Battery depleting when camera off AND base station disarmed?

[Poezestrepe]

We have a base station and 3 cameras, which we only turn in when we’re not at home. One of the cameras is located in the living room, so we pass in front of it all the time.

Battery is currently at 9%, it went down 6% in 5 days. All this time, the camera has been OFF, and the base station is disarmed. I can see no red light or any sign of life.

In fact, we get less battery consumption when we’re not home and the cameras are on, since then there’s no-one walking in front of them.

Surely it can’t be right to get 3 months battery life out of a camera that is never doing anything?

Am I missing some setting? Or is it defective?

Any help would be appreciated!

[TomMac]

Not knowing if your using OEM or rechargeables cells....

Yes, If the camera is low usage, the OEM cells will last a long time.  A couple of my very low usage cameras run 7 months without a battery change. Most run almost 4 months.

I would take the camera giving you trouble and swap it ( after new batteries ) with one of the others... first find out if the problem follows the camera or is it location.

If you find the issue with the same camera in it's new location then it's prob the camera. If location, the 'new' camera would react similar.

Then you can contact Netgear with info to support a possible claim for warranty if needed.

[jguerdat]

Are you turning the base off or using the Disarmed (or similar) mode? Turning the base off causes the cameras to keep trying to connect, wearing down the batteries.

If it's just the one camera, try swapping cameras around to see if it's the camera or the location.

[Poezestrepe]

The base station stays on, but is in “disconnected” mode.

I tested it for two weeks around New Year, then all the cameras depleted about equally..

Now it’s the one that:
1) we pass in front of the most
2) that’s closest to the base station (less than 10 meters, no walls).

I’ll try changing the batteries and switching them up to see what happens.

[Poezestrepe]

Thanks for replying.
We use single use batteries. It’s a new set-up which we’ve had since mid December. Used them to guard an empty house for two weeks, and from then on pretty much kept them switched off all the time (though at first, I only put the cameras on « off », once si noticed the draining, I switched the base station to « disabled » as well.

I’ll switch the cameras up to see what happens. Given prior usage though, I suspect it’s the location rather than the camera. It behaves similarly to the others (limited battery usage) when no-one is around for him to spy on.

We do have rater wonky internet connection, so I first thought it might be an issue trying to reconnect, but the problem cam is actually the closest one to the base station.

[jguerdat]

How many total minutes per day is the camera recording and live viewing? Spec battery life is<5 minutes per day.

[steve_t]

Unfortunately, proximity to the base station is no guarantee that they won't be subject to interference and disconnecting. If the camera is disconnected by interference, it will rapidly deplete the battery. I had a camera that was offline and unable to sync even when it was sitting right next to the base station. I was at my wits end thinking I had a faulty camera. I even recording 2.5 minutes of video to show the camera blinking a low blue LED while the base blinked the green camera LED. In the end I moved the base station a few feet further away from my wifi router and the camera sync'd immediately and has been online ever since. It was weird that it was only one camera out of 10 cameras. I wondered if each camera gets its own frequency so they don't interfere with each other. Anyway, give that a shot. Couldn't hurt

[Poezestrepe]

Zero. The entre system was turned off.

Even when on, it records zero minutes since it’s inside our house and has no reason to record anything. In that case, the battery does not drain.

It seems to only drain when it’s supposedly off (camera off - base station disarmed) because we’re home and are passing in front of it continuously. However, no video is recorded then.

[Poezestrepe]

Update: we’ve away from home for 5 days now, with the camera continuesly ON; we lost 0%. So it’s definitely draining only when it detects motion even when turned off.

[Poezestrepe · Accepted solution]

I FOUND A WORK AROUND SOLUTION:

First off; this is apparently a known bug, where a camera still detects movement (and thus uses up thebattery) even when no action is required.

If you encounter the same problem; i.e. a camera battery rapidly depleting because it is located in a high traffic area (such as a living room), despite being turned COMPLETELY OFF (both camera OFF and system DISARMED); here’s the fix that worked for me:

Go to Settings > Subscription > Manage Camera Status.

Here you’ll see a list of your active cameras, and below it, a (probably empty) list of inactive cameras.

Drag and drop the draining camera in the list of inactive cameras. Click continue.
Your camera is now inactive and will no longer drain its battery. To undo, simply drag it back into the active camera list.

Small drawback: if you need to turn your camera on, this is a bit more work than simply arming your entire setup. So this fix is intended mostly for cameras that are of 90% on the time and that you only need on occasionally (like when going away on holiday). That said, the rest of your system will still operate as usual, and you can easily do all the steps described from the App even when you’re away from home.