Spotlight Cam Battery not charging with solar panel

Update: with the latest iOS update this week, my Spotlight Cam DOES seem to be charging from the panel. Both batteries have been topping up to 100% each day. It still reports incorrect “solar panel status” messages for my different devices, but the ones on the panel do seem to be charging now.

And BTW the temp has been in the 40’s.

TomA lucky you…guess I gotta wait for the warmer temps…will have my hubby disconnect the solar panels and reconnect and see if it helps any but doubtful…

I posted on this thread on Jan 7th and my situation is now RESOLVED. Since that time, I have been working with Ring senior support to try to figure this out and here’s what we found that worked for me. I have a Ring brand solar panel connected to a 1st generation stick-up camera. The battery went from recently charged 100% in December to 67% beginning of January back up to 93% this week when the following occurred.

Two critical things to consider:

  1. WEATHER

The battery becomes impacted at 36F and will not charge at or below 32F.

The following are key temperatures to watch out for in regards to your batteries.

  • 36°F (3°C): The battery may not hold a charge as effectively, resulting in you having to charge the unit more frequently.
  • **32°F (0°C): **The battery may not charge at all. Even hardwired configurations may not charge the battery.
  • **-5°F (-20.5°C): **The battery may stop working completely until temperatures warm up.

See https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005939463-Cold-Weather-and-Battery-Powered-Ring-Devices

  1. ORIENTATION

The orientation of your Solar Panel is very critical. It should have an unobstructed view of the sky, facing directly toward South, and tilted at approximately 45 degrees.

How was my issue resolved? I am in the NY area and the weather has warmed up into the 40s the last week or so helping tremendously. But more importantly, my solar panel orientation had become out of alignment with the sun. When I first set up the panel orientation over the summer it was getting some direct sun exposure even though it was facing east. But as the earth has rotated into winter for the northern hemisphere, the sun was no longer hitting the area where I had mounted the panel. I re-oriented the solar panel to be more directly aligned with the sun (i.e., from facing east to facing south). That made a huge difference (even on limited 3-4hrs of direct sunlight per day)!

Simply put, each day the sun’s rising and setting points change slightly. At the summer solstice, the sun rises as far to the northeast as it ever does, and sets as far to the northwest. Every day after that, the sun rises a tiny bit further south. At the winter solstice, the sun rises as far to the south as it ever does, and sets as far to the southwest. So like in my case, if your panel is not facing south, it may still have worked over summer but may not be working now in winter as the sun may not be hitting it.

I hope this helps some of you.

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manikomio: Thanks so very much for your detailed post and helpful information. It was very much appreciated and I feel hopeful that my issues will eventually resolve for the first time in quite some time.

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i when to the app store and there they had an update i downloaded the update and you’ll still see that attach solar panel bla bla bla line but i don’t care about that but now i am getting some charge it was at 68 yesterday today it’s at73 so so
e charge is better then no charge and that with aprcial sun so i expect better when full sun hits it

It seems the problem is fixed, but it is still mislabeling the solar charger. Sure, it’s a minor inconvenience if it’s working properly, but this is Ring, owned by Amazon, so I would expect more from a trillion dollar company than my college programming final with a few bugs.

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UPDATE

Late last week I notice after installing a freshly charged batter on one of my Stick Up cams, that the solar panel appeared to be charging.

I then on Friday installed freshly 100% charged batteries to my other three Stick Up cams and a Doorbell 2 connected to an aftermarket solar mount.

I was going to report back my findings on Monday, but most of Monday was cloudy.

Since Friday evening, all sunny days except for Monday. My cams and doorbell 2, report

88%-89% Stick Up Cams

92% Doorbell 2

I have at least 12 incidents per day on these devices.

Seems to be charging, not sure if it is back to where it was before the Oct/Nov debacle, will keep an eye. Hopefully the solar panels can keep these devices charged until sunny and hotter days come around.

