Batteries Draining Arlo Camera

[Shammy]

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

[paddos]

Well said! They have released at least 4 things since the May issue between Pro, Q and Apps. They are clearly doing something.

Just shocked they have not resolved this issue given its impact to the installed base and as you said new customers.

@JamesC. Been several weeks since you have provided an update. Seems like we are do at least a status update even if it is the typical "engr still working the issue will get when u know more."

[waynebaron]

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@DawnM wrote:

Hello all,

Regarding the battery rapidly draining issue that started recently, we do have a fix in QA being tested right now. We'll update this thread when that is released. 

Regarding the community prompting you to re-verify your email/credentials today, we updated our customer support tool last night. If you still see this issue, let me know, but you should only have to do that once 🙂

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Arlo-Stories/New-Arlo-Support-Experience-Is-Here/m-p/1584166#M2226

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This was at the beginning of June.  We are almost at September.  Is this still "in QA"?

[Chase84]

@DawnM @JamesC

Is there still no update on this battery drain issue? This is beyond riducilous. Netgear needs to get its sh__ together. I am tired of recharging batteries all the time. Calling in is useless and the information isn't flowing too freely on here either. Fail in communication, fail in product reliability, fail on Netgear.

[waynebaron]

They release "Something" a little while back, but it's unclear and the link to the announcement that Dawn posted just takes me to an unauthorized page, so I have no idea what the release was intended to fix.  Since this issue isn't marked as "solved", I'm assuming (and also based on empyrical evidence from using my cameras) that the issue isn't resolved.

So... update please.

[JamesC]

The Engineering team has firmware available in field trial that we are confident will help resolve the issues some users are experiencing with increased battery drain. If you would like to participate in this field trial trial, please reach out to me in a private message with a confirmation that you would like to participate along with your email address you use to log in to Arlo.

Take a look here for information on how send me a private message: Private Messenger

JamesC

[ProfZebu]

I am experiencing the same. by this morning all cameras were disconnected and by plugging to the charger it showed 1% for all. Simply turned off without any notification how it used to be. Do you have any idea what is happening?

[paddos]

Anyone on this thread trying new firmware per JamesC trial request?

Curious if the new firmware has improved battery drain discussed here.

[mrshanno1]

I have the trial firmware....when I received it overnight on 8/31, I had 100% (good signal from base station) and 96% (poor signal from base)...now I have 96% and 91% respectively. Admittedly, I only record 2-3 events per day, and use schedule function to arm approx 16 hours out of a typical day. It certainly seems to have helped, as I used to last 5-6 months, and recently was only lasting 2-3 weeks.

[DeiterB]

I'm testing the trial firmware and have experienced a significant improvement with battery life. Charged all 4 cameras to 100 % on September 1st.. To date I have two cameras in the front of the house one at the door and another over the driveway. Both cameras have high traffic due to facing the road, passing cars. Currently they both sit at 98% after 7 days of activity. Before the test firmware I was loosing 3 to 4% a day. So drastically improved on my end.

[pc2k17]

I have the trial firmware. I didn't have the battery drain issue, so can't comment on that, but I can say that my battery usage is still normal.

[Redmoonstar]

I also have the trial firmware,  one of my camera's is connected to a solar panel and it was draining a lot overnight so that the panel couldn't charge it up during the day,  ( it's winter here) but now it has charged most days to 96 - 100% so not draining as much.  I have another camera that doesn't record as much and it is still draining. Charged to 100% on 27/8/18 and today 8/9/18 it's 69% with around 5 - 15 videos in 24 hrs. They have been lasting 2-3 weeks and I have now purchased 3 outdoor charging cables as we are gong away for 5 weeks and will have no camera's after 2/ 3 weeks. The camera that is still draining doesn't have any charging cable connected so if this firmware doesn't work I will lose it while away. My camera's were lasting 2 / 3 months before with the same use. 

[Greg0101]

Guys new trial firmware has been disappointing for me. Cameras appeared to be working better when it was installed but after day they all went off line, intermittently might register something and now all are flat. So battery life when the cameras are offline is shocking

This is beyond a joke, that we can’t get back to firmware that was working. 3 months ago when all cameras were working properly.. this is absolute crap..

