Signal lost, camera stream still working, low light problem?

C

Cuis

n3wb
Oct 6, 2019
9
3
Europe
Hi,

I have 7 Tp-link cameras added to blue iris and they work fine. I added three 0,9MP cameras for bird nest watching and I'm seeing issues.
Stream in any of these 3 new cameras freezes some times. They work normally most of the time but suddenly Bitrate drops slowly from 0.9MP to 0.0MP and FPS drops slowly from 1.0 to 0.0 and stream freezes -> signal lost.
If I open camera settings in Bl it shows like this. It's slowly dying until watchdog sends restart command for the camera and then it's again back up and running.
1628622062116.png

If I open mobile app (which is built for these wiwacam mini cameras) when issue occurs -> stream works just fine there.
So for me it seems that BI is having issues. At the same time all 7 tp link cameras work fine and there is no signal lost messages.

This seems to happen most of the times at evening. This might sound stupid but when the bright daylight is gone then problems usually starts. Not always though but mostly at evening. I brought one camera back inside and tested it. When it's bright camera works ok but yesterday when daylight was gone and I had tv on in my living room while testing camera, all the brightness changes made stream look bad because there is not enough lights -> that I understand.
But if there was lot of light in one tv scene and all of sudden darker scene it seems like that's where BI started to have issues.

Not sure if bad stream quality and sudden changes of brightness in camera stream that causes BI to do something which kills that camera feed until signal is lost and watchdog wakes it up again.
Does this sound anything that can happen or am I just.. stupid..

Can low light in camera feed cause BI to think that signal is lost until camera feed in BI is restarted?
 

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In the Watchdog tab for each camera, do you have the option "Interpret monochrome video as loss of signal" enabled.

In the early days of BI I used to get random signal lost messages and like you I checked on the cams themselves and they were fine, unticking that option resolved the issue for me.
 
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Yes, a black image can be interpreted as a loss of signal.

It sounds like a power issue with the camera, and with it happening mainly at night, sounds like cameras are switching to IR and need more power and thus the issue.
 
IAmATeaf said:
In the Watchdog tab for each camera, do you have the option "Interpret monochrome video as loss of signal" enabled.

In the early days of BI I used to get random signal lost messages and like you I checked on the cams themselves and they were fine, unticking that option resolved the issue for me.
Click to expand...

Yes it's enabled. I thought monochrome would mean...well monochrome. I'm unticking this so let's see what happens. Thanks!!

wittaj said:
Yes, a black image can be interpreted as a loss of signal.

It sounds like a power issue with the camera, and with it happening mainly at night, sounds like cameras are switching to IR and need more power and thus the issue.
Click to expand...

They are small usb powered cameras without IR. So there shouldn't be no more power need at night time than in daytime.
 
Even if no IR, if the scene is darker as it would be at night, the camera can be working harder to try to make an image and thus pull more power.
 
wittaj said:
Even if no IR, if the scene is darker as it would be at night, the camera can be working harder to try to make an image and thus pull more power.
Click to expand...

Now that I'm running tests I can say that disabling "monochrome" did not help.
Camera is really working harder when darker:
1628705110863.png

Those first two are now in living room equipped with me and my tv :) Lights are off so it's constant change in camera stream depending of how much light tv provides. Bitrate is over 900kB/s.
Those other two cameras (I installed one more) are in the room with no lights. So pretty much nothing is happening in those two. Bitrate is under 150kB/s.
Could it be that when there is no lights camera is really working so much harder that Bitrate raises high and that kills camera stream?
I'm now testing other power supplies too. I'm guessing there needs to be more amperes when talking about more powerful power supplies? Camera runs with 5v usb outlet.
 
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