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yeah i have notice tha my solar cam has been charging slowly it was at 63 and i three days it’s up to 76% and the other is still at 100 % that’s with cloudy days as long as it keeps that up i am happy and will keep it it seems that the problem is fix i dont care that the app has that line add a solar panel to charge your batteries. as long as it’s charging it’s all good

Yes, it appears that Ring updated their software from version 3.21.1 (Nov 2019) to version 3.22.1 (January 2020). The update seems to have fixed the problem of solar panels not charging the batteries on Spotlight Cameras.

I purchased four new Spotlight Cameras and one new solar panel to test the charging function. The solar panel did not charge the battery on the Spotlight Camera to which it was attached, until I downloaded and installed the 3.22.1 update. The battery on that camera was draining at a rate of about 2% per day. One hour after installing the update the battery went from 82% to 87% and continues to increase. Let’s hope the software update is a good fix.

The Ring CS folks should probably broadcast this fix to the community and recommend going to Play Store and download the update.

Now I think I’ll order the other three Ring solar panels needed for the other three Spotlight Cameras.

UPDATE:

This makes no sense… the camera seem to be charging as of the date of my prior post, and it seemed to charging even on cloudy days. But within the last few days nothing, and it’s been sunny, very sunny in fact. I am wondering if there was another firmware update that went and screwed it up again. It makes no sense that it charges up 3 or 4 percent on cloudy days, but bright and sunny no charge and even 1 or 2 percent drainage during the day. This sucks, it’s back to the way it was before now. :frowning:

There was another update today which I did and I haven’t seen any difference…I actually got a notification that one of my Spotlight Cams need recharging and that’s with having 2 batteries installed…I told hubby that this weekend I need him to unplug the solar panel for all 3 spotlight cams and plug it in again and we will see if it works if not I guess next weekend we will uninstall and reinstall…hope there’s some solution to all this craziness because at the end of the day these devices are costly and I have 5 devices 3 of which has double batteries and solar panels attached. Just frustrating…sorry for my rant!!!

Hi neighbors- want to clarify this would not be due to an App update. Team is still investigating.

Yep I am aware it would be due to a firmware update, nothing to do with an app update. People seem to confuse the two on what they accually effect.

Weird though, seems I spoke too soon. Got a 2% charge today and to note there was a lot of activity/motion detection. This system is just odd. lol

same here camera was ok even charging in cloudy days and now back to NO charging at all

We updated our iOS app as soon as the reports started coming in. Our battery continues to decline daily. We have had this up and running for several years and never had to manually charge the battery a single time until this whole debacle started. We had always stayed at or near 100% no matter the season. Whatever improvements others have seen in recent days, they have yet to come to our house.

Update

I guess I spoke too soon. This whole week has been nothing but sunny days without any clouds. Except for Monday. I have started to notice my devices are dropping in charge. They are now in their mid-80s, for a couple of days last week it seemed As though they were finally charging and my test device actually kept its charge to 100%.

This is definitely a firmware issue, but since no one knows and Ring will not tell us anything. I am assuming that with the app updates there is a possibility that the updates push firmware updates to the cameras.

I cant believe how slow RING are in fixes these issues, i am just glad i returned and refunded my spotlight cams and solar panels as soon as i did and replaced them with the wired versions!

RING initally told me that the panels and cameras were defective and replaced them and when the replacements also didnt charge with the solar panels they changed there tune and said that there was a firmware issue and assured me that the next lot of replacements will have the right firmware on them?? you know what i said no thanks give me my money back!

I am starting to think that these devices cant even update thier firmware themselves OTA, as why else would RING say that the 2nd lot of replacements will have the right firmware on them?

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ring we need developers and people with technical skills reading the thread not social media managers or marketing people please fix the issues, and more important stop wasting our time with responses that dont make any sense, do you thin we did not search the forums and tried everything already???

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@river2018 You hit the nail on the head…each of my devices say “Firmware up to date” yet still I am having so many issues…I work for IT and if we had this much issues from users For such a period of time…a lot of jobs would be replaced with ones that could ensure that whatever system/product works properly (no one says that all systems are perfect but this is ridiculous)