Is this possible? Cams on ethernet but internet on WiFi

[CompleteSpud]

Hi All

I'm new to all this so apologies in advance if I ask stupid questions.

I am trying to set up a dedicated Blue Iris computer with two Reolink RLC810-A cameras. They are powered by an unmanaged POE Switch (Edimax ES-5104PH v2). The computer is an i5-8500 with 8GB of RAM. I have a BT smart hub 2 as the router. The computer has an ethernet port which is through the motherboard and I have a separate Wireless PCI express card.

What I am trying to do is have the IP cams connected via the ethernet port but also have the computer access the internet via the Wireless PCI express card (so I can use the Blue Iris webserver). I have a separate WiFi network running off an independent BT smart hub 2 which is what all my devices connect to, this is what I want my Blue Iris computer to connect to. The problem I am having is that if the ethernet is plugged in, then when trying to use a browser to use the internet, nothing works. I am also trying to understand how I can keep everything secure - so the cams are on their own network, but I still need to retain internet access via the wifi card. If I pull out the ethernet cable the wifi internet connection works fine. I note I have tried to 'bridge connections' but it doesn't always work and I assume this wouldn't be secure for remote access to Blue Iris web interface.

I have drawn a network diagram:



I'm sure there should be a simple solution, but I'm struggling!

Another side question - Do I need a router to connect my cameras and poe switch to the blue Iris PC or is it possible to manually connect everything using Windows to avoid having a router (BT Smart Hub 2)

Thanks in advance

 

[mat200]

Hi All

I'm new to all this so apologies in advance if I ask stupid questions.

I am trying to set up a dedicated Blue Iris computer with two Reolink RLC810-A cameras. They are powered by an unmanaged POE Switch (Edimax ES-5104PH v2). The computer is an i5-8500 with 8GB of RAM. I have a BT smart hub 2 as the router. The computer has an ethernet port which is through the motherboard and I have a separate Wireless PCI express card.

What I am trying to do is have the IP cams connected via the ethernet port but also have the computer access the internet via the Wireless PCI express card (so I can use the Blue Iris webserver). I have a separate WiFi network running off an independent BT smart hub 2 which is what all my devices connect to, this is what I want my Blue Iris computer to connect to. The problem I am having is that if the ethernet is plugged in, then when trying to use a browser to use the internet, nothing works. I am also trying to understand how I can keep everything secure - so the cams are on their own network, but I still need to retain internet access via the wifi card. If I pull out the ethernet cable the wifi internet connection works fine. I note I have tried to 'bridge connections' but it doesn't always work and I assume this wouldn't be secure for remote access to Blue Iris web interface.

I have drawn a network diagram:

View attachment 84081

I'm sure there should be a simple solution, but I'm struggling!

Another side question - Do I need a router to connect my cameras and poe switch to the blue Iris PC or is it possible to manually connect everything using Windows to avoid having a router (BT Smart Hub 2)

Thanks in advance

Welcome @CompleteSpud

1) Reolink RLC810-A - numerous issues with Reolink cameras, please search the forum for threads on it and read why Reolink is a brand not liked by members.

2) WiFi for reliable security camera video streaming is problematic - so if possible we typically recommend going wired instead.

Have people reported getting a WiFi network segment to work .. yes, but it takes an investment in better equipment and time to do this. For most of us it is easier to just go wired.

 

[CompleteSpud]

1) Ouch, wish I had discovered this forum before I bought the cameras. I have been playing with Blue Iris and I have had performance issues with the 4k video recording and live playback, mainly stuttering and dropped frames. Is this likely a Reolink issue? If so, are you aware of any fixes or any on-going support/communcation from Reolink? I am reading stuff but there's a lot to take in. Unfortunately it is probably too late for me to return the cameras. I've read low light is an issue, but I will have 3500 lumen flood lights at my new property so hopefully low light won't be an issue.

2) When you say video streaming over wifi is problematic - Are you referring to use of the blue iris web app? I only plan to use that for occasion glancing at my cameras. I am also worried about slowing my network down if I have my cameras all communicating over the same network (if all connected via ethernet). I will search for 'wifi network segment' anyway so thanks for that pointer

 

[sebastiantombs]

The problem with Reolink is that they play games with every setting trying to get a good image. The key ones being frame rate, bit rate and iframe rate. They are not constant but vary depending on conditions, second to second, and never get to what they may actually be set for, what you want them to be. Blue Iris depends on a constant frame rate and constant iframe rate both for recording and for motion detection.

