Random "No Signal" failures, nothing in log

SharkyTM

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I've got a simple BI setup running on a local server. Not that it should matter, but it's an HP i5-6500 with 40GB RAM, recording to a single 10TB WD Enterprise drive (shucked EMAZ drive). Win10 Pro.

BI Version 5.0.2.4 x64

Cameras are a pair of Dahua cameras, models don't particularly matter. They're powered by a Dell 5548P switch, which is on a 1000VA UPS. Location is a commercial building with good power. Network traffic is handled by a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter4. Cameras are on a VLAN that contains only the cameras and one port of the server's 4-port Intel NIC. There is no internet access on this VLAN. The server does have internet access via another port on the NIC.

At random, both cameras will drop out with "No Signal" messages on screen and not come back to BI without either restarting BI or rebooting (effectively the same thing). I can login to the cameras at any time, no power cycling required. I have noticed that when this problem occurs, BI is using a ton of CPU (>50%), and when it's restarted, it comes back using ~20%, as expected.

BI video settings: 20FPS, direct to disk recording via Intel. Detect loss of singal is checked, as is interpret monochrome video as loss of signal. Nothing else in the Watchdog window is checked. Receive buffer is 40MB on both cameras.

I can post screencaps or logs, as required. The main log recorded as:
0 9/8/2019 9:36:31 PM New Move: nothing to do [77/168 hrs, 8.82G/10.0G, 9.05T free]
0 9/8/2019 9:36:31 PM Stored Delete: nothing to do [149/336 hrs, 18.7G/20.0G, 9.05T free]
1 9/8/2019 9:40:36 PM Eyeball Signal: network retry
1 9/8/2019 9:40:36 PM Front Signal: network retry
1 9/8/2019 9:41:06 PM Eyeball Signal: network retry
1 9/8/2019 9:41:06 PM Front Signal: network retry​


Signal failure continues after that. It's odd that both cameras drop out at the same time. The server is set to never sleep, and never turn off the drives.

Any suggestions about how to avoid this in the future? I'm in the process of installing another 4 cameras, and never had this issue prior to BI v5.
 

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SharkyTM

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Forgot to mention: Running BI as a service, and usually have a second instance running to monitor.
 

SharkyTM

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I checked "Restart camera after 5 timeouts" and "Send camera reboot command if possible after 10 timeouts", and came in this morning to one camera showing the rainbow screen, but no "Loss of signal" warning.

Here's the log:
1 9/12/2019 7:16:23 PM Front Signal: network retry
1 9/12/2019 7:16:54 PM Front Signal: network retry
1 9/12/2019 7:17:23 PM Front Signal: network retry
1 9/12/2019 7:17:54 PM Front Signal: network retry
1 9/12/2019 7:18:24 PM Front Signal: watchdog reset
2 9/12/2019 7:19:00 PM Front FORCE quitting pXServer thread

Any thoughts?
 

SharkyTM

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Another day, another dropout...
1 9/14/2019 2:37:59 AM Eyeball Signal: network retry
1 9/14/2019 2:38:29 AM Eyeball Signal: network retry
1 9/14/2019 2:38:59 AM Eyeball Signal: network retry
1 9/14/2019 2:39:29 AM Eyeball Signal: network retry
1 9/14/2019 2:40:00 AM Eyeball Signal: watchdog reset
2 9/14/2019 2:40:36 AM Eyeball FORCE quitting pXServer thread

Different camera, same failure. Anyone have any clues? This isn't acceptable behavior, and means that I can't trust BI to actually record anything.
 

Rakin

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I’ve been having a similar problem with random drops and restarts on a couple of dahua and running bi5. I looked at the cameras logs themselves on the sd card and it logged the drops on the cameras sd card. So my issue isn’t a bi5 issue. I’ve been swapping ports and updating firmware on one camera. Now the problem showed up on a camera that hasn’t had the problem before and it was one I reversed the port on. I’m not totally sure if mine is a switch issue, firmware issue, or something else. It’s only happened on the 5231-ze’s and not the 2231s. I have 3 of each running.


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wodman

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Not using bi but have two 2231's that were dropping connections while monitoring and browser logins were sometime inconsistent. Factory reset seems to have fixed them both.
 

Rakin

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Not using bi but have two 2231's that were dropping connections while monitoring and browser logins were sometime inconsistent. Factory reset seems to have fixed them both.
How often was it happening?


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wodman

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Started few weeks back just few times a day then got worse and became many times an hour.
 

SharkyTM

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My failures are once every couple of days. I need to get a microSD card into the camera that supports it and see if it's camera-side or server-side.
 

SharkyTM

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I verified that the failures didn't exist on the SD cards, so I switched BI from running as a service to running as a regular application. It's been 2 weeks with no failures.

So... is there a reason why running as a service would cause this problem?
 

IAmATeaf

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I’ve had similar issues, all my Dahua 5231-ze cams would drop out with all reporting no signal. Logging onto the cam direct would show that the cam was fine. When this last happened it I’m tried things like pausing the cam and restarting it but only a restart of the BI service or the PC would bring the signal back.

For me this was happening every 4-5 days. I have updated to the latest version of BI and it’s been 4-5 days now since the last occurrence so I’ll report back.

Gut feeling is that an update of BI is causing the issue or the version of the Intel video drivers. As well as updating BI windows updates had updated the video drivers so I also downgraded them to a version I know works.
 
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