Rapid battery drainage and strange sounds

[skowyrnie]

Hello, I have a problem with my Arlo Ultra camera. For the past 3 weeks, the camera has been discharging from 100% to 9% in 3 days. So far I have been charging the camera once every 5 or 6 months. I have no idea what could be the problem. The settings have not been changed.

I have noticed that the camera makes strange sounds, similar to a click. It makes these sounds in the evening time. The camera is located in a building. The range to the base is very good.

Disconnecting and resetting (full reset) the camera and the base does not fix the problem. Is the camera "broken"? Is it a battery problem? I think it is not possible for the battery to suddenly reduce its capacity so drastically.

Thank you for any reply.

P.S. I apologize for my English, it is not my native language.

[jguerdat]

Your English is better than many Americans'.

Does the clicking occur only in low light? That could be the IR filter moving in and out of the optical path. If it happens all the time it still could be the filter but it shouldn't be happening, indicating a faulty camera. However, being in a building implies low light all the time so it may be normal.

Do you have another camera with which to swap batteries? Are you using activity zones? It would help to know how many total minutes of recordings per day you get but zones can interfere with that calculation since the servers may discard videos that are determined to be out of the zones. Disabling or removing the zones for a few days may be needed to get the true total.

[xstech95]

My Ultra (which has been working fine for years) has started having the same rapid drain problem.

The only correlation seems to be my Hub received a firmware update roughly when the problem began:

https://community.arlo.com/t5/Firmware-Release-Notes/Arlo-Base-Station-VMB4000-1-20-7-0-4237-cf4d59a...

[skowyrnie]

Thank you for your answers.

The clicking of the camera was indeed related to the low light. After increasing the light strength in the evening, the clicking stopped.

I do not own another camera, so I cannot check the battery from another device. I have removed the zones, however the power consumption of the camera is the same. The battery goes from 100% to 10% in about 48 hours.

[jguerdat]

Add up all the recording times of your videos in that 48 hours. Also add the amount of time used live viewing, too. If more than ~5 minutes per day, on average, you may have found the problem. If you are using activity zones you need to remove them since thew servers will delete any videos found to be outside those zones, falsely making it seem that you're not recording as much. If you happen to be using local recordings on a base or hub, ALL videos stored there represent the true total since they can't be filtered by the servers.

The other typical issue with fast battery drain is due to the location of the camera. This can be due to distance from the hub or router, objects in or on the walls that the signal must pass through as well as the house construction, with stucco, stone, brick and cement being the most likely to block the signal.

[skowyrnie]

I do not have any recordings on the server or on the local hub. Live viewing is sporadic, sometimes once every few days I look in if no one is home. So the time should be defined as less than 1 minute in 48 hours. The activity zones were removed a few weeks ago.

The camera is close to the hub. This distance has never been changed, they (camera and hub) have been in the same place all the time for almost 2 years.

[jguerdat]

I would try 1) reboot the hub and reinsert the camera battery, 2) bringing the camera closer to the hub (indoors) for testing to see what happens and maybe 3) remove and reinstall the camera on your account. If neither of those helps, it could be a faulty camera or battery. I suppose you could buy a new battery from a store that allows you to return it if that proves to not be the problem. An outdoor AC power supply could be a solution or at least a workaround. 

[skowyrnie]

I have already made all these points. Unfortunately, there has been no improvement. The only thing left is to replace the battery to see if the problem is the camera. Thank you for your reply.

[skowyrnie]

The new battery didn’t change anything. The camera consumes about 15% of the battery in 9 hours. This is not normal. In that case, I understand that the camera is to blame. Just why did this start to happen? After all, there was no such problem before. Could it have been an update?

[ShayneS]

@skowyrnie 

Please reach out to the Support Team to further investigate this issue you are experiencing. You can find several options for contacting support though the Arlo Mobile App by navigating to Settings/System/Support.

[skowyrnie]

I have replaced the camera and hub kit (VMB5000) with a new one. I currently have an Arlo Ultra 2 and the above mentioned hub. The problem still exists. All indications are that the current camera software is faulty and draining the battery in the Arlo Ultra and Arlo Ultra 2 in an absolutely unacceptable way - after all, one charge is supposed to last for six months, while with me it lasts for 2 to 3 days.
The batteries are new, the cameras are new, the hub is new, so what else could be the cause if not the software?

[CherM]

I am convinced that this is a software issue. For a year my doorbell would drain the battery in a day never happened before. Then no more draining. I did nothing different same batteries I've always used but all of a sudden it stopped draining them again. I think they need to hire actual software programmers engineers and not the gerbils they have writing software now. A few of my different issues over the past 4 years start randomly and then fix themselves. I am in the process of slowly replacing One camera at a time with the Google cameras. I watch my son's house and that's what he has and the only problem his cameras have is in the winter it gets below 32 the battery will drain quickly. if I get an alert on one of his cameras I can instantly connect from my house. I have never gotten the little circle trying to connect. In my house with Arlo I'm in my house on the same network and I get that constantly. It also missed three events that I know of in the past 4 months where we had something stolen from the front yard within my activity zone and I find no recording when we go back to look to see what happened. Tried to check up on my grandson one time the next day and he's a very active child so there was constant movement between two cameras neither picked him up. Yet I have numerous recordings of an animal being seen in the middle of the night it's really good at picking up animals. But not someone that is closer than animal was taking something out of the back of my husband's truck. I think this was just the last straw so I'm slowly collecting a new system so I can actually tell when somebody is stealing something.

[ShayneS]

Hi @skowyrnie 

Did customer support previously replace the camera for you? 

[skowyrnie]

No, I purchased a whole new set.

[ShayneS]

Please contact support Team to further investigate this issue you are experiencing with the battery drain. You can find several options for contacting support though the Arlo Mobile App by navigating to Settings/System/Support.

[skowyrnie]

A few days ago I sent through the application form a description of the problem. I am waiting for a response.

[ShayneS]

@skowyrnie Thank for the update, do you have the case number by chance?

[skowyrnie]

Yes, I have the case number, I need to check in the email.

[skowyrnie]

The case number 00535066.

[ShayneS]

Let me check in on this, it looks like you are dealing with EU support. I'll report back as soon as possible. 

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