Solar panel not charging!

My Stick Up Cams batteries are constantly going dead. I have installed ring solar panels for them to receive some sort of charge, but I’m constantly recharging these batteries daily. Panels receive about 6 hrs of direct sunlight daily

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Did you ever get an answer? Mine’s stopped working too!

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My two solar panels have also stopped working in the last week. This is very frustrating.

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Hey there, neighbors! Great job checking the plug in adapter is securely plugged in, and ensuring several hours of direct sunlight. These are the most important steps to check first. Please also consider how many events are occurring, as too many events per day, or even frequently streaming live view, can drain battery quicker.

I recommend also checking out our Community post about battery drain for more tips on optimizing battery life, and the charge you receive. As long as the battery is not draining quicker than a charge can apply, the Solar Panel should certainly be working.

If you’ve checked the above and still are not receiving charge from the Solar Panel, please try resetting your Ring device by holding the setup button for 20 seconds. Once complete, fully charge your battery and monitor over time to see if a charge is applying. I hope this helps! :slight_smile:

No all the hoops you have asked us to jump through do not work! How about a refund based on false advertising???

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I’ve tried every suggestion listed in the Ring community to solve the problem of the solar panel not charging the stick up cam. Nothing works.

Adding to the community comment that this is frustrating and disappointing for the time spent trying to solve it and more importantly, what seems to be a product that doesn’t work as stated. After spending a few weeks trying to get this to work, I’m ready to return these items for another companies product. If anyone has ideas *other* than what has been posted on the Ring site, please share.

Ring representative, please help the community who trusted this solution would work.

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Hey neighbors, happy to chime in for Marley here. If you’ve tried the suggestions previously presented and the concern still persists, it would be best if you reach out to our support team. As this is a neighbor-to-neighbor support forum, our support team will be able to take a deeper look and offer more advanced troubleshooting steps. Please give our support team a call at one of the numbers available here. We’re taking additional steps to protect our team and help reduce the spread of COVID-19, so this has resulted in longer than normal wait times. If you are outside of the US, please read our response to COVID-19 here to see how to contact support. Feel free to report back on what solutions our support team recommends! :slight_smile:

This has been an ongoing problem for me for the last week and a half when I installed my gen. 3 (newest) stickup cam and the $50 dollar solar panel. I initially was only getting morning sun (maybe 3 hrs. of good sun) due to mounting restrictions/obstruction so bought a bracket at the hardware store and remounted/positioned the panel for darn near all day (Texas) direct sun exposure. I fully charged the battery to 100%. I disabled motion AND recording during daylight hours. I’ve monitored battery level the past 2 or 3 days now and the battery is down to 96%. It has never increased…not even by 1%! My cam is in “battery” mode with power source indicating “power outlet” (which is normal; gen. 3 s.u. cams don’t indicate “solar connection”; a software thing I assume). I know the cam is sensing the solar panel because when I disconnect it the lightening bolt in the center of the battery icon disappears (and also at night). Plug it back in and it reappears. The panel appears to not be doing a darn thing!

I have a couple of weeks left in my return window (with Amazon) and if things don’t turn around in the next week or so, the panel (and possibly the cam) will be going back. This is non-sense to pay $50 for a non-operational accessory and I’m not taking a chance on the $100 “super” panel. I MIGHT try the "indoor/outdoor power adapter (with barrel plug for gen. 3 cams) but then I’d need to cut it, fish a thin 2 conductor wire through the small hole where my cable and fiber wires go through the wall to my office, then splice the cable together outside and inside. Of course, if THAT power adapter doesn’t work, then I’m screwed on the return and out $40. Frustrating to say the least!

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Same. Solar not changing. Gets plenty of sun.

Mine says the battery is at 99%, and that never changes. The camera says it is “connected” all day to the solar panel. The panel gets 6-8 hours of direct sunlight every day - south facing Florida mounting location. Every night around 2:00AM, the camera goes dead and the “device health” panel says it is in battery mode (don’t know when it switches between connected and battery modes); the panel says the battery is still at 99%, but the battery is in fact completely drained. When i replace the battery with a fully charged one, the camera comes back on line, the panel says it is in connected mode, and the battery level is at 100%. The same frustrating cycle of connected-to-competely dead happens every night.

