Multiple Amcrest wifi cameras

steve491

n3wb
Apr 6, 2014
19
20
I have an Amcrest doorbell camera that works great with BI. I have a second Amcrest camera that works great as well. I added a third 2.4 wifi Amcrest camera and they all went to crap. All three have different IPs. What am I doing wrong?
If I unplug one, the other two work great. My wifi network is great.
 
Cameras connected to Wifi routers (whether wifi or not) are problematic for surveillance cameras because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to send cameras through a wifi router. At the very least it can slow down your entire system.

Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent, especially once you start adding distance. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch NetFlix before it freezes - mine goes 45 seconds. Now do the same with a camera connected to a router and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

The same issue applies even with the hard-wired cameras trying to send all this non-buffer video stream through a router. Most consumer grade wifi routers are not designed to pass the constant video stream data of cameras, and since they do not buffer, you get these issues. The consumer routers are just not designed for this kind of traffic, even a GB speed router.

So the more cameras you add, the bigger the potential for issues.

Many people unfortunately think wifi cameras are the answer and they are not. People will say what about Ring and Nest - well that is another whole host of issues that we will not discuss here LOL, but they are not streaming 24/7, only when you pull up the app. And then we see all the people come here after that system failed them because their wifi couldn't keep up when the perp came by. For streaming 24/7 to something like an NVR or Blue Iris, forget about it if you want reliability, as you are now seeing.


This was a great test that SouthernYankee tried and posted about it here:

I did a WIFI test a while back with multiple 2MP cameras each camera was set to VBR, 15 FPS, 15 Iframe, 3072kbs, h.264. Using a WIFI analyzer I selected the least busy channel (1,6,11) on the 2.4 GHZ band and set up a separate access point. With 3 cameras in direct line of sight of the AP about 25 feet away I was able to maintain a reasonable stable network with only intermittent signal drops from the cameras. Added a 4th camera and the network became totally unstable. Also add a lot of motion to the 3 cameras caused some more network instability. More data more instability.
The cameras are nearly continuously transmitting. So any lost packet causes a retry, which cause more traffic, which causes more lost packets.
WIFI does not have a flow control, or a token to transmit. So your devices transmit any time they want, more devices more collisions.
As a side note, it is very easy to jam a WIFI network. WIFI is fine for watching the bird feed but not for home surveillance and security.
The problem is like standing in a room, with multiple people talking to you at the same time about different subjects. You need to answer each person or they repeat the question.

Test do not guess.

For a 802.11G 2.4 GHZ WIFI network the Theoretical Speed is 54Mbps (6.7MBs) real word speed is nearer to 10-29Mbps (1.25-3.6 MBs) for a single channel



And TonyR recommends this (which is the preferred way IF you want to do wifi)

The only way I'd have wireless cams is the way I have them now: a dedicated 802.11n, 2.4GHz Access Point for 3 cams, nothing else uses that AP. Its assigned channel is at the max separation from another 2.4GHz channel in the house. There is no other house near me for about 300 yards and we're separated by dense foliage and trees.

Those 3 cams are indoor, non-critical pet cams (Amcrest IP2M-841's) streaming to Blue Iris and are adequately reliable for their jobs. They take their turns losing signal/reconnecting usually about every 12 hours or so for about 20 seconds which I would not tolerate for an outdoor surveillance cam pointed at my house and/or property.

But for me, this works in my situation: dedicated AP, non-critical application and periodic, short-term video loss.... if any one of those 3 conditions can't be achieved or tolerated, then I also do not recommend using wireless cams. :cool:
 
Hello Steve sorry to hear you are having some issues with your cameras from Amcrest..

How did you setup the cameras on your network? Most times cameras will connect when using Wifi you will need to connect using the App to tell the camera to connect to the Wifi Router.. Now One thing that can be an issue is if you setup a camera Not all of them but some of them using Ethernet connection and then setup Wifi and then try to connect over Wifi after the system can get messed up with what is what on the IP address..

So how to fix this.. Well I would Reset the camera you are working with that when you connect seems to take out your other cameras. This is odd normally would take out 1 maybe because the are sharing an IP address.. But anyway I would reset the camera back to factory, I would then using the Amcrest View Pro 2 app. This is the current App for Amcrest devices. I would remove the device from the app if you already have the app and have added it already.. My guess is not the way I will post here..

If you have it and removed the device. Reset the device, then in the app click on add device, then click on scan QR code, Then scan the code if it is missing or damaged you will want to make sure to note the Serial Number before Reset, Anyway if you have QR scan it, It will pop up Wifi, Ethernet or Recorder icons. Click on the wifi. Now it should ask you to pick your wifi router from a list of Routers in your area. Pick one that your camera will use if it is a 2.4 only camera then setup on that Also should start from that connection on your phone then it will ask you for your Routers Password because the camera needed to connect to the routers Wifi that should be password protected.. Once that works and your camera says it is connected the router should have given the camera a good IP address on your LAN and should not be any conflicts with other IP cameras on your network..

Something to keep in mind, If your network using 192.168.0.xxx or 192.168.1.xxx I would make sure to change any device that is using 108 on your current network to a different IP address because a lot of camera from Dahua and Amcrest can default to that IP address and if you are setup with that there can be issues when adding new cameras..

Also I would after you add your camera log into the camera WebUI if you are using Smart Home Cameras there isn't any but if using real Ip cameras you will want to log into the WebUI goto setup, then network, then TCP/IP and then change the connection type to Wifi and then change the IP address from Dhcp to Static and put in a IP address within your Range but one that you want for your camera.. So like if the network is 192.168.0.xxx and the IP it was given was 192.168.0.18 and your router is full range setup I would change IP for cameras, DVR/NVRs to something 100 and above just so you know they are your cameras.. So lets say you have 12 devices and this is your 13th, then 192.168.0.114

It is important that you change the network type in the camera to wifi when you are making changes in the TCP/IP area as default will be wired and making a change to static there and saving it will not change the ip on the cameras wifi channel..
 

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