WiFi was never designed for the constant, never ending, data stream that video surveillance style operation requires. You would be better served plugging the PC directly into the PoE switch with a cable and use the WiFi connection to get the PC onto the internet.

 

[CompleteSpud]

The problem with Reolink is that they play games with every setting trying to get a god image. The key ones being frame rate, bit rate and iframe rate. They are not constant but varydepending on conditions, second to second, and never get to what they may actually be set for, what you want them to be. Blue Iris depends on a constant frame rate and constant iframe rate both for recording and for motion detection.

WiFi was never designed for the constant, never ending, data stream that video surveillance style operation requires. You would be better served plugging the PC directly into the PoE switch with a cable and use the WiFi connection to get the PC onto the internet.

Thanks for the information, really helpful. I will keep researching. Is there any discussion on Blue Iris being updated to deal with the querks of Reolink cameras?

Can you advise or point me in the direction of how to get the cameras to work by plugging my switch into the PC? The Reolink app and Blue Iris only seem to detect the cameras if the come in via a router.

 

[CompleteSpud]

Scratch the switch in to PC question - I found a tutorial and it's working!

 

[concord]

What is the range of IP addresses (DHCP) set for your router (i.e. 192.168.1.x) that connects to your wirless pc card. If you are connecting your switch to the wired pc connection, I assume you are using static IP addresses for it and the cams. The static IP address(es) of your wired network and cameras should be under a different IP range, like 192.168.2.x. This will keep your cams from directly communicating with the outside world.

See this thread for more info:

Dual NIC setup on your Blue Iris Machine

I am iut of town and get home tomorrow and will try this. Currently vlan2 is only 1 port. I will add a 2nd and try this. Hopefully it works. Thank you Keep in mind that the vlans on your switch are local in your situation. So it's just like you have two PoE switches. You are not doing...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[wittaj]

Thanks for the information, really helpful. I will keep researching. Is there any discussion on Blue Iris being updated to deal with the querks of Reolink cameras?

Can you advise or point me in the direction of how to get the cameras to work by plugging my switch into the PC? The Reolink app and Blue Iris only seem to detect the cameras if the come in via a router.

Let me give you an example as to why Blue Iris and Reolinks do not work well together.

This was a screenshot of a user's Blue Iris status where they had set the cameras to 15FPS within the cameras and they were missing motion:

Even though they have set it for 15FPS, look at what the camera is doing - dropped some down to below 1FPS but none are 15FPS. Now look at they key - that is the iframes. Blue Iris works best when the FPS and the iframes match. Now this is a ratio, so it should be a 1 if it matches the FPS. The iframes not matching (that you cannot fix or change with a reolink) is why they miss motion in Blue Iris and why people have problems. This is mainly why people are having issues with these cameras and there are many threads showing the issues people have with this manufacturer and Blue Iris. It is these same games that make the camera look great as a still image or video but turn to crap once motion is introduced.

Now compare the BI camera status above to cameras that follow industry standards that allow you to actually set parameters and they don't manipulate them. You will see that the FPS match what is set in the camera, and the 1.00 key means the iframe matches:

The Blue Iris developer has indicated that for best reliability, sub stream frame rate should be equal to the main stream frame rate and these cameras cannot do that and there is nothing you can do about that with these cameras... The iframe rates should equal the FPS (something these cameras do not allow you to set), but at worse case be no more than double. This example shows the cameras going down to a keyrate of 0.24 means that the iframe rates are over 4 times the FPS and that is why motion is a disaster with these cameras and Blue Iris...A value of 0.5 or less is considered insufficient to trust for motion triggers reliably...

This is totally out of control of Blue Iris and there is nothing that can be done about it - it is clearly a limitation of the cameras. All the updating in the world on Blue Iris will not correct this deficiency as it isn't a deficiency of Blue Iris.

Blue Iris is great and works with probably more camera brands than most VMS programs, but there are brands that don't work well or not at all - Rings, Arlos, Nest, Some Zmodo cams use proprietary systems and cannot be used with Blue Iris, and for a lot of people Reolink doesn't work well either.

