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Standard Arlo Base Station Lockup and Batteries Flat

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Matt_N
Aspirant
Aspirant

I have had two occasions now when, at some point, I check the Arlo app and find that it tells me that the base station is offline. Now this may take a day to notice as there is no notification like there is when there is movement detected or I leave or enter home zone. This in itself seems to be a silly bug as it should be very important to know that the connection to the base station has been lost.

 

Both times this has happened I simply restart the base station and it reconnects just fine only to find that the camera batteries are either completely flat or at a very low <5 percentage depending on how new they are.

 

The most recent time this happened I had only just replaced all 16 batteries the previous week so very annoyed that I now need to spend another £25 to replace them all.

 

It seems that whatever it is that happens to the base station, the cameras just exhaust their batteries. One would have thought that with no connection to the base station some sort of power saving scheme would be in effect.

 

As a note, there seems to be no issues with any other product connected to my router/modem at these times. Looking at the logs for the fibre modem I see that there has been no loss of internet connection during these incidents with Arlo.

 

Has anyone else experiences this base station lock followed by rapid battery exhaustion?

 

Thank you

2 REPLIES 2
TomMac
Guru Guru
Guru

Yes, what your seeing when the base goes offline has happened many times....

With no connection to the base, the cameras keep reaching out to the base attempting to maintain contact ( sort of like yr cell phone trying to reach a cell site )... this causes the batteries to drain faster.

 

The only way around this is to keep the base online.... many do this with a UPS  on the base unit.  It seems if the base is powered even if internet is down the cameras maintain contact.

 

It would be nice to get an alert if the base is offline... recommend checking out the "wish list" at

https://community.arlo.com/t5/Arlo-Idea-Exchange/idb-p/arlo-idea-exchange

See if the item is in the list and if so add kudos... more kudos, more likely to come to fruition

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Morse is faster than texting!
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hokeysmoke
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

My "old" base station (original) also has been going offline a lot recently.  I have always had it on a UPS but it is still happening.  Could be the new firmware, or it could be it's just dying after 5 years.  I have switched to the rechargeable batteries because I can't afford new ones so often.

 

I bit the bullet and got one of the inexpensive cylindrical bases (VMB3500) to replace it.  Perhaps that's just what Arlo wants us to do.