I have 3 outdoor cams and numerous V2’s, both pan and stationary and access to a neighbor’s outdoor cam (shared). Since the recent update to 4.17.1.185 on one of my outdoor cams, the battery is crap. The others are fine (no issues that I’ve seen yet). I’ve looked for other threads and nothing really helps. I’ve considered other options, but nothing else has changed - same location for both the cam and the base, same activity at the cam, same settings. My other outdoor cam at this location (the third is at another location), is further away from the base even. So here goes.
When I updated this OC, it had issues doing the firmware update, but after several attempts, including fully charging the battery and bringing it indoors within a couple feet of the base, it finally said it succeeded and reports it is at 41.17.1.185 like the others. Now, the battery drains WITHIN HOURS. At first, after the update, it seemed fine. Then last week, it said it was dead - as in 0% - so I brought it in and charged it up full again. Took it back outside and it lasted just a couple of days. So, I brought it back in and charged it again. This time, it’s draining in just hours. I charged it at noon, took it out and by bedtime it was down to 60%. Turned it off for the night (had a bug problem causing it to trigger) and turned it back on in the morning. By lunch it was down to 21%.
So I suspect something went way bad during the firmware update. I would just reset it and re-apply the firmware update, but you can’t do that with the outdoor cams. What I don’t understand is that this is limited to one cam. My other outdoor cams seem to be OK.
Anyone have any suggestions? I’ve opened a case with support, but the initial, automated reply said it could be delayed “48-72 hours”. So I thought I’d try here. In the meantime, the camera is OFF and USELESSS.
You didn’t say what firmware your Base is using, but I thought I saw a massive camera battery drain issue using Base Station firmware 4.16.2.16 (I think problems with the Base was overworking the camera), but that seems to have gone away with Base FW 4.16.2.24. Unfortunately they took that version offline while they investigate problems downloading it.
There is nothing wrong with firmware 4.16.2.16. Is the base on Wi-Fi or is it connected via ethernet. I got my 4 cameras in October 2020 and have never had a battery issue that wasn’t self inflicted during scheduled recording. The cam may just have bad batteries or a low signal from the base that will kill the cam quickly because it is searching/ trying to stay connected to the network.
I have a bad outdoor cam also, Happened before the update, Went from 80% to 5% charge in a very short period, Now it won’t charge or respond, it’s only 2 months old.
I think you and I just got defective cams. I have another and it is now having recording issues, guess these cams were not ready for release.
I bought the 2 month old one at Home Depot, odd thing is I told a friend that owns 12 businesses around the country and uses a large amount of security cameras how great I thought they were and he said he was going to try some out, that was the day before mine went bad…I’ll have to tell him to avoid them.
Take it back to Home depot and tell your friend to by some powered V3 cams or something else for a business. The WCO is fine for what I use it for but I would not use them for 12 businesses.
Well, that’s a pretty confident statement, lol. I have 4 cams hooked up, only 1 went bonkers on battery life, and it started right after I installed 4.16.2.16. The camera was not doing anything but setting there, waiting to be awakened by a passing heat source. The only ones of those it saw was me testing the camera once a day.
Then my house had a power failure, and the bug in 4.16.2.16 that caused the Base Station to keep flashing blue bit me. They don’t have the description of the problem quite right on the firmware page, but plenty of people were reporting the Base wouldn’t reconnect after a power failure. That’s what happened to me. I couldn’t get it to reconnect either, not via WiFi or cable.
During the first night a camera looking at my battery-draining Outdoor camera saw it switch it’s IR lights on exactly every 2 hours. Evidently it was waking up and searching for a connection. My guess is even while it was originally connected it kept loosing the connection and kept cycling to get it back, thus wearing down the battery. I updated to 4.16.2.24, got everything connected again, and it has been fine since. I just checked, and it is still at 100% charge.
Unfortunately you will no longer find 4.16.2.24 as an update in the app, as they have taken that version down while they investigate problems people had downloading it.
I haven’t had a power outage yet but last night Xfinity ( Comcast) dropped the entire area around my house at 8:01 PM. The network came back up about 3:00 AM this morning. My base was flashing blue so I pulled the power and restarted, no luck but then I power cycled the router again and the base came right back up after about 3 min. 2 of the 4 cams came back on-line instantly, the other 2 took about another 45 min to connect. The battery use was down 1 % from the day before. Firmware 4.16.2.16 plugged into the router.
We definitely had different experiences, but like I said, only 1 of my 4 cams was affected. That should indicate not everyone will see this issue.
I power-cycled and power-cycled, hit the reset switch, even the sync button. Plugged it into Ethernet. Even left it on for a couple days while waiting for the firmware update. Nothing would recover it until I applied the firmware update.
Even then my experience was different than others; my update installed fine.
I’ve noticed that recently, two of my WCOs have drained the battery completely within a day after working normally for weeks and weeks. They are on the latest 4.17.1.247 firmware, with the base on 4.16.2.24. I charged them to 100% today and after just a few hours, they are already down to 75-80%. Looking at the WCO in another view from one of my V3s after dark, I see that the IR lights never shut off. If they do, they pop back on again seconds later. In the video, they are the lights at the very top of the screen. They are two WCOs just outside my fence. No wind, no nothing, but they keep recording. During the day, they were giving me false motion detection every minute or so. They’ve worked fine until a few days ago.
Hmmm… Interesting. My affected cam (currently working) is still on 4.17.1.185 because I didn’t update to 1.247 before they took it down. I wonder if that version is also broke.
I got a response from support already. Basically, what they told me to do is download the firmware with a given link in the email, put it on an SD card from the cam in a specific folder/directory, insert the SD in to the cam and reboot the cam. When it comes back up it will see the SD, find the directory and the flash file and then reflash the cam. I’m skeptical, but it’s worth a try. I’ll need to charge it again first though…
I’ve had a similar issue that popped up with 2 of my 4 WCO’s in the past moth or so. The cameras had been lasting close to 3 months per charge. Now, 2 of the 4 can’t make it a day on a charge. I’ve need to do some troubleshooting on these before I contact support.
Ditto. I’ve got 2 WCOs and one still last months on battery, the other days. At first I thought it was a battery reporting problem, because I’d get a notice “20% left”, but when I’d connect to the Live View, the battery percentage would go up to 40, then disconnect and connect again and it goes up to 60%. But this time it seems to be truly dead, 0%, after just 3 or 4 days (detection turned off), All seemed to start after the 4.17.1.185 update, but that could be perception. @AaronR you’ve got 2 out of 4 bad, I’ve got 1 out of 2–could it be the base has trouble with even-numbered connections, or some crazy thing? Doubtful, I guess, given the other postings here…
For me it was Base firmware 4.16.2.16, but there are definitely indications camera firmware 4.17.1.247 has an issue too. I never installed that one, tho.
I did the update/forced firmware refresh support suggested after first making sure it was 100% fully charged. That was about 6PM last night. At about 2AM this morning I received the alert that the battery was “low”. Then about 5, another alert saying it was off-line. When I checked a short bit later, the battery was at 0%. So even with the forced flash and a full charge, it still lasted less than 12 hours. Not a happy camper here. I considered forcing it to 247, but from what has been said, that’s not any better. My other WCO’s don’t have this issue at all. So, I suspect it is something in a particular batch of manufacture.
