Added a Wifi modem and lost all my cameras

hekg

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Hello, I had a working cctv system with about 20 cameras running Blue Iris, most of them wifi in a rural area where there was no internet service. In order to access my cameras remotely I had to borrow internet by paying a remote user that installed an atenana on my property and pointed it at his equipment.

This worked fine for a while but he has recently moved and took his antenna with him. So now my only choice for internet is by buying a ZTE Wifi modem which uses cellular service to provide internet to my PC running Blue iris.

The problem is that with the cellular modem connected to my blue iris PC, I can now access the computer remotely and view Blue iris but it only displays the three IP cameras connected via ethernet to the router, none of the wifi cameras work now. All wifi cameras are setup with the Gateway IP as 192.168.0.1 (which is now in conflict with the router and cellular modem)

What can I do here to fix all my wifi cameras now? Thanks!
 

wittaj

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Sounds like your previous setup used DHCP to assign IP addresses to devices (and you are fortunate they never changed after a power outage).

You need to put all the cameras on the same IP address range as the new router/modem, and each camera needs to have the last numbers be different. Sounds like yours are all 192.168.0.1 so it is an IP conflict. Change the .1 to an unique number for each camera and then go into BI and change the IP address for each camera.
 

hekg

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Hi wittaj, I actually do have each wifi camera with a set IP address that does not change. So each camera's address is like this 192.168.0.x but each camera has its default gateway set to 192.168.0.1 which is the address of the router.

The main problem that I see is that the router and the modem have that same .1 IP address now. So if I were to now change the router's address to 192.168.0.4 so that it would not conflict with the modem then the wifi cameras would not be able to connect to the router since they are looking for the .1 gateway IP.

Maybe the fix is to leave the router as .4 and log into each camera individually and change the gateway IP to .4 as well? I really don't want to have to do it this way though.
 

iwanttosee

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Default each WIFI cameras and join to your new router.
 

hekg

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I don't want to do that because the 17 wifi cameras are mounted on poles and hard to reach locations, etc.

Also, I'm not using a new router, I added a wifi cellular modem to the network that I already had in place.

Essentially I need the modem to just provide internet to my Blue iris PC so that I can access it remotely while all my cameras continue to connect to my router so that I can see them inside BI.
 

mikeynags

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If you can change the IP address of the modem, that's the lesser of 2 evils.
 

mikeynags

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Can the BI machine communicate with the cameras?
 

hekg

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and the other cameras are wireless? how are they connected?
Correct, every other camera connects via wifi. It's just odd that three cameras connected via ethernet cable are working fine even though those are still on the same network and looking for the same .1 router.
 

mikeynags

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If they are on the same network as the BI machine, the cameras don't need the router ip to talk to Blue Iris because it's all local traffic. You have something else going on here. Do you have a network diagram to share at all with your current layout?
 

hekg

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I re-read your first post again. So the wireless cameras, are they connected to wifi currently?
Yes they should all still be connected via wifi since everthing is the same as it was before I I added the cellular modem to the BI computer. Problem is that I can't even access any of the wifi cameras' control panels via the browser, even outside of BI.
 

mikeynags

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Yes they should all still be connected via wifi since everthing is the same as it was before I I added the cellular modem to the BI computer. Problem is that I can't even access any of the wifi cameras' control panels via the browser, even outside of BI.
What about PING? Can you ping the wifi cameras from the BI PC?
 

hekg

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If I had another computer connected to the router then I bet I could probably access the camera browser pages locally. I think I'm going to ask somebody to
What about PING? Can you ping the wifi cameras from the BI PC?
I tried but I can't ping them form that BI computer. If I had another computer connected to the router and not the modem then I bet I could probably ping them and access the camera browser pages locally ... unfortunately this is all in another country and I'm trying to manage and troubleshoot from home and asking others to be my hands remotely :lol:
 

mikeynags

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OK - that's the problem. If they are ALL on the same network (on the 192.168.0.X network) and you cannot ping the wireless cams from the BI PC, I would say that they aren't connected to the new WiFi that you have in place and they are completely disconnected from your network. Solve this WiFI issue and you will fix the cameras not appearing in BI.
 

mikeynags

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is there a way to move the PC back to the router and uplink the router to the ZTE modem? It sounds like you have it directly connected which is not a good security practice. Your BI PC will be at risk of being compromised if it is not behind that router.
 
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