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Arlo Essential camera has many lovable features, even though it’s cheaper than its sisters. One of these lovely features is the Wire-Free design from the wireless transmission of data and battery power. But then, we’ve noticed many people don’t know how to remove battery from Arlo Essential spotlight camera themselves.
There are various situations you may want to remove the battery of your battery-powered Arlo camera, as we shall see shortly. And whichever reason that may be for you, we can confirm it’s pretty straightforward for anyone, including newbies.
Verdict: Steps on how to remove battery from Arlo Essential spotlight camera
- Loosen the rear cover of your Arlo Essential Spotlight camera
- Remove the rear cover- you may need to pry it open and pull gently
- Unscrew the screws to the internal plastic rim sitting above the battery pack of the Arlo camera
- Next, disconnect the battery pack cables attached to the circuit board
- Finally, remove the battery pack, which you should know consists of two welded Samsung 18650 rechargeable batteries.
When You May Want to Remove Battery from Arlo Essential Spotlight Camera
First, a battery-powered security camera is usually the best option to monitor areas inaccessible to wired power. Also, the battery power is a perfect solution when you want to hide your CCTV for total covert surveillance.
The Arlo Essential spotlight camera fits these two situations pretty well. However, various situations may force you to remove its rechargeable battery. Such situations include:
- Remove the battery from the Arlo Essential camera to hard power cycle. A hard power cycle is basically where you reboot the system by cutting all power supply. But since the Arlo camera does not have a physical ON/ OFF button, you can only hard-power cycle it by disconnecting the battery.
- Remove the battery from the Arlo Essential camera to delay the degrading process. The trick is most useful when the CCTV camera won’t be in use for a long time. And what happens is that removing the battery from the device ensures there won’t be a leak of the power current. Thus, preventing excess discharge, which is what causes faster battery degradation.
- Remove the battery from the Arlo Essential camera to jump-start it. Of course, not many think about this when their camera is dead and can’t recharge in the usual way. But the truth is that you can revive the chemical processes when you try to recharge the battery directly (without going around the PCB).
- Remove the battery from the Arlo Essential camera for replacement. It’s usually the last resort when the previous battery no longer holds charge as intended or doesn’t charge at all. However, Arlo doesn’t sell brand-new replacement batteries for Essential cameras.
Should I Remove the Battery from Arlo Essential Spotlight Camera?
Which of the four situations above is the reason you want to know how to remove the battery from the Arlo Essential Spotlight camera? Whichever reason it may be, the Arlo security camera doesn’t have a removable battery.
The Arlo Essential wire-free camera user manual even states it has an integrated battery that can’t be removed. If you remove the battery, you’re violating the Arlo warranty policy.
As with any other company, breaking the Arlo warranty policies will automatically void it. And this means the company won’t replace or repair the product in case you contact them with any issue.
Nevertheless, companies usually don’t offer repairs or replacements for products that are already outside the warranty window.
For instance, you’ll only get troubleshooting support when your Arlo Essential camera develops a battery issue after two years (way outside the warranty period).
In such a case (with expired Warranty support), you should have no remorse to remove the battery from your surveillance camera. You got nothing to lose at this point, anyway. And perhaps removing the battery may end up solving the issue you had. Thus, saving you from unnecessary costs you’d have spent to purchase another system.
How To Remove Battery From Arlo Essential Spotlight Camera
The steps on how to remove the battery from the Arlo Essential Spotlight camera are simple, but at the same time tricky. In the other Arlo cameras (Pro 3, Pro 4, Pro 5S, and Ultra series), removing the battery is usually as easy as pressing a button to release the housing. Then you just grip the battery and pull it from its compartment.
The batteries of these other Arlo cameras have integrated terminals like those of your old Samsung Galaxy S4 battery (removable). There are no wires that need unclipping or cutting.
When we now come to the Arlo Essential Spotlight camera, the battery is non-removable. A “non-removable battery”, just like with most latest smartphones, means the company has built it into the device. So, it’ll take a couple more time to remove than the devices with the “removable battery”.
Fortunately, a built-in battery of security cameras is usually not soldered to the circuit board. Instead, the battery attaches to the circuit board with a two-pin connector cable. Thus, you’ll only need to unclip the connector to disconnect the battery.
Unfortunately, however, the Arlo Essential camera does not have a quick-release button for the housing like its sisters above. Even worse, it has an additional block you’ll need to remove with a bit of unscrewing to reach the battery compartment.
Steps to Remove the Battery:
To remove the battery from the Arlo Essential spotlight camera, you’ll first need to remove the rear cover. The rear cover is somehow like that you remove on the original Arlo Pro camera, only the Essential Camera doesn’t have quick-release buttons.
So, the very first step for you to proceed is:
Step One: Loosen the Rear/ Back cover
Indeed, you have to loosen the rear cover of your Arlo Essential camera for it to come off. The “rear cover” is where we have the rear screw mount hole, and it’s often firmly put together to anchor the device well on the mounting bracket. So, you’ll need a flat screwdriver (1.5mm size will work) to loosen the mounting screw hole, which then releases the cover
Step 2: Remove the Camera Rear Cover
After you have loosened the center screw on the screw mount hole of your Arlo camera, the cover still won’t pop out. You’ll need to pry it open, which will require a bit of gentle pull. (Don’t pull with too much force as this may end up breaking the plastic “lock” tabs that hold the cover to the camera body.
Step 3: Remove the Internal Plastic Rim
Once you remove the rear cover, you’ll notice a plastic rim secured with four screws. The supposedly battery compartment is under this plastic rim.
So, grab a screwdriver and unscrew the four screws. Then remove the plastic rim (carefully).
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Step 4: Disconnect the Batteries
When both the rear cover and the internal plastic rim are out of the way, you’ll now be able to reach the battery compartment.
The battery, as I mentioned, connects to the circuit board with a 2-pin connector cable. So, you only need to unclip the connector to disconnect the battery unit from the camera.
As you work around here, be careful as you could end up causing more damage than fix. For example, breaking any of the battery wires (or that of the micro-USB charging system) will require you to solder them back.
Also, the printed circuit board of the security camera (or any electronic) is a complicated system. A slight mess-up there can end up damaging the entire system.
Step 5: Remove the Batteries
The Arlo team put into meaning their words on an “integrated battery that can’t be removed” with the Essential camera. Despite the hassle we’ve seen so far, the battery pack is also not something you can easily remove.
The pack comprises two Samsung 18650 rechargeable batteries that they have welded together into one piece. So, if we’re talking of reviving individual batteries, you’ll have to break the weld to separate them.
Here is a video to see
Final Thoughts:
When you go to the web, you’ll notice not many people have covered how to remove the battery from the Arlo Essential Spotlight camera. The first reason for this is because Arlo themselves also doesn’t cover it- not on the camera manual guide or blog page.
Secondly, we’ve seen the process requires a bit of unscrewing, which may be tricky for those without the screwdriver.
Thirdly, the way Arlo welded the two Samsung rechargeable batteries into one pack is close to permanent one-time use. Not even eBay, where there’s about anything, has a replacement battery pack for the Essential Spotlight camera.
Therefore, the solution in this guide will best help the users looking to jump-start the camera batteries. It could also help those would want to store the Arlo camera without using a while or need to do a hard power cycle.