It seems like it is either a software bug where the system doesn’t know what to do when the mode switches, or a product/software bug where the solar panel is actually not charging the battery at all

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i would also like to know what is causing this. My panel shows connected and has direct sun light most of the day. It is no longer charging as of the last month.

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Has anyone had any luck with getting this resolved? I have the same issue with my stick up cam gen 3 solar. Started several weeks ago. Have done it all…recharged battery via usb, reconnected solar panel, reset camera, deleted and reinstalled, have everything disabled that could drain battery etc. Like others, during day it shows power source and at night battery. Battery is slowly draining and not topping off even though the solar panel gets 6+ hours of direct sunlight each day. Is Ring ignoring this issue as it seems multiple people are having the issue? Suspiciously sounds like software issue but one would think by now they would have resolved it.

Turns out, after reading the info in the link that battery operated ring cameras are useless here in Michigan. Wish Ring had beenhonest in their advertising and mentioned the camera wouldn’t work in northern climates during the winter EVEV WITH SOLAR PANELS ATTACHED. I’m getting disgusted with a company that’s not honest in its advertising and won’t allow us to store the video directly on our own devices. Having to pay a fee to use their servers, which get less responsive every day, is, in my opinion fraudulent since we’re given no choice and don’t find out about it until having bought a certain number of cameras. There should be large warning labels on every box for each of these marketing lies!

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After all these months Ring is still absolutley silent about these major problems… I’ve wasted hundreds of dollars on buying products from Ring when i could have gone with a far cheaper and far more reliable company like Wyze. They have completely ignored all the customers experiencing problems with their solar setup.

Funny story. I contact customer service today about the same issue. I have had my two stick up cameras with panels attached all year without a single hiccup. Suddenly since the last firmware my batteries drained and died. And die daily now as well. No setting changes on my end. The rep indicatd their batteries dont work well below freezing ( it has not been below freezing but one day). My question is why does Ring not stand behind their prodcuts, this renders my cameras useless during all of winter here in Virginia (east side not mountain side so mild winter). I asked why this information is not provided up front anywhere to customers, had I known this I would have made a different decision on what products I went with (AKA not ring). THese are OUTDOOR cameras, they should be made for all the elements, or else DISCLOSE this !!

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Very unhappy here. I purchased a solar panel to recharge my exterior Stick up Cam and the first year it worked fine. Now all the sudden it stopped charging to where the battery died. I had to climb up where the cam is to manually remove the battery and charge it inside. This is not what I purchased the solar panel for. When I called Ring I was told it was due to the cold temperatures but why make products that are to be outside if they cannot handle the temperatures? Would not recommend!

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The same here. The solar panel was working for about one year and around November 27, 2020 after the software update, it has stopped charging even there is direct sun light. I live in NEPA and it is cold in the winter but it was charging great previous year so, I think there is a bug in that software update that Ring did.

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RING, why are you not responding to all these customers that have been reporting a problem about the solar charging? I cant wait to move away from using Ring products.

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Same issue I have three cameras all with solar. None of them last more than two days without me having to charge them. I bough the solar panel and it was a waste of money because it doesn’t help. My doorbell ring is also doing the same thing now and it’s wired. WTH is the point of spending. All this money on useless products.

Similar problem here. I’m in NY I have two Ring cameras with a solar panel each. They worked flawlessly through an entire year. Then this past summer (July) one of them stopped charging on the solar panel. I’ve recharged the battery, reset the camera, etc to no avail.

This is not a temperature issue as they worked for an entire year through the winter , sub zero temps etc and didnt fail until the summer. One of them continues to work while the other does not. Ring, please get your software act together and get us a solution or replace this product as it is useless to me if I have to get out a ladder and recharge the battery every two weeks.

Disappointing…

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