Ultra 2 battery goes 15% in 5 days. Video is optimized and activity zones only covers front yard

[VCohaagen]

Recently purchased Ultra 2 set of 2 with Smart Hub. Installed first camera to test. Battery level at 100% when installed and now, just 5 days later, it's at 15%. Video is optimized and activity zone covers only the front yard.
I have noticed that sometimes I get detection notifications when a vehicle passes by, far outside of the activity zone, but this isn't consistent. Nighttime settings are spotlight on, night vision on, color on, behavior constant, and brightness 100%.

They're not battery optimizing settings, but I still had expected to go more than a month before charging, not less than a week. I'm getting 8-12 total clips from this camera per day, ranging from 10-60 seconds each.

The Hub - possibly related - frequently flashes orange suggesting a connection issue, but within the app I see no indication that anything is wrong.

[StephenB]

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@VCohaagen wrote:

Recently purchased Ultra 2 set of 2 with Smart Hub. Installed first camera to test. Battery level at 100% when installed and now, just 5 days later, it's at 15%. Video is optimized and activity zone covers only the front yard.

A common misconception is that activity zones will help battery life.  It doesn't.

Whenever motion is detected, video is streamed to the cloud.  The cloud determines if there is motion inside the zone.  If there is, the video is saved.  If there isn't, the video is discarded.  The camera functions the same way in either case, so there is no power savings.

So I suggest positioning the camera so it isn't covering the street (or a public sidewalk if there is a lot of pedestrian traffic), and see if that helps with battery life. 

[VCohaagen]

Oh wow. Yeah, at least 2 cars per minute pass by steadily through the day so that could be it. Would be difficult, if not impossible, to position it not to see road at all, but I'll see what I can do. Thanks.

[VCohaagen]

I do also have the wire-free doorbell, which has a view of the road, and after 2 weeks installed its battery is at 90%.

[StephenB]

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@VCohaagen wrote:
I do also have the wire-free doorbell, which has a view of the road, and after 2 weeks installed its battery is at 90%.

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Motion triggering depends on distance too, so it is possible that the distance + the motion sensitivity setting are enough to control the amount of streaming for the doorbell.

[larss19]

I'm using Ultra 2. Battery lasts 4 day. Max battery life turned on, only "people" smart notifications turned on.  The problem seems to be that camera registers movement from nearby bushes when there is some wind.  I might have a 100 notifications (or more) a day.  Again, the camera is supposed to only register human movement.  I'm opening up a case with Arlo Support for help.

[dcfox1]

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@larss19 wrote:

I'm using Ultra 2. Battery lasts 4 day. Max battery life turned on, only "people" smart notifications turned on.  The problem seems to be that camera registers movement from nearby bushes when there is some wind.  I might have a 100 notifications (or more) a day.  Again, the camera is supposed to only register human movement.  I'm opening up a case with Arlo Support for help.

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The camera still records everything and the servers determine if it is in or outside your zone or if it a selection in smart like people.  So zones and do not save battery life,  you just won't see those recordings.  @StephenB reply near the start of this thread  went into detail if you didn't read earlier replies. Your best action is to get the bushes out of view or try lowering sensitivity. For smart it is just for notifications, not recordings. 

[JettyIslandJim]

I have the same problem, but with 8 cameras. First I purchased 2 extra batteries and a charger to make changing them faster. But with all 8 going dead within 3 weeks (some as short as 24 hours) I ended up our buying $500 worth of solar chargers just so I could leave home for two weeks and keep cameras rolling. They’re all on solar chargers now but I wish I could have not had to do that. I can’t wait to find out why this is happening to all my cameras. There doesn’t appear to be any way to adjust sensitivity to motion. When the wind blows the leaves on my trees some of my cameras record all day long, which seriously loads up the library with hundreds of files. Heavy sigh.

[StephenB]

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@JettyIslandJim wrote:
There doesn’t appear to be any way to adjust sensitivity to motion. When the wind blows the leaves on my trees some of my cameras record all day long, which seriously loads up the library with hundreds of files. Heavy sigh.

