Arlo 3 Pro Battery Drain

[Chris Eichhorn]

I recently received my Camect and hooked up all of my cameras to it (including my 4 Arlo Pro cameras). Before Camect, my Arlo camera battery life was about 4 weeks. After hooking up Arlo to Camect, all the cameras were battery depleted within 24 hours. I figured the cameras hadn't been charged in a while, so I started re-charging a camera. I confirmed the battery at 100% and went to work. 4 hours later, the camera is at 75% battery (confirmed thru Arlo's direct web UI). At this rate, that camera will be dead by tomorrow morning. That's from 4 week battery life to 24 hour battery life.

I now have concerns about the connection frequency with camect and what I can do about it. My suspicion is Camect is now recording 24x7, where I did no active recording and the cameras were just on demand real-time view. That would certainly explain the change. Has anyone else experienced this and what can be done about this? Full transparency, I have not had the time to play with the deeper settings outside of install, so my hope is there is a way to configure no recording from those cameras, while still having recording from my wired cameras. We just use the Arlo cameras to keep track of our dog during the day.

[CamectArup]

Hi Chris, 

     Sorry that this came as a surprise. We did try to make it clear  in the camera compatibilty faq that battery drain will be a problem on battery-operated cameras. (See here for the Arlo entry.) 

The UI also warns you that batteries will drain quickly when you choose to add a battery-operated camera (at the point where it shows you the cameras in your account as asks you to select the ones that you'd like to use with Camect). 

To record only from your powered cameras, you can disable your battery-powered cameras using the slider at the top left of the camera's title bar for each battery-powered camera. Right now you'll have to re-enable the battery-powered cameras manually to view them live. To do that, you have to click "show XXX disabled cameras" at the bottom of the camera display, and then use the slider to enable. 

[Chris Eichhorn]

Thank you for the information. I just didn't think the battery drain would be that drastic, but it does make sense understanding that camect is in 24x7 record mode. Hopefully there is a plan to support a view only option for cameras, that's the way Apple Home and Alexa app support cameras. For now, I will go the disable route and go back to using 2 different apps to monitor all the cameras. I still love the camect and it has me researching new cameras and pricing. Unfortunately, power wiring cameras is not always feasible, where battery cameras fill that niche nicely (especially when the battery lasts a month).

[CamectArup]

By "view only" mode I assume you mean that the camera would be enabled only while you're connected to the UI? 

We don't currently have a plan for that as you're the first to ask for it. However, I do see the sense in what you're suggesting, with the possible caveat that you might be annoyed by the time it takes to connect to the camera after you connect to the UI. (Arlo in particular takes a while, as you've probably seen when you enable a camera.) 

Like all features, this would get prioritized depending on how much demand there seems to be for it ... So we'll keep track of whether this will solve anyone else's problems too. 

[Rob Taft]

I'd like add a vote for the "view only" option.

[Chris Eichhorn]

yes. please add a 'view only' option to the roadmap for review. I think this will get a lot of traction over time as those with battery operated cameras notice the performance hit. It makes perfect sense why this has happened, but alexa and apple and google have found ways to integrate with Arlo without the 24x7 recording performance hit.

[Steve Gibson]

+1. I’ve got Arlo pro 2 cameras and I went from 3 months to just under 2 weeks on battery.

[CamectArup]

2 weeks is actually quite a bit more than some others have reported, so I'm curious:  Do you have the Arlo continuously recording, or only recording part-time (e.g. when you're not home)? 

[Chris Eichhorn]

I wanted to revisit this and see if a 'view only' option had gotten enough traction to make it on to a roadmap? I still keep my Arlo system off camect as the battery drain is a deal breaker, but love camect for my other 4 IP cameras that work flawlessly.

I had seen a post where a question was asked, if a 'view only' option was implemented, would you prefer a view always on but not record or a connect when wanting to view. For me, the view only option is so that battery based camera systems (like Arlo) aren't drained by the constant connection. In that scenario, then I would not want Camect to contact the cameras at all, until the Camect UI connects and wants to see the cameras. Would that cause a connection delay? Yes, but Arlo's own system works that way. I have to wait for their UI to connect to the cameras, so this would be no different.

What would be ideal, is to tie this feature, on a per camera configuration. Let us choose which cameras to record 24x7 and which to run 'view only'. For myself, I could then add my Arlo cameras and have them 'view only' while my other IP camera can continue their job.

[CamectArup]

No, this feature is not on a roadmap yet, but that doesn't mean we have forgotten about it. 

We're still a bit puzzled about what value we'd be adding over using the Arlo app by doing this. You'd open Camect and see other cameras fairly quickly, but then have to wait quite a long time to able to see the video from your Arlo. (The time taken would be about the same as it takes if you enable an Arlo camera that has been sitting disabled for a while. Now that Arlo expires 2FA tokens every 15 days, you might also have to deal with entering the 2FA pin as well if you haven't looked recently.)  I'm wondering why you'd prefer this to just opening the Arlo app itself. Is it because seeing the live view from all your cameras in one place gives you a better overview of what's going on at home, and this feels like it would be worthwhile even if you have to wait a while to see it? 

[Chris Eichhorn]

That's a very valid point. For me, and potentially anyone who has multiple cameras from different vendors, it's simply a matter of consolidation and convenience.