Night Vision Too Dark

[ericmcgovern]

Ran into an interesting problem last night...

Walked onto my patio, which triggered the camera at about 9:30 last night. I looked up at it, and saw all the of LED's come on. For the heck of it, I took a look at the picture and realized it was nearly pitch black and wouldn't be usefull if I was attempting to catch a real event. 

So I got up on my ladder and started looking at the camera, which of course triggered it agian and the image was again nearly all black. After not seeing anything wrong with the camera, I got off the stool and walked away, which again triggered it. However, this time the picture is what I am used to seeing. I could clearly see my patio and everythong on it. Nothing changed about the lighting or positioning This caused me to look at all my cameras, and I noticed another one was having the "nearly black" issue. I messed around with, but never could get it to snap into actual "nigh vision". I have posted a before and after image, hopefully someone can give advice. 

Too Dark

VS

Just Right

[HouseApe]

Also after "smacking it" try shining a flashlight right at it to make it switch to day mine then back to night.

[slickman]

I just dont understand why you have to do all this to cameras that are brand new out of the box.  They need to address this.  These camera worked fine for night vision till  the firmware update...

[MrGeorgeLynch]

The broom handle didn't help... Oh, yes... Shining a flash light into the lens? That's a good idea! I'll try that!

[MrGeorgeLynch]

Ok, The flashlight trick didn't work either... I shined the flashlight onto the lens until it switched to CCTV, and then I turned the flashlight off. No success... When a car drives down the street it lights the area up pretty good..

I got the ladder out and cleaned the lens of the camera, and it seemed to help a little bit, I think, but still not bright enough to what it was before this black out epidemic started.

I had an external "Cheap" illuminator that I bought off ebay for under 10 bucks, and used it to illuminate the area, and this worked great, especially when I "turned off the internal IR LED's built into the camera." However, these cheap illuminators on ebay for under 10 bucks don't last very long as these have burned out on me in the past...

I believe the ONLY solution to fixing this problem is to buy those good High Power Illuminators from Frys.com... They're around fifty bucks.. I'm going to get the good one's that illuminate 150' or 250' feet, and they work best if you disable the cameras built in illuminator, and just use the external illuminator as the light source. The LED's built into the camera are actually behind the glass where the lens is located, and they seem to reflect off the glass causing "light noise." This may be what's causing the "too dark" syndrom. Hope this helps everyone else having these STUPID issues.

[MrGeorgeLynch]

Actually, I think I'm going to try resetting the cameras to their factory defaults, before I buy a good external illuminator.. I'm just not sure if that will fix it, but it's worth a shot. I'll wait until daylight before I go to this extreme.

[jguerdat]

There seems to be a spate of dark night vision complaints which would lead me to believe that it's a hardware issue that can only be resolved by swapping the system at the store or opening a case using the Contact Support link at the bottom of the desktop version of these pages.

[slickman]

I just spent $15 for a 48 led IR light for my driveway till these guys get it fixed.   Like I said above, mine worked fine till the firmware was updated so I don't think its a hardware issue.

[jguerdat]

My cameras work fine so I'd suspect something other than firmware. Maybe the update just tripped a flaw in the hardware - no real way to tell.

[slickman]

I would put money on it its firmware as you can change the IR output via firmware.  I recall seeing the IR led's on when I first power up the camera but now I don't recall seeing it after the update.   I'll have to check tonight.

[MrGeorgeLynch]

For $15 you should've been able to get two of them, as I did... When you're having a darkness issue as I am, two is always better than one) They had a bunch of these on eBay recently, but I don't see any, now... Check the completed listings of the users offering these deals..

I've been using the 12V @ 500mA adapters that seem to work pretty good....but, again. The LED's are burning out one at a time after six months of use. It has 48 LED's in each one, but now, about six to ten LED's have burned out in each illuminator.

I'm probably going to go ahead and buy the high power illuminators from Fry's.com. I already have one that is the 90' range... and, all the LED's are still working...However, as dark as my cameras have become, I'm going to go with higher power for $5.00 more in price. Also, the power adapters actually come with these illuminators, so I'm getting the actual adapters that were made for these illuminators, and not some cheap adapters that I had to buy separately that are not from the manufacturer. This may be the cause of the LED's burning out on me.

[MrGeorgeLynch]

I would try doing the firmware update on my cameras, but I can't find any info on how to do this... Then again, after hearing your horror stories, not sure I want to..

