Arlo VMA4600-10000S Certified Accessory - Solar Panel | Compatible with Pro, Pro 2 Black

12/19 UPDATE: Charge fault error, fixed!With the winter sun lower in the sky, the solar panel on the north side of the house was not getting enough light to charge. So, I replaced the standard mount with an Acetaken Arlo Mounting Bracket mount, a 23" long mount that allows me to extend the Arlo Solar panel over the roofline to face south from a north-facing garage.When I plugged everything back in, I got the dreaded "Charging Fault" error telling me that the Arlo Solar Panel was not compatible with the Arlo Pro camera. I went through all the troubleshooting steps, including: remove the battery, wait 10 minutes, re-insert the battery; remove the camera from the Arlo App and set it up as a new camera; reset the entire Arlo network; reset my modem. Nothing worked. I was just about to give up and call technical support but decided to do one more thing.We had just had an enormous winter thunderstorm come through the area, so wondered if there was a problem with the electronics in the camera, like, perhaps, some moisture got inside. I brought the camera inside, replaced the battery with another freshly charged battery, then let the camera sit inside for a day.Not sure which of my activities did the trick, but the camera is mounted, operating, and again charging with the Arlo Solar Panel. The problem seems to have been with the camera battery, not the solar panel. All five of the Arlo Solar Panels in my security network remain operational after eight months of testing; so, the Arlo Solar Panel keeps its five-star rating from me.6 MONTH UPDATE: ONE MORE PANEL, ALL GOODAfter six months of testing and gradually installing one Arlo Solar Panel at a time, I just installed my fifth solar panel. I now have an Arlo solar panel powering each of my perimeter cameras, and all continue to work flawlessly. As before, I installed this final panel on a battery that had been entirely drained. After one hour, the battery is 20% charged and will be fully charged by tomorrow.Considering a 100% success rate with six Arlo Solar panels after six months of testing, I’m increasingly puzzled by the negative reviews. Maybe people are not removing the plastic protective barriers, installing the panels in the shade, or not securing the plugs into the camera. Anyway, initially skeptical, I am a strong advocate of the Arlo Solar Panel for anyone tired of climbing the ladder every few months to charge their cameras.I’ve decided to NOT buy solar panels for the six Arlo lights I have on the property. After five months of operation, they remain fully charged while lighting the path whenever they are approached. Thank you, LED technology, super-bright with almost no energy. Cool.Because of all the warnings and negative reviews, I held off on buying the Arlo Solar Panel, hoping to find a viable alternative. Ironically, the other options proved less viable, so I took a slow approach to deploy Arlo panels. After four months of testing one installation at a time, I’m happy with the results and wondering why others have had so many problems.SEPTEMBER UPDATE: DO NEGATIVE REVIEWS SAY MORE ABOUT THE USERS THAN THE PRODUCT?Four months ago, I bought one and installed it with the Arlo Pro camera over the garage door. Installation was easy, and it worked like I would expect it to work.Testing one of the common complaints that the solar panel drains the battery, I plugged the panel into a camera with a depleted battery. Not only did the panel keep the camera operating while the sun was shining, it fully charged the battery over two days, and has flawlessly worked for four months. The only maintenance has been to brush it with a broom to remove spider webs lightly.After a month of operation, I bought a second Arlo to mount with the Arlo Pro camera monitoring our back yard. Same results. Easy installation, easy setup, zero maintenance.——-With another month of successful testing, I bought a third Arlo Solar Panel for the Arlo Pro camera monitoring the side gate. This one triggered the well-reported error of an incompatible power source. I thought this might be the end of the test, with the worst and most common complaint confirmed: the Arlo Pro Solar Panel is not compatible with the Arlo cameras it is made to power. Fortunately, the solution was easy: I made sure the cables were securely connected and reset the Arlo Pro Base station. Since then, two months now, everything has worked flawlessly.With another month of successful testing, I bought a fourth Arlo Solar Panel for the camera monitoring the front door. Same results, flawless operation.One slight problem on the front door unit: the cord is too short. All of the other panels are installed next to their respective cameras with the extra cable stuffed under roof tiles. With the front door camera mounted above the door and the solar panel on the side of the house, the wire has to stretch across an open area over the front door to reach the camera, not attractive. I am now in the market for an extension cable so I can tack the cable to the wall rather than have it hanging over the open area between the column and the door.As with the other three Panels, I’m also testing the fourth panel with a depleted camera. With today’s sun, it’s charging at a rate of about 10 percent per hour.——-With four months of successful testing on four units resulting in a flawlessly operating, no maintenance video monitoring system around the property, I’m wondering why others are having problems.I’m in Phoenix, Valley of the Sun, so have substantial exposure all day every day. I saw a picture in one of the negative reviews that showed the solar panel mounted on a tree. Solar means sun, folks — no solar no charge. Mounting a panel in the shade of a tree or in an area that does not have direct exposure to the sun will not work. For a couple of the panels, I bought a special mount that is about a foot long that allows it to reach around or over the house so the panel can get optimum southern exposure, even from the north and east sides of the house. Other reported issues may be fixed by making sure the connections are secure and resetting the base station.Occasionally, I get so much sun that the cameras shut down because they overheat. This seems to have been resolved by removing the black rubber protectors from the problematic cameras but may result in my moving the cameras under the shade roof rather than on the exposed side of the house. But, even when our temps hit 118 F, the solar panels have remained operational.I’ll keep testing to see if I can confirm the warnings and fears from those with the negative review. Meanwhile, four months of gradual deployment and testing of four Arlo Solar Panels has resulted in smooth operation and low maintenance for me.

