Removed Batteries to Recharge, Cameras Seem Less Sensitive to Motion

[eborden1]

My wife and I are new to the Arlo family, just purchasing two Arlo Pro cameras shortly after Thanksgiving. Our batteries were getting low (approximately 25% on one and 40% on the other), and decided to recharge the batteries before it was supposed to get cold again. This occurred on April 3rd. I didn't read the instructions on how to recharge the batteries (bringing the cameras inside to plug them in and recharge, or having a spare battery and swapping out the dead battery). I just opened both cameras and removed the batteries to bring inside to place in the charging station, leaving the cameras up without batteries for a couple of hours. The batteries charged fine, and I put them back into the camera the correct way.

I thought it was weird when I put the batteries back in, the cameras didn't record me closing the cameras or me walking away from them (there was no recording immediately after or the rest of the night). It was dark when replacing them, and I noticed both cameras lit up (blue or red, I don't remember which). I assumed I should have two recordings after both batteried were replaced, and there were no new recordings. At the time, I wasn't too worried as I thought maybe it would take them 5 minutes or something to synch back to the home base or something.

It has now been 2 full days with the recharged batteries, and the cameras seem significantly less sensitive to motion. We were messing with the motion sensitivity in the days prior to recharging the batteries. One camera faces the street, and we were trying to cut down on the number of push notifications received from our front door. Turning the sensitivity down to where cars on the street no longer triggered a recording also meant someone could get to our porch before Arlo would begin recording. We decided to kick the sensitivity back up to 85% on the front door, which records a lot of cars in the street and we turned off the push notifications. In the days leading up to the batteries recharging, I would guess we had 30-40 recordings (most of them were 11 second clips of a car driving by).

After recharging the batteries, we have had two recordings on the 4th (a 17 second clip from the back door of a squirrel, and a 13 second clip from the front door of me waving in front of the camera to "make sure it was working"), eight recordings on the 5th (FRONT DOOR: a 24 second clip of a bird, three recordings of utility workers doing some work in our yard - all under 40 seconds, two recordings of me checking on the utility work, walking from the front of the house to the back - both 20 seconds; BACK DOOR: two recordings of me walking out to check on the utility work), and no recordings so far today. This was a large drop in activity from the days immediately prior to recharging the batteries with no changes to the settings.

I guess my question is, has anyone else noticed a drop in recordings after removing/recharging batteries in Arlo Pro cameras? We have the basic subscription - videos only go back 7 days and maybe limited to 1 GB of storage online. Is the online storage limited to 1 GB, and would I have hit the limit without being notified? The BACK DOOR sensitivity has been at 95% since around March 25th, but doesn't get much activity. It might pick up three recordings per day of "nothing" or a bird/squirrell - all videos are short, less than 15 seconds. However, around March 29/30, they were out marking utilities (one utility came out on the 30th, but there were flags out already in the videos I can see), and had a few more and a little longer - I would guess nothing longer than 2 minutes. The utility work performed on the 5th, no workers were recorded in the back yard, even though they were recorded multiple times a week prior. The FRONT DOOR is a different story with the cars in the street. Sensitivity was set at 85%, but I raised it to 90% yesterday to see if anything would pick up. Prior to recharging the batteries, we would have approximately 30-40 recordings, the majority were 11 second clips of cars driving by, with a few longer of a bird or package dropped off, or us looking at the yard. We left the sensitivity "high" to pick up most street activity, and figured if we had a package stolen from our porch or our house broke into/vandalized, we could go back through the recordings. After replacing the batteries, we are down to a few videos, basically of us testing the cameras out to "make sure they are still working". I don't believe we've had a recording of a car driving by, which is very abnormal.

Is it possible I damaged something when reinstalling the batteries? Do I need to synch the cameras every time I recharge the batteries? The batteries are in the correct way. I did not force the camera closed, and it did "click" into place. I have double checked the sensitivity to make sure it was still "high". If there is a limit to the online storage, are you notified when you are approaching the limit? If I've reached the limit, can I delete the videos of "nothing" - cars, squirrels, etc., and I will be good to go again? I thought it was weird it still picks us up if we walk up to it (or a utility worker walks by), or by waving at it, but nothing else seems to record (other than a bird/squirrel). The biggest difference is that no cars are recorded, but it seems like the cameras are also less sensitive to people walking in the yard (they have to be fairly close to the front porch to record them).

Hopefully this wasn't too long, and thank you in advance for any help!

[jguerdat]

I doubt you damaged anything. If you can use live view and manually record, things are working.

There have been reports lately of the lack of recordings, potentially caused by the latest firmware update. If turning sensitivity up doesn't help, open a case with support here to raise awareness.

[eborden1]

Thank you for the reply! I didn't really think I damaged anything, it was just weid how I went from a few dozen recordings before I recharged the batteries to basically zero recordings after. I'll be sure to open a case with support.