Arlo Ultra Solar Panels not charging camera after 2 days

[Petermitchell]

After purchasing Arlo Ultra. I have recently purchased the Arlo Ultra Solar Panels. After 2 days in the direct sunlight, they have not charged a single percent. I have been informed by Arlo Support today that they will not be sufficient enough to charge the Arlo Ultra Cameras.  Quite astonishing really. Do these people not test these things before putting them out for sale. 

I have owned each each version of the Arlo cameras as they have been released, and can clearly state that these are the worse Arlo cameras I have purchased.  Battery life is 3 days maximum if your lucky. If cameras are on tracking you cannot connect at all, so you have to use with this feature switched off. Camera will not record for the length of the activity anymore. You cannot use 24/7 recording anymore due to battery life. To add insult to injury, Arlo have charge me £193.00 subscription charges, when it clearly states on the Ultra that subscription is free for 12 months. I have also noticed gaps in the recordings 3 hours missing, when there has been activity outside my property. Plus you cannot buy power cables anywhere.

An update is seriously required.

[brh]

@Petermitchell,

I cannot address all of your problems, but as far as the Ultra Solar panel, I have five of them and they do a pretty good job of charging the cameras unless for some reason the batteries have drained way down. Before I purchased the solar panels my battery life on the Ultras was about 2 to 3 months before having to swap batterie for charged ones. Something is wrong with either your setup or you have defective cameras. I am wondering if the cameras are disconnecting from the system due to the distance from the base or interference somewhere. That will drain the batteries rapidly and cause you to miss recordings.

Brian

[JamesC]

Adding to what brh mentions above, how much activity are the cameras seeing? The Solar panels provide a trickle charge to the cameras, this isn't the same as having the cameras plugged in using an AC adapter (features like CVR and look-back will not work with the solar panel).

As brh suggests, many of your symptoms sound like the camera could be having an issue communicating with the SmartHub. What does the signal strength icon show?

JamesC

[LandJS]

My curiosity would be were the batteries 100 % charged before hooking up the solar charger.  Even on my solar panel outdoor floodlights it states they must turned off and charged for 3 days or placed in a charger before using the solar panel.  Most panels are just trickle chargers.  

[DSMagic]

I have 4 Ultra cameras with 3 solar panels. None of the solar panels can keep up but they all drain at different rates. One of my cameras is set to 4K and that one drains in 12 hours, mid day. I had to turn on sound sensitivity on that camera though so that might be the reason. I can't win though. Without it I'm getting stuff stolen from my yard and the cameras don't pick it up but with the extra trigger my batteries drain in 12 hours. The real solution would be to have a built in microSD card on every camera so that it would capture faster and I could turn down all the trigger sensitivities.