I purchased this solar panel in January for one of my Arlo Pro 2 cameras and when I installed it back then, I found out that it will not work in temperatures under 32 degrees so I took it down and I figured I have to use it when it gets warmer and sunny out. I did not mind that because I was going to use it for the camera I have on the rear deck where during winter there is almost nothing being recorded and the battery lasted from December to mid April in a single charge.This week we got a few days of good sunny weather and I installed the solar panel again. The mount that comes with it does not allow the panel to extend out enough to get much sun and it was getting direct sunlight for about 3 hours (see 1st picture). The problem is that it would show that it charges the camera but the battery level would not increase. To remedy that I purchased a CEARI 7 inch Arm Mount (it is actually 6 inch) and extended the mounting so the panel could point more toward the sky and get about 7 hours of sun (see pictures 2 and 3). With this configuration it increased the battery level by 14% in 2 days but the third day with this new configuration, I got the message "A charging fault has been detected. Unplug and reconnect the charger from the camera side..." (see picture 4). The next day, the camera would not show that it is charging at all even in direct sunlight. I took down the camera and the solar panel, reconnected the cable on both sides and placed the panel on a table under direct sunlight but I cannot get the camera to show that it is charging no matter what I do.Of course this cannot be returned via Amazon any longer so I called Netgear and put in a support case. They created an RMA to replace the solar panel and they gave me 3 options:1) Standard Swap Exchange: I pay to ship back the solar panel and they send me a new one when they receive my old one.2) Advanced Ground: I pay them $16.50 and they ship a new one with a label for the old one that they have to receive within 10 days otherwise they charge me for the new one.3) Advance Next Business Day: I pay $29.99 to have it shipped with the same terms of option 2 but faster.I selected option 2 because I would end up paying for shipping and for a few bucks more I will get a label and a box so it will be less hustle. I gave this product 3 stars because I expect that I got an one off defective item and I will update my rating when I get the replacement. The fact is that this is a horrible experience with this product and I have now paid close to $100.00 for it. I paid the extra money to get the Netgear solar panel and not an aftermarket product just to avoid the situation I found my self in right now.More to come...Update 5/10/2018 - I received the replacement solar panel last week and installed it 6 days ago. We had 2 sunny days since I installed it and the battery went from 88% to 97%. If it keeps working like this I will be happy because I will not have to charge that camera all summer and given the fact that this camera in installed on the rear of the house, there is not much activity during winter and last winter one charge lasted 4 months. Hopefully this way I may have to charge that camera just once or twice a year. I am raising the rating to 4 stars and if this does not stop working in the near future, I will buy one more and will raise to 5 stars.Update 7/1/2018 - We had a couple of weeks with rainy and mostly cloudy weather and I found the battery down to 46% (a lot of traffic on the rear deck during the summer). But, the past 2 weeks was mostly sunny and checking today, the battery is back to 94%. I am very happy with how it works in the summer for me and if you are going to use this in geographical areas that is mostly sunny throughout the year, it will work great for you. Changing the rating to 5 stars.

I placed two of these last week on two cameras. Camera one gets about 4-6 hours of daylight. This battery was at 35% on purpose, and its already fully charged. Camera 2 gets about 8 hours sunlight and its stayed at full charge since installation. I did purchase a Wasserstien panel for a third camera which also works as good. that panel had one fault code and needed to be unplugged and plugged back in, which is now working fine again. I like the look of this panel better and will purchase one for each camera. Installation is kinda a pain as you have to attach the cable to camera, then spin it all onto the mount, then mount the solar panel.**UPDATE** ive returned the off brand panel since I continued to get the error on my phone. Having to climb up weekly to unplug the panel and plug it back in defeated the purpose of the panel. All 7 cameras are now on Arlo solar panels and working great.