Spotlight Cam Battery not charging with solar panel

This is kind of embarrasing, but I must have dislodged the battery campartment when I used a long extension swifter duster to sweep the cobwebs off my ring light/camera. I took it down, recharged the battery, returned the battery to the cam and plugged the solar panel back in. Now it stays fully charged.

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My solar panel has been charging my Ring Stickup cam perfectly for several months. Then suddenly on 8/16 it went offline due to a dead battery. I have checked all of the things suggested here. When was the last soft/firmware update? How do I find that info? I’m curious if it lines up with when my battery suddenly died. Also where do I find warranty info on my camera and solar panel? Is there a warranty for the batteries themselves? Am I just screwed?

Wow, this is very disheartening. I just bought a Solar Stick up Battery Cam. I dutifully charged the battery, placed the solar panel in the hot California Sun, and was happier than a pig in ****. For a day. Then the battery died and it went offline. WTF?? It is all brand new and we are getting 14 hours of sunlight, a large portion of this almost directly overhead (which it where I have my panel pointing). I believe I made have made an error in configuration, since when I connected the panel, it said it was on wired power and asked to switch modes, but even then, you would think that during the day, it would come back to life. No, it has been offline and completely dead for a week until I noticed it. Now I’ve been charging the battery all day long and it is still not charged. After a few hours of charge, I tried connecting the battery to at least reconfigure the camera and nothing. Completely dead. Now I don’t know if I have a dead battery, a dead camera, a useless solar panel or all of the above. I can tell you, if it is not charged by this evening, I’m sending the whole thing back for a refund. It is unfathomable that there has been no fix to this since the beginning of the year.

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Switching it back to battery mode seemed to make a big difference. It has been running well now for a few days.

I am having the same problem as everyone else. I reset the cameras. Cleaned the panels and ports. Switched panels around and all of that. No luck. Cameras have been at 3% or less for over a month. I have the cameras linked to come on due to safety reasons. However, the panels sit in direct sunlight sunup to sun down. I’m beyond frustrated that as I paid for 4 spotlight cameras with solar panels. If I could get a refund, I would and go with a competitor because it seems that a majority of us have yet to resolve this issue.

Ring needs to figure this out. Quickly. Will be calling customer service today to try to return items.

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What do you mean? Stop using the solar panel? Don’t quite understand what you meant…

I’m having the same problem Ring replaced the battery packs in the past and that kind of fixes thr problem but now they won’t charge!

In the app it says established but not charging
How do I get the solar panel replaced under warranty? It was purchased brand new from amazon a little over 1 year ago and I have protect plus plan!

Similar issues described on two other community discussion threads:

https://community.ring.com/t5/Security-Cams/Ring-app-does-not-accurately-reflect-battery-charge/td-p/11998

https://community.ring.com/t5/Security-Cams/Ring-Stick-Up-Cam-Battery-amp-Solar-Panel/td-p/56501

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I’m now having this issue!

I’m having the issue to, battery charge stuck at 86-88% for the last 2 weeks and Ring telling me there is nothing wrong, even though the charge was always 100% in June/July.

Now I really regret buying this solar panel.

My $15 solar powered motion led works much much better than this $50 crap of a solar panel.

Add yet another of probably hundreds if not thousands of people with this issue. I have a spotlight battery camera that has two batteries. I added a solar panel and for months, I was happy to see 100% charge in both batteries. I actually tracked it, I was getting 5-6% overall increase between the two batteries each day when I first install the solar panel until it got to 100%.

A week or so ago I noticed the battery icon - one was red, the charge was down to 9%, and the other was at 28%. I still have the “established” status to the solar panel.

I replaced the 9% battery with a fully-charged extra, but the other battery keeps dropping.

I have another camera with solar panel that works fine (though it has one battery). It pretty much never drops below 95%, and is frequently at 100%.

The fact that this is happening suddely for a bunch of users sure seems like a software/firmware issue.

Until this problem gets fixed, I would suggest no one buy cameras where you are going to rely on the solar panel to charge. The one that’s going bad for me requires a ladder to get to (one of the big reasons I went with a panel). How many people are in the same situation, with a camera that’s difficult (or even dangerous) to access?

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Hi
I just try that and still not charging. Pls advise
Thanks

It seems something happened again in the last update. My solar panel has been charging my battery fine for several months now. It was reading that I had 100% battery life but yet stopped recording on Wednesday night. Went through all the troubleshooting, says it’s connected, everything is fine but still not able to view my live feed or record any motion, it just completly stopped working. I rebooted Wi-Fi numerous times (I have an Orbi so this is never a problem) tried all the troubleshooting tips, etc. Today it said battery is dead and is now offline.

My stick up cam has been up for 2 days. Have the solar panel facing south. Gets sun most of the day. Camera is dead. Worked fine yesterday.

So I recently picked up a spotlight battery cam. I quickly realized I would need two batteries in order to stave off recharging every couple days. But even with two batteries I was needing to recharge at least once a week even with modest capture settings. So I ordered a solar unit for the cam in hopes it would do the trick. I too live in sunny CA. and have hours of direct sunlight. My spotlight shows that solar power is connected, but the batteries were dying just the same. So I converted the wiring so that it was essentially a hard wired unit ( I voided the solar panels warranty by connecting the cable to a power supply instead)! Spotlight shows being connected to solar still, but even with a known and constant power source, the batteries were still dying just as fast. What I did notice is that when I took one battery out to charge on a charger, that the one left in the cam would increase in charge. So the “ solar connection “ was working. However, as soon as I put the second artery in, it would just discharge rapidly. So as a test, I left the cam with one battery and set the cam for the most aggressive capture settings. No problem at all and would stay charged. As soon as I put a second battery in, they would both die in about two days even connected to the charging power source.

It seems that when the cam has two batteries in it, and a solar panel connected, it just can’t manage the charging. At least for me, when I only have one battery in, the charging source works as it should. So if you have 2 batteries in your cam and are having this issue, try pulling one battery out and see if things improve.

Add me to the list. Purchased the solar panel and spotlight cam under a year ago. I saw an email today that the battery level is 4% and needs recharged. I’ve cleaned the panel and checked connections. After seeing this thread I’m not as confident a simple cleaning is the solution.

I purchased both from ring and assume they are under warranty. I’ll see if they charge today at all, if not I’ll look into a warranty claim I guess?

I’m on iOS and have the “established” under solar status as well, nothing showing it is charging though.

Add me to the list of frustrated Spotlight Cam Battery users. I bought an additional camera and solar panel in July and everything seemed fine for a bit. However, in the past two weeks, I saw that the batteries were sitting at 3% and 5% and I am seeing Solar Status “Not Established”. Cautiously climbed a ladder today and checked connection, then removed batteries which are now charging in my house. Called CS yesterday, and after a few minutes of the usual temperatures, debris, and sunlight warnings (I am on the sunny mid-CA coast!), they wanted the serial number of the camera and solar panel! Of course, they are not easy to see while mounted, and I am not able to take them down myself. This is the newest of four Spotlight Cams (three with solar panels) and the others with Solar Panels are working like a charm! I have an Android phone…anybody with updates? Had the Geek Squad install it originally…

Add me the list. I’ve done it all to troubleshoot to include replacing both camera and panel. I bought 6 stick up cams but only installed 2 when I noticed the lack of charging. All items are being boxed up and returned to Amazon today.

Yeah, both our cameras are being stupid again as well, after several months of good operation. Within a day, both cameras had drained down to low battery mode.

It’s like they don’t have QA testers in their software division.