[Greg0101]

Batteries last about 1 week and that’s for five cameras, even one of the cameras is 1m away from the base station.

[secaz]

I've had a wide range of odd stuff that keeps happeneing, but newest since this yesterday, Friday, is videos say they have recorded 10 seconds, but when I try to view it will play 1 second and that's it.  Happens sporaically, and I even swapped cameras around but that doesn't help - thought maybe there was a problem with a particular cam so took a different cam an put it in same place, but same thing happened.  Happens sporadically on most cams, have three different base stations so can't even blame a particular base station.  Have rebooted my modem, my router, my basestations, I had even popped batteries out of my cams and reinserted... and with 10 cams ask my if I feel like deleting them all from their base stations and adding them back.  This sytem truly sucks... cannot rely on it AT ALL...

[dhung]

Hi all, just a quick update on what happen to my darning camera from mid July firmware update.

I managed to get that Arlo Pro camera I'm having draining problem swaped out from where I got my unit from, they took a brand new unit (1 camera system) from their stock and gave me the camera and the battery. Unfortunately, it's also a H8 hardware version camera tho…..

Anyhow, I charged it up and added it to my system, it behave normally, no sudden battery drain, no IR light stuck on anymore!

From my understanding of OEM manufacturing process/agreement, vendor (Netgear) will have a clause that tell OEM manufacture certain % of cost reduction (cost down) spanning over a period of time, any significant change of components used during production, OEM manufacture need to tell the vendor so adjustment on software/firmware can be action to accommodate change of hardware behavior. Thus there were H8 and H11 Arlo Pro cameras

I’m suspecting there were batch of H8 camera used different components during manufacturing due to shortage of particular components or they ran out of buffer stock and used substitute item instead of the original spec components in the BOM (Build of Materials), and those camera passed the QA process as the performance of the finished camera is according to spec.

Try to get your seller to replace camera(s) that you have issues with from their stock, just the camera(s) and keep doing that until you satisfied with your system.

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@dhung wrote:

the "new" base station firmware did not address the battery drian due to IR turning on by itself, this update made it worse than the June update.

after another reset/resync/recharge last night around 10pm, I came home about 11pm and saw that one Arlo Pro camera was emmiting red IR light.... I open up the Arlo App, guess what...... it went off-line!! @%$!@#!$!!

I took the battery out and back into the camera, check the charge of the battery is at 85%, something happend which caused the camera IR to turn on and somehow caused it to crash.

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[Greg0101]

Guys what I'm failing to understand is that I too finding cameras are draining very quickly, cameras going offline, intermittently recording, etc etc.  but all this changed when new firmware was introduced in May/June this year.  Prior to that all my five cameras were working correctly and was getting approx 3 monhtly life from the battery  was very happy.

Since the firmware upgrades that occurred - in my case I was on Holidays, for 8 days the fully charged batteries drained with a week, and now ever since then the whole system is completely stuffed.

So I fail to understand hardware is causing the problem, because Arlo has the serial numbers our cameras are using and can quantify the components if required - if that is really the cause.

The real question is what went into the firmware updates that has caused our cameras to become totally ineffective, and for a lot of use, its very hard to get a refund/return because its the firmware not the hardware that has caused the problems.

So it still baffles me that we can't get this resolved alomost 2 months down the track.

The "cameras offline issue" must be the trigger why the cameras then start draining quickly, but what's causing this issue - would be nice to get some indepth understanding, as its been introduced in the past 2 months

Like I said before, the trial firmware has done nothing

   5 x Cameras - 21159 (H8)

   Base station - 24726 (VMB4000r3)

AND - can we get some "logging" functionality in the base station that we can acces as it may help us see what our systems are doing/not doing because right now nothing is being fixed as far as I'm concerned and fixes are not forthcoming  Most modems, routers have this, whereas Arlo based station we see nothing.....even if its just in the trial firmware....this would go some part into helping us understand what is happening in our own loandscapes

[jguerdat]

The biggest issue is that for (seemingly) most folks, this isn't a problem. Yes, there are a lot of complaints here but compared to the total installed base it doesn't seem to be an issue. As such, how do you fix an issue if you can't reproduce it? That said, there is work on this going on by all reports and it should eventually be resolved for everyone. Right now that doesn't help you or anyone else with the issue but it is what it is. None of my cameras have this issue so I am not part of any effort to bring this to a close.