 

[wittaj]

When you say video streaming over wifi is problematic - Are you referring to use of the blue iris web app? I only plan to use that for occasion glancing at my cameras. I am also worried about slowing my network down if I have my cameras all communicating over the same network (if all connected via ethernet). I will search for 'wifi network segment' anyway so thanks for that pointer

Wifi is 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 use it through a wifi router. Someone tested this once and after 4 cameras, the wifi was unusable...

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. 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 before it freezes. Now do the same with a wifi camera and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

Plus, you should never have your cameras passing through your router...they should be isolated from the internet all-together. That is how folks here have 30 cameras going and doesn't slow down their internet. Try that with 30 cameras going through your router and it will be slower than dial-up internet (if you are old enough to remember that LOL).

 

[sebastiantombs]

I admit that I have owned a Reolink. It was actually an OEM Reolink I bought very early on in my trip down the rabbit hole of surveillance cameras. I also use Blue Iris. The only way I could get that camera to work semi-reliably was to raise the frame and bit rates as high as the camera allowed. It almost maintained a one to one relationship of iframe to frame rate most of the time but it never really got there that I saw. On top of that it also was a bandwidth/CPU hog because the bit rate was so high although that also never, ever, reached what it was set for.

Bottom line is that Reolink just doesn't cut the mustard.

 

[wittaj]

Here is typically what folks post about those cameras and say it is great quality (that clearly isn't), which is a direct result of the camera adjusting settings to make the static image look great, but any motion and it is a complete blur mess...

Reolink cameras poor performance

Hi, looking for some ideas of what to try. I have recently installed 4 Reolink cameras and the performance is shocking. I've been trying different things for a few days but getting nowhere really. Issues are very poor fps, intermittent gray/green screens in recordings. PC System is i7-8700K...

ipcamtalk.com

This is an example from their marketing videos - do you see a person in this picture...yes, there is a person in this picture. This is why you cannot buy any system that you cannot change the shutter speed. Could this provide anything useful for the police? The still picture looks great though except for the person and the blur of the vehicle... Will give you a hint - the person is in between the two columns:

Bad Boys
Bad Boys
Watcha gonna do
Watcha gonna do
When the camera can't see you

Reolink: Deconstruction of a dangerous misleading youtube review "Finding the BEST 4K Security Camera NVR Package (Reolink vs Amcrest vs Swann)"

Executive Summary: DO NOT be a sheep. Ask what a reviewer can be missing, ask if a reviewer is using hype words to sell the cheapest product. Test your cameras and kits right away. Just do a bench test. Test real world conditions. Test moving suspects. Test at night, test at day. Use a test rig...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[mat200]

Thanks for the information, really helpful. I will keep researching. Is there any discussion on Blue Iris being updated to deal with the querks of Reolink cameras?
..

Hi @CompleteSpud

Q: "Thanks for the information, really helpful. I will keep researching. Is there any discussion on Blue Iris being updated to deal with the querks of Reolink cameras?"
A: From a software engineering perspective, short answer: NO.
Longer Answer: Attempting to code Blue Iris to deal with numbers of problems presented from the image capturing camera is similar to the job Sisyphus (or Sisyphos) has with pushing the rock up the hill... never ending issues, with little practical results at the end for the developers. The best solution would be for Reolink engineers to build better cameras ( hardware, and firmware ), and for the customers to spend $10 more per camera.

 

[CompleteSpud]

Thank you for the advise all, I'm glad I came across this forum before it was too late - Good new is I've been able to arrange a refund for the two Reolinks. I paid £135 (approx $185 USD) for two RLC-810A, which I thought was good value (for a 4k blah blah). The cameras seemed to work better with the Reolink software but I want to use Blue Iris for the functionality, eitherway I would say the Reolinks didn't work as advertised. I bought them after watching a Youtuber who seemed knowledgable in his videos but perhaps didn't fully explain how the cameras worked and after finding these forums and searching (and reading your helpful links above) I have come to see the error of my ways. I have seen the Youtuber has been named a few times...

Does anyone have any recommendations for two cameras at this price point (£135 / $185 USD)? I will be buying in the UK. Is buying used/second hand worth considering? I am willing to stretch the budget if it means I get better performance in Blue Iris which I have a full license for. The cameras will need to POE to match my existing hardware and plan to have one covering the front of my house and one at the back - nothing complicated! I would like