Battery Life after 3 days VMS3130-100NAS

[lillylangtree]

Hello,

Ok, we had motion on all the time for 3 days, the picture is pretty good, but the batteries are dead after 3 days on this.  I am ready to return the unit.  I even put the unit on 50% and still,last night before sleep, on my arlo is instructed us to change the batteries.

We live in the country. but people drive by all day and wildlife is everywhere here.  What can I do?  I love the cameras, but I can't afford the batteries? 

What are my options?

[jguerdat]

Share a video with us (view a typical video and use the share icon at the bottom to copy the link to paste into a reply) so we can make suggestions. Battery life shouldn't be that poor unless you're recording hundreds of minutes of video in that time. Positioning is important, hence the shared video request, so we can make suggestions. Many folks include too much in the camera view leading to recording every silly thing that passes by. Maybe simply tilting the camera down would help.

[Schorschi]

The official use-case scenario of the wireless Arlo cameras is 4-minute video footage recorded per camera per day. This will result in a battery lifetime of 4-6 months.

It sounds like your usage exceeds that by orders of magnitude.

I see you having two choices:

1. Adjust your placement and orientation of your cameras to get (much) closer to those 4 minutes recording time per camera.
2. Return the Arlo system, as your expectations don't match how Arlo is supposed to be used. The fact that the wireless cameras are battery-driven doesn't work if surveillance results in near-constant video recording.

Some suggestions for #1 are:

1. Place cameras such that they are orientied towards your house, i.e. make sure they are inbound looking, not outbound.
2. If you can't fully adhere to #1, tilt your cameras down, so that public passage- and roadways are outside of the cameras' field of view.
3. In some cases you can improve on #2 by additionally orienting cameras upside down, as the motion sensor is pointing down at a slightly different angle. There is an option in the software to adjust each camera's image orientation upside down, so that you see the picture upside right.
4. Concentrate camera placement on points of ingress only, i.e. doors and windows. It may be nice to cover a whole front yard, but it may just cause too many trigger events. Ask yourself what's more important: to catch a shrub thief who vandalizes your front yard or the burglar who steals your TV.