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There is a way to adjust sensitivity in the camera rules.  https://kb.arlo.com/42/What-are-modes-and-rules-and-how-does-Arlo-use-them

But trees are a problem, as the leaves create a lot of motion - (including shadows in my case).  If you set the motion sensitivity too low, you'll miss recordings you want.  Activity zones can help reduce recordings, but they won't help battery life.  I don't see a good solution for the battery life impact, as more sophisticated sensors in the camera will increase the power use.

Panels help (and I use one on a camera that is also capturing a lot of tree motion).  But the excessive recordings are a nuisance.  All you can really do is use the filter to eliminate "all other motion". 

I guess Arlo could add an option to suppress recordings if you've suppressed the smart notification.  The risk is that a classification error would end up with missing a recording you really want.

[andru13]

This is/was an issue for me with the camera i have over my garage.  It was recording non stop...  I lessened the motion sensitivity which helped a small bit then bought some solar panels off of amazon.  Cheaper than the Arlo ones.  They have been keeping my batteries charged so that has been a band-aid for now.  

[JettyIslandJim]

Thanks for the response. I'll keep messing with the settings. For me, there is turning out to be a long learning curve for how to optimize these cameras. For now, my 8 solar chargers are keeping the units all charged up. I re-did the math, at $80 for a two-pack, that means I spent only $40 per charger on Amazon, I guess I only spent a little over $200 on the chargers..not $500. Sorry about misleading with the bad math.  My bad.

[JettyIslandJim]

Thanks for the response. I have recently re-looked at my math. I bought 4 two-packs of chargers on Amazon for $80 each. I said I'd spent $500 on chargers, but at the moment I gave the cost I had $80 x 8 chargers in my head. It was $80 x 4 two-packs. My bad. With tax, I spent around half that. The chargers so far are working great. I can leave the house now for weeks at a time and still have cameras working.

I bought this system because my next door neighbor bought a 4 pack of cameras at Costco and he loved them. So I went to Costco and purchased 2 four-packs so could put up 8 camears.  His 4 cameras require charging every 3 to 6 months.  The only difference I know of for sure is that he has connected to Ziplfy Fiber Optic internet which gives him MUCH faster speeds than my Comcast cable. In a few weeks I am probably going to cancel my cable and hook up to the FIOS. I have NO idea if internet speed assists in battery life, but it's the only difference I know of between he and I.  I will, however, have him take a look at my camera settings and see if he set his up differently than I did.

[JettyIslandJim]

Good to know that the zones really do help. Knowing that they, at least, stop filing cloud files is a benefit. I figured since they didn't help my battery life they were of no use so I shut them all off. I learned something. Thanks.

[andru13]

from what i understand the upload speeds are helpful so if you make the jump to fiber that should help not sure it will help with the battery life but will help with getting connected quicker least that is what i was told.  My ISP caps me at 45mbps up even though i have 1gb down.  

[VCohaagen]

Follow-up from original post -
I repositioned the camera a few times and changed the video size, until I think I've reached a sweet spot between the best view extent and not missing important activity.
I did not change most other settings, as those would defeat the purpose of having the camera at all.
I'm now on track to get maybe 1 month from a full charge. I've purchased solar panels to test those next.

[StephenB]

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@VCohaagen wrote:

I repositioned the camera a few times and changed the video size, until I think I've reached a sweet spot between the best view extent and not missing important activity.

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I think that's the best strategy generally (except of course with the doorbells - which you can't aim).

[Blueswede]

Battery life for these cameras sucks.....there has to be a better battery out there that lasts more than a week. Also, my smart hub continues to disconnect from the internet and start flashing amber. Pretty much every day. I have to unplug it and then plug it back in. Very annoying. I'm really thinking of returning the whole system and finding a different brand. In this day and age, Arlo should be able to figure out how to extend the battery life and just make the system more functional. It's not a cheap system, but just has too many glitches to really be worth it.