charged one camera a week ago and it is now down to 80%

[DocCJC]

James:

Would like your help to raise this with the Arlo engineering team, as it is being reported by many Arlo customers in the forum. 

I have had 6 six cameras for 12 months and they started draining batteries much faster after the May update. Other Arlo customers have reported the same issue. The June update fixed one problem (IR light staying on) but there are still battery drain issues being reported. 

We have tried everything to rule out connectivity and set up problems, such as resyching cameras, swapping batteries, resetting base stations, rebooting everything, distance from base station, etc, but nothing works. So there is a good case for something faulty with the firmware.

To give you an example of the problem: I charged one camera a week ago and it is now down to 80%. It has had 0 motion recording and is disarmed half of the day. So why should this happen? It's not a usage issue. The battery is fine. The camera has a strong connection to the base station. Previously, the battery would have dropped no more than 5% in a week.

Please help put some focus on this issue, as there are many customers not happy and the Arlo system is not performing as expected or claimed by Netgear in it's product disclosure.

[pc2k17]

The IR lights staying on was the reason why the batteries had rapid drain. While the cameras were off, they would still detect motion, and if it was dark enough the IR lights would come on. This constant detecting of motion and the IR lights coming on drained the batteries. The June firmware update fixed the motion detection/IR lights issue while off, which in turn should have fixed the battery drain issue.

The June update fixed the issue for me, battery drain back to normal, so it's not the firmware itself, but more likely it may not have been applied correctly on your base station when the update was pushed out. A drastic measure would be to factory reset your base back to the day you bought it, and set the whole system up again. Doing this will hopefully get the firmware applied correctly and fix your battery drain issue.

Also note: if you charge the batteries while in the camera they will only charge to 80% even though the app says 100%. This is to prevent overcharging. The external arlo battery charging station actually charges the battery to 100%. Because of this you may notice some strange battery readings right after a full charge.