Amcrest IP2M-841B-V3 going offline every 2 minutes on the dot.

Z

zachelliottwx

n3wb
Mar 12, 2018
5
0
I have two of these cameras and both of them have developed the same issue. Hard reset, firmware updates, etc don't change it. The issue is I have blips in Blue Iris, and looking at the logs, I see that every 2 minutes (or 3 minutes sometimes) it has an offline event for eth2 (wireless)

Time:2022-08-05 20:35:36
User Name:System
Type:Event Begin
Content:
Ethernet Card: eth2
Event Type: Off-line Event

Then 3 seconds later, it comes back on

Time:2022-08-05 20:35:39
User Name:System
Type:Event End
Content:
Ethernet Card: eth2
Event Type: Off-line Event

I opened a ticket with Amcrest support, and they just suggested a hard reset. Cameras were bought about a year apart from each other, from Amazon.

Any ideas? I ended up replacing one of them as we were using it as a nursery cam and it was too unreliable to keep an eye on our kids. But now i've moved it to the basement and it's still doing it. I'm about to lose my mind.
 
I've got 3 of the V3's running wirelessly with BI almost 3 years now without a single hiccup. :idk:
 
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Am I to understand this happens when operating wireless?
If so, what happens if you use the wired instead?
 
So i'm not sure if it does it while wired. I need to pull it down and check. The only other thing I can think is I block all my cameras on my camera network from the internet. It's a WAN OUT rule on my firewall. I did have a crazy thought about since these are "cloud" cameras, maybe it was doing some sort of phone home or check in every 2 minutes and when it couldn't reach out maybe it crashed? I guess I can temporarily restrict that firewall rule and try it out.
 
Ok I disabled the rule and it still did it. Also verified that wireless was chosen as the default card and not wired. I'll try wired tomorrow but it seems my theory is bunk.
 
Sounds like the wifi processor is getting overloaded. Which is why I use exclusively an AP or a cheap wifi router as an AP, one per camera. Sicking cameras all on the same wifi never worked well because most wifi processors can't handle it.
 
Yeah, I would lean toward wifi getting overloaded, but probably as you suggested it might be trying to ping their cloud service and doesn't reach it and bombs out.
 
wittaj said:
Yeah, I would lean toward wifi getting overloaded, but probably as you suggested it might be trying to ping their cloud service and doesn't reach it and bombs out.
Click to expand...

If PTP is disabled, its not going to send any packets to a media STUN server. But I don't think that is the problem. I have some on an Amcrest NVR and its been working without physically connected to the internet, even with PTP enabled. So I doubt its a cloud connect issue.
 
I doubt it's wifi overloaded. Each camera is on a separate AP from each other and they are Ubiquiti Nano HD APs. I have one upstairs attached to one cam and another downstairs attached to another. Of course there are other devices on each AP, but it's not like i'm powering 50 devices off a single crap router.
 
zachelliottwx said:
I doubt it's wifi overloaded. Each camera is on a separate AP from each other and they are Ubiquiti Nano HD APs. I have one upstairs attached to one cam and another downstairs attached to another. Of course there are other devices on each AP, but it's not like i'm powering 50 devices off a single crap router.
Click to expand...
If there is more than 3 other devices its going to choke. especially if both 5Ghz and 2.5 Ghz are enabled. Wireless computers and IOT don't tax the processor in access points like the sustain transfer rate requirements of a camera connection. That is why you can get 80-150 wifi phones and computers on an AP. But maybe 2-4 cameras. If it was hardwired through an unmanaged concentrator switch (10/100M to 1Gb uplink), most likely the simple buffer in it would have kept alive the stream.
 
I confirmed wired I don't get the disconnects. So it is just wireless, and i've got plenty of other devices on my APs that are cameras (Nests, other IP Cams, etc) and they all do fine so i'm not chalking it up to my wifi having issues when two identical cameras have the same identical issue. I'll probably just end up replacing them.
 
Keep in mind Nest is not streaming 24/7 to BI like these cameras are. That is a difference.

Wired it works and wifi it doesn't - so either an issue with the wifi or maybe the tolerance factor for this particular camera is more sensitive to dropped packets.

Maybe you are fine now one day with wifi cams, but one day something will happen. A new device, neighbors microwave, etc.

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 Blue Iris, forget about it if you want reliability.


As a test, did you try turning off (unchecking) the Skip initial HTTP NDS and reachability tests as well as uncheck the Send RTSP keep-alives? Maybe the wifi is overloaded when the test are being done and BI then interprets it as a lost signal.

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