Arlo|Smart Home Security|Wireless HD Security Cameras
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TheLCSteve
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Aspirant

so I've read a number of the posts on here about people having the same problem. I've had my HW7 Arlo Free system now for about 18 months and it worked reasonably well (never could resolve the long delay lag to record) but close to 6 months ago 2 of my 4 camera would be offline everytime I tied to use them. I'd replace the batteries in them and set them back up and go back to what I thought was normal. A couple weeks would go by and I'd try to check on the camera again to see it was offline again. I didn't check them often because they were in low traffic areas and I didn't expect activity on them. After it happening again a couple more times I ordered rechargable batteries and tried again. Same thing, the batteries were in fact dead and charging them and reinserting them would cause the camera's to work again for the day. Next day nope they were offline again. I would then recharge the batteries, remove the camera from the base station and add it back on. Same results everytime. Fast forward a month to mid June. I pulled all 4 cameras down, I removed each camera from my base station and removed the base station from my account. 

 

I waited nearly a week and charged all the batteries and making sure to mix them up. I then added my base station back to my account and added 1 camera back on. it was was of the previous 'good' ones. I renamed it and placed it in one of the locations previously giving me trouble. Waited a couple of hours, checked it and it was still working fine. Batteries were still reading 100%. I then grabbed a previously noted 'bad' one and added it back to the base station, renamed it and set it up in a previous 'good' location. To keep this story short I repeated this process for the other 2 cameras as well and when all 4 cameras were now on my system and I could access them from my IOS app as well as the web browser I immediately flipped the slider from on to off on each of them in the app.They all gave me the same message and updated the image to the last thing they saw. 

 

The next day, 2 of the 4 cameras are now showing offline and are unavailable. They are the same 2 cameras having trouble before and have been in the 'off'' position to boot. I waited 3 days (well had to I had family over and couldn't pull away to play with these) now today they show the same status as before. The 2 'good' ones are able to be turned on and have 97 and 98% battery on them and the bad ones are not working and blinking orange. The closest bad one has a 25ft 100% clear line of sight to the base station. 

 

  • all cameras are in the same location aside from the recent swaps for nearly 18 mo.
  • base station has not moved more than 2 inches in all that time
  • base station is connected to a UPS 100% of the time
  • no changes have been made to internal networking years, 80% of devices are ethernet vs wifi
  • used both rechargable and non batteries in these cameras, swapped batteries between cameras
  • swapped locations with good and bad camera with no affect on hyper draining
  • Batteries are in fact depleted when this occurs
  • all cameras have firmware 1.2.16720 and appears to be latest
  • base statin has firmware 1.10.0.7_21310 and appears to be latest
  • cameras have been removed and added multiple times and renamed

I'm sure this is a software/firmware issues since it started abruptly with 2 of my 4 cameras at the same time. Turning the cameras off and having my mode as disabled does nothing for this and they continue to rapid drain overnight. My home network has been very stable with no changes low wifi activity. What else can I try? I'm sure my cameras are out of warranty not that I could get Netgear on the phone or chat anyway. what else is there I've maybe missed?

 

Steve

 

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bcaps
Aspirant
Aspirant

I am having the exact same issue with just 1 camera. I switched out the location and it still happens to this camera. I put brand new rechargable batteries in the camera Sunday morning and the camera was off line by Sunday early evening. Took the camera down and the batteries were dead. 

TheLCSteve
Aspirant
Aspirant

Well I'm not sure whats happened inbetween yesterday and today, all of my camera and base station were on the most recent firmware already so far all 4 are working.I charged the 2 'bad' ones last night and did nothing more than put batteries in and back on the wall mount. I just checked at lunch here and they are both available including the original 2. We're talking over 12 hours and they are both showing 100% batteries still so something changed. I like many others had on-going problems with this happening and so many people had the problem go away after posting on the forums. I'm really wondering if Netgear isn't seeing these posts and fixing the problem with peoples accounts user by user. It almost seems just too unlikely that after almost 5 months of this is mysteriously sorts itself out the very evening of the day I posted this on the forums.

 

I'll update over the coming days as to if it still works or slipped back in to hyper drain abyss again.