[NetBox]

That's great if you don't have this issue and hopefully it will stay that way.

Initially too I didn't and when I saw all the mention of severe battery drain I thought what is all the fuss about but then after a while boom, it appeared and I realised what everyone was saying waa correct.

It is true to say not everyone is affected but in reality the people who use these forums and post publicly and only a very very small percentage of users so its not true to say only a small percentage have this issue as there may be millions who have this issue. They just don't report it or post it here and in some cases just live with it. But it would seem if what Netgear/Arlo state is correct that is certainly isn't everyone. The truth is we and probably even Arlo just don't know.

The one thing that is certain in there wasn't a problem before and Arlo introduced this problem (by however they did it) so we all know how the Arlo cameras/system "should work" but it simply isn't doing any more and needs fixing. 3/4/5 months or however long this has been going on now simply isn't acceptable which I'm sure Arlo will be the first to admit.

I am 100% convinced they know how it happened (not necessarily why, but how), but they just don't know how to fix it. When they updated the firmware they obviously messed some users systems up and created a whole host of other issues, but their total refusal to roll back to the previous working firmware obviously means whatever they changed they deem too important to lose and roll back. As some have stated its probably all due to this new "smart" system/idea which is the new money making idea, so they want that to work and hence won't revert back to the previous working system/firmware. It's a business decision and geared around then making money you would tend to think, but they are a business after all so it's understandable. It just screws many existing customers systems up and has probably cost them reputation and lost sales in the long run. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising and bad posts all over the internet doesn't do them any good, so let's hope they can get this fixed.

I personally think that any Arlo Pro users who have this battery drain issue and been suffering for months on end should be able to exchange their Pro cameras for Pro 2 cameras either free of charge or for a very low cost as it simply isn't fair on us the ridiculous length of time we have had this issue.

[BGPunggol]

If there are indeed a handful having this battery drain issue, isn't it easier for Arlo to upgrade the affected Arlo Pro cameras from H8 to H11? They should be able to know which are the ones affected since info are fed back through the base station. Unless this issue is affecting more than they can do exchange but the engineers are clueless how to fix these issue.
Maybe they could use this as a start point. I discovered that if you reboot the base station by turning off power and back on everyday, it does slow down the drainage of power.
Just sharing my experience.

[Hugelolcat]

Count me in as having issues with at least one of my 4 cameras. Charged to full last week, only noticed this week it's now at 51% with only 2 very short events recorded over that whole time. What the heck. It's discharging faster than my front door camera which is hitting 10+ events every day.

[pc2k17]

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@NetBox wrote:
but their total refusal to roll back to the previous working firmware obviously means whatever they changed they deem too important to lose and roll back.

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I tested rolling back to previous firmware..........it caused more issues and fixed none (and I don't use arlo smart). Going back is not an option.

[pc2k17]

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@BGPunggol wrote:
If there are indeed a handful having this battery drain issue, isn't it easier for Arlo to upgrade the affected Arlo Pro cameras from H8 to H11?

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I have H8 and H3, no battery drain issues. Others with H8 & H11 have reported battery drain issue. Swapping from H8 to H11 more than likely isn't going to fix anything.

[NetBox]

@pc2k17

Yes I agree that the HW revision doesn't seem to make much difference as many users have reported problems across different HW versions.

Just out of interest how did you manage to roll back firmware?

I thought we (the end users) had no control over this at all and it was only Arlo themselves who pushed firmware onto our devices.

[pohleonguk]

Hi,

What is the version number of the trial firmware for the camera and base station supposed to be?

Thanks

[pc2k17]

@NetBox

I'm in the Arlo Beta Program. I was asked by Arlo to test the old firmware. They rolled my base firmware back and I tested.