Question

Thanks for letting me join. I only bought my Arlo 3 two camera set up last week. I wanted a wireless system and I must say I am impressed with the field of vision and the 2K clarity. I have noticed that the recording started a few seconds after movement was detected, which is not good as my camera records cars going by the house (useful after a nearby burglary! ) and people taking a short walk to the front door. With about 100 clips a day, the battery was down to 35% after 5 days. I may need to exclude vehicles to keep this number down. I investigated and found something called the "Foresight feature" which starts a few seconds before the motion detected. However, it turns out I have to run a long extension cable to connect the charger cable and then to the camera. This is not ideal for a wireless system. Have others managed to overcome this?  

Answer 1

Even if you exclude vehicles, it will still record, it just wont notify you. You can do activity zones, but this still uses battery. Foresight only works with continuous powered set ups (and I dont believe solar panels count). You can play with the angle of the camera to reduce the unnecessary recordings, but sometimes it's nice to have those other videos, you never know what you might be able to catch.  

Answer 2

Good detection is a combination of good positioning/angulation (so the motion moves sideways rather than towards the camera) and good motion sensitivity calibration. Also Activity Zones should help exclude the road for vehicles for recordings, but won't save your battery. Using multiple devices to cross trigger is also a good strategy. Unfortunately, the 3-6 months of battery life is based on 5 minutes a day of recording. If you are using the camera in a high traffic area, you'll need to run AC power or for moderate traffic you might get away with a solar panel. Arlo Foresight requires full time power though

Answer 3

Thanks Georgina and Steve. I'm still finding out about the system and really expected Foresight to be the norm (as with my cheaper Y-cam cameras (mains powered)).  

Comments

The way Arlo Foresight works is the camera is constantly recording to a buffer. Then when motion (or audio when selected) is detected, the buffered video is added to the front of the recording sent to the cloud. If the camera is only battery powered, constantly recording to the buffer would drain the battery in a matter of hours. It's the limitation of battery operated cameras, unfortunately

Answer 4

I only record vehicles and people on my property. My batteries last months.