How does a camera go from 76% battery to 8% overnight with no use?!?!

[MarkN2016]

It's a vacation home, 350 miles away. The camera looks over a front security gate. If it sees 1 motion event a month, it's a lot. It suddenly dropped from 76% battery to 8‰ overnight, sending a low battery report. No motion events at all to draw it down. What's up with that?

[manfredz]

One possibility would be that you had an internet or power outtage that caused the cam to use up all that battery power trying to reconnect with the base ststion without luck. 

[MarkN2016]

I should add I have a 2nd camera at the same house that is still showing 68% battery life remaining.

[manfredz]

That rules out my suggested cause.

Two other possibilities are bad batteries or poor contact.  If easy to get at cams, try swapping the batteries between cams and see what happens,

[MarkN2016]

Thanks for the reply! Next time I get to that home, I'll check those particular batteries with my multi-meter for voltage. It really perplexes me how they stayed with adequate voltage for 9 months (They are the original batteries... Like I said, they hardly ever see movement.) Then in one quick night go from a 3/4 charge to a nearly dead state for no apparent reason whatsoever.

[manfredz]

just a hunch here, but for them to have lasted 9 months they should have recorded almost nothing.

Netgear says batteries will last about 6 months, using a 5x 20 sec recording for that claim.

So if you were recording a bit maybe it wasn't the batteries but the battery meter reading where the problem lies

[MarkN2016]

Yeah, I'm wondering that too. That's why I'm going to look at each of the 4 batteries as for voltage to help figure it out.

[TomMac]

BTW, the batteries are doa at about 2.75v-2.8v for the OEM cells.

My low use cameras that use 1-2 min a week run 7 months... 9 months is basicly not in use as all  (wow)