[slickman]

The two for $15 is from China and I did not feel like taking a gamble because manmy of them fail.  I got it from Amazon and if it fails I just send it back.

[MrGeorgeLynch]

Oh, I see what you mean about coming from China!!! that's a red flag... However, my seller was based in California, but the product was made in China like everything else...

As I mentioned before, the darkness issue I'm having, the little cheap illuminators helped somewhat, but it's still not as it should be. So, I'm going with the higher powered ones.. I'm determined to get these cameras working back to their full potential because I spent a lot of time running the ethernet cable through my attic and mounting these cameras. I really don't want to go through the hassel of buying new cameras, and remounting them, again. That was a complete nightmare!

[MrGeorgeLynch]

Oh, by the way... I woke up early this morning to see how the night vision was working as it slowly got from dark to lighter outside.. And, the night vision brightness got much better and seemed to be working as it should with the low ambiant light. It must be something internal in the camera that got messed up, but I really don't know.

[MrGeorgeLynch]

After doing more research on this "Too Dark" image that I'm getting out of my security camera... I came to the conclusion that the "AGC" (Auto Gain Control) settings are off and need re-adjustment. This is the cameras automatic brightness control that the camera uses when the image is too bright, the AGC will lower the brightness automaticallly, or if the image is too dark it will automaticlly raise the brightness of the image... The problem is, I can't find any info on how to do this with my particular camera... There are other cameras online that inform you how to adjust these settings, but you have to open up the camera to get to the internal parts to adjust it.

[slickman]

Firmware!!

[HouseApe]

I contacted Netgear last night. They looked at my footage before and after a battery pull in night mode. They gave me a RMA for that camera. Said it's "having issues transitioning from day tonight modes"
I do believe there's an IR filter that that moves in front of the lens and it's not moving or is weak.

[Arlofan521]

I'm having the same problem. Image was good 11/14/16 until around 1/5/17. I played around with the settings turning night vision off and back on and brightness then all of a sudden the image was back. This is something Netgear needs to address immediately. I paid $649 for the Pro with 4 cameras and now I'm not sure I can trust my investment.

[MrGeorgeLynch]

I was actually able to finally resolve my "too dark" issues with my alarm.com cameras.. I logged into the alarm.com website and edited the "Device Image Settings" by configuring the "Max Exposure" option.This affects how bright the image is at night. It states "the automatic option will be the brighter, but the motion will be blurier, whereas the 1/30 exposure will be darker, but the motion will be clearer." 

my options for Max Exposure were: "Automatic", 1/5 second, 1/10 second, 1/15 second, 1/30 second, 1/60 second, 1/120 second, 1/240 second, 1/480 second.........

The automatic option is what the camera was set to before everything went dark on me... I changed to "1/5 second" (one option down from automatic), and the image came back the way it used to be when set to automatic. 

So, somehow the configuration in "Max Exposure" changed, but it really isn't a problem at this point, but it took several days for me to finally figure out without having proper documentation.I searched everywhere online for this info, but I couldn't find it....

[Johnny_K]

I have had many of the same issues with the night vision working fine and then it goes dim. The issue with mine started when my battery went low on power and turned my camera off. I charged my camera to 100% and turned it back on and that's when the night vision problem began. This was the first charge to this camera as it was only25 day's old ( I played around with it alot in the beginning). I went through many of the same way's to try and get it back working and failed multiple times. The one thing that I did that finally got it working again was to take the battery out of the camera put it back in and then re sync the camera. I had to do this several times but it finally started to work again like it should.

[beershaun]

I had the same problem with my brand new Arlo Pro camera. It also wouldn't switch back from night vision after the lights turned on. This was also after it updated to the latest firmware during setup.

I pulled the battery waited a minute and put it back in. The restart seemed to cure the issue. Will check again tonight. Maybe the firmware updates don't take without a hard restart?

[jguerdat]

Updates cause the camera to reboot. No battery pull required. However, any hardware using a computer chip can get stupid for unknown reasons.

[beershaun]

Still having the problem again tonight. 2 things. Won't switch back to day mode from night vision when I turn the lights on. I had to get out of position mode and reenter for it to switch back to day mode. Then when I turned to lights off. The night vision popped on but was much darker than it was before. Don't understand

[jguerdat]

Try resetting the camera by reinserting the battery. If no good, open a case with support.

[JoTu]

Same problem as many above. Just bought a two camera system. Was working fine for 3 days. I accepted an Arlo update that appeared on line and my night vision went very dark. Was really good before the update. Suggestions please for the brand new guy!