credit card detils is about to expire on the 1st Aug.

So, I went into my account and removed my credit card details altogether!

There is no way to give more money to this incompetent company that screw up so bad on thier so call "hero" product.

This is just a quick note to let you know that the credit card associated with your Arlo account (xxxx@xxxxxx) is about to expire.

We won’t be able to renew your service account automatically after the credit card expiration date. The good news is, there's a simple fix. Just log into https://arlo.netgear.com and navigate to “Subscription” to update your credit card information.

Thanks for trusting Arlo to keep an eye on the things that matter most!

The Arlo team

---

@pc2k17 wrote:

Here is the email for anyone who didn't get it:

Dear Arlo Customer,
 
Earlier today between 1:00PM - 3:30PM PT some Arlo users noticed that they were unable to access their accounts.
 
We wanted to let you know that all Arlo systems are operational and that you may always check the status of Arlo systems by visiting: https://status.arlo.com/.
 
We're sorry if you were impacted by this service interruption and we want you to know that our team continues to closely monitor our systems to ensure they function as expected.
 
Thank you,
 
Arlo Team

---

[megatec45]

Got this reply from Arlo today. Everyone should go to this link and tell them what you are experiencing.


Please contact Arlo Support Team to further investigate your problem : http://www.arlo.com/en-us/support/contact.aspx You will find several options for contacting support in the provided link. Thank you.

[dhung]

the link they gave you means nothing at all

It point you to thier Q&A, Community Forums, OnLine Chat and a number to call their support.

[secaz]

Arlo is up to is old (typical) tricks - it just missed a delivery van in BOTH of my street cams.  Each cam points in a different direction so can't blame the sun... which is OVERHEAD here anyway... and one cam is totally in the shade... one is set at 95% motion sensitivity, the other 97%...

Not the least bit reliable... this system truly BITES...

[Retired_Member]

Hello is there a fix for this battery drain issue yet? Im finding it very hard to navigate to a fix on this website.

My cameras are performing very poorly. If there is no fix I shall be returning them under the consumer guarantees act here in NZ. 
Regards

Warren

[NetBox]

Sorry to say..... No fix at the moment.

We are just all stuck with useless cameras which need charging every few weeks rather than months until the development team get their act together and release a new firmware which fixes the cameras back to how they used to be (and how they should be).

It is ridiculous to think that the CEO would accept this himself (if he actually even uses Arlo as a CCTV system) so we should not have to accept it either, but alas we have no choice, we are only the customers who keep them all in jobs and give them our hard earned money to pay their wages.

[Retired_Member]

My Cameras which used to last a few weeks only now last a couple of days. # days max. With limited to no recording during that time battery is fully drained. Its no problem ill return them for a refund

[NetBox]

That sounds about right and is similar for me too. Mine used to last 3 - 4 months but now only a few weeks.

Its taken Netgear (now separated and just Arlo) months and months but still no fix in sight. It is pretty disgraceful really and they should get these cameras fixed and back working properly like they used to.

I would return mine if I could but unfortunately I purchase mine from Maplins in the UK who have gone bust so I've no chance.

My original Arlo HD cameras are nowhere near as bad as my Arlo Pro cameras but they certainly are draining faster than they used to but my Arlo HD cameras which have rechargeable 650mAh batteries last 3 or 4 times longer than my Arlo Pro cameras which have 2400mAh batteries in and do less recordings.

If you can return them I wouldn't hesitate as it doesn't look like Arlo will be fixing them any time soon and it appears are still in many cases denying there is actually a problem. But these forums show otherwise.

[RaylanC]

They claim they can't revert back to the earlier, working firmware version.  Maybe they can mask it as new and push it out to all of us?

[pc2k17]

The battery drain issue did have a fix pushed out, but unfortunately it didn't work for some. It fixed my issue and my batteries will last about 2-4 months depending on that cameras use now. They were draining in days before the firmware was pushed.

For those who the "fix" did not fix, Arlo definetly needs to address those. Rolling back the firmware is not an option because rolling back might make things worse by breaking people who are working fine now. And letting some roll back while others stay is a support nightmare with 1.9 millions customers. My advice, for anyone willing to help with the battery drain issue, send a private message to JamesC (the forum moderator) and see if he can get the Arlo engineers to work directly with you. Saturday, when the database went down, after it came back up some still had issues logging in. They posted in the forum looking for someone who couldn't log in and asked if they could call that person and work thru the issue. They did, they found the issue, and they fixed it. They were willing to work with customers one on one for that issue, why not the battery drain issue. Worth a shot...

[Wklovelace3]

It seems to be camera specific. I just added a pro to my backyard and it is not draining rapidly. It is an h11. The other two are h 8 . one gets 50 videos a day the other maybe 4 or 5 and they are both draining at nearly the same rate. Both also drain overnight about 5 % a night even disarmed. My inside camera has 15 total videos since saturday and was charged fully. Its now at 88%. Thats almost 1% per video

[NetBox]

The one really frustrating thing with Arlo (and Netgear) is they FORCE us to have their botched "updates" when they are not fit to be released or thoroughly tested before they go out. Why ruin a perfectly good working system? Its just a joke.

If something isn't broken don't try to fix it. WE should have the decision on whether we "risk" updating our hardware, we paid for it and we own it, so it should be up to us whether we risk messing it up with a risky update. And/or as said before we should be able to reflash our devices with previous versions like all other manufacturers allow.

I understand Netgear developers may think they know best and they are never wrong so take that decision away from us, but honestly its 2018, who pushes updates out these days that are obviously not thoroughly tested that totally ruin a system? (Apart from Microsoft of course)