New Camera - battery died overnight!!

[Dd1980]

I just bought 5 arlo cameras with the base station (4893617WA16A3) with firmware 4941. Two of the cameras 48B458SRBA2CB and 48B458S3BAFCF have their battery run out in two days without any motion detection or much usage. Batteries used were provided with the package. 2 days seems awfully low. I have done the normal trouble shooting opening and leaving for 10 mins etc What do i do? I guess I have to return the camera. I had very high hopes for this but the camera don't seem to have consistent quality

[Dougie360]

I had similar issues.  Figured out what was causing my issue - I had been using my Apple Airport Extreme as my WiFi Router plugged directly into the ATT Modem/Router.  Both my Airport and ATT Modem were generating wifi signals and probably continually pinging the camers.   I went into my ATT Modem/Router setup and disabled all Wifi and also firewall and basicallly just set it as modem.  Batteries have been great ever since - looks like I will get 5-6 months at least per set of batteries.

Tech support had no idea about this - kept advising reboots, etc.   

[JamesC]

Dd1980,

Poor signal strength or interference can cause the cameras to drain battery faster than expected. The location of the camera may be the issue. One way to isolate the issue would be to swap locations of the affected camera with a camera that is behaving correctly to see if the problem follows the camera.

JamesC

[lydiap01]

SO angry....set up was a breeze, overnight sometime the danged thing stopped recording and now it is completely dead....help!!

[JamesC]

lydiap01,

Was the camera armed? How many recordings were made before it stopped recording?

What is the behavior of the camera LED when you open and close the battery compartment door? A slow flashing amber LED indicates dead batteries.

JamesC

[lydiap01]

I dont see anything that was recorded/stored in my library.  I had three or four that I deleted when I tested it at first. Then I armed it and went to bed that night. Next morning, camera was offline so I took it down (it was outside) and the camera is completely dead - nothing happens when I push the synch button on top of it. 

Im not at home at the moment but I will open the battery compartment this evening to see what the behavior of the camera is.

Thanks for responding.

Lydia

[lydiap01]

So when I came home, the camera was flashing amber slow.  I opened the battery compartment and reclosed it and it flashed blue for one or two flashes and then it stopped everything again. 

Lydia

[jguerdat]

Sounds like the batteries are dead.  Slow amber flashing indicates very weak batteries.  Opening and closing the battery door should have created rapid flashing blue but if the batteries are dead, you'd be lucky to get a flash or two.

[lydiap01]

Disappointing....there should be no reason why they died so quickly....

[jguerdat]

There are actually lots of reasons for the batteries to die prematurely:

- bad batteries in the first place

- weak WiFi between the base and camera (reposition base and/or cameras)

- interference on the 2.4GHz band from other wireless devices

- total number of minutes recording and live viewing (spec usage is ~4 minutes per day)