Amber Light Stays On, No Night Vision, Was Completely Dead VMC3030

[TheZombie]

Hi. I\m new to the forum. I hope I'm in the right place.

I have a camera that was dead the day after I put fresh batteries in. I wish I would have checked the voltage of each battery, but I did not. I opened and closed the battery cover abd it came back on, but the amber light was on. It died again in about a half hour. I switched the batteries and then the base station couldn't find it. Amber light was still on. I did a factory reset and the base station found it again. 

Still, any time the camera is on, the amber light is on.

It died again within 24 hours. This time, I tested the batteries and 2 of them had zero volts. 2 had  3.1v. I think I do have 1 bad battery our of 32 floating around. It was installed upside down in a different camera.

So I put in a fresh set. It's been running for more than 24 hours now. This time, it wasn't detecting motion at first. At all. I set it to 100% and couldn't get it to detect anything.

Another reset.

The amber light was still on  and it's used for the motion detector setting, so I thought it may be stuck in some motion detector loop. I tried the motion detector test under device utilities, but the amber light just stays on. And now the motion detection works, but the night vision doesn't. 

When it boots, the amber light comes on, it blinks amber and blue, then turns solid amber.  It has the latest firmware, and I'm assuming it was updated in the several months I've been using the system before this. The latest firmware is from 1987 or something. 

Kidding of course, but it was released long before I got my cameras.

Any ideas what's up with it? Voodoo? gremlins? Politicians?

Thanks in advance for any assistance/

-Mel

[TomMac]

I still have 2 of the older Arlo HD cams running so they should function on any of the bases ( what base are u using btw? ).

It is possible that the camera is bad for some reason...

But first, a reset of the camera is to open the battery door which you tried, then batteries go in as follows;

The led will blink blue once if the batteries are in, then go to fast flashing blue if it syncs ok. Since your seeing amber, the procedure is not working correctly.

MY firmware on those cameras is running now 1.6.297  ,  check this if you can.

You may have to reset the base again and start all over as if new... if it works the cameras may update as they are found and it will tell you.... try this at   my.arlo.com with your browser, I've always found the web access to be more stable

[jguerdat]

Also, it rather sounds like you have pushed the batteries into place. Try again but this time just lightly place them in the slots and let the battery door do the pushing. Sometimes the batteries get stuck down and don't make contact with the door contacts.

[TheZombie]

Thanks all for the input.

TomMac,

The base is VMBr34. It all came as a kit and worked for weeks. 

I tried the steps at https://kb.arlo.com/000062438/How-do-I-factory-reset-my-Arlo-wire-free-camera . It's not specifically for this camera, but it can't hurt anything and I thought maybe it would kick the yellow light into submission. Plus, pushing and holding a button down usually does *something* on a devise with only one button. lol It did nothing at all in my case.

The firmware is 1.4.293 on all 3 of the cameras that will boot (including the one discussed here), and that's the latest one I can find in the release notes on this website. The app says there are no updates. It looks like you and I have different cameras. Mine do not have the USB port.

I'm sure you are correct that the camera is bad. I wondered if it was a problem that you folks had seen around here before.  I might try resetting the base station later,  but I don't know how it could cause the problems I'm having.

jguerdat,

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind. Tested individually, each battery is making contact with the door. I just now tried to get the batteries to stick by pushing them all the way down several times, and they didn't feel like there were any sticking points. The front 2 batteries are the ones dead. They are on the same contact in the door and the back 2 are on a contact in the door, so I thought you might have something. It has to be running on just the front two. I suspect there's something wrong with the battery board inside. It is running right now, though.  

And FYI, I just tried booting another camera on just the front two batteries. Then, I tried with just the back two. It boots either way. I opened the door when the blue lights started blinking, though.

Thanks again. I'll update later. 

[TheZombie]

I haven't had time to get on here in a few days. Been working on my Jeep. 

Nothing has really changed. It's still running on 2 batteries. They last a day and a half or thereabout.