"Dead" batteries coming back to life?!

[Figueroa419]

Arlo said the batteries were dead. We were pretty busy so I forgot to change them. About 2 weeks later I started getting motion alerts. I check and the batteries were showing alive with a 3/4 charge! The camera worked for another 3+ weeks before dying. Now I'm wondering what is going on and how many times I threw away perfectly good batteries!

[steve_t]

The only things I can think of would be corrosion etc preventing one pair of batteries making good contact and then suddenly being able to connect, or temperature related output changes. Going from 3/4 full battery life to dead in 3 weeks isn't particularly good so I'm guessing they weren't really back up to 3/4 capacity

PS. I strongly recommend rechargeable batteries

PPS. If not, I defo recommend you use a multimeter on your batteries before you throw them out as there have been some observed differences in discharge rates between the pairs of batteries

[jguerdat]

The original wireless cameras use the batteries as two sets of two - front and rear.  The camera will switch between them to even out depletion over time.  If one set didn't have connection, the other set would wear down.  It plausible, although seemingly unlikely, that the second set could somehow have then made connection allowing the camera to start operating again.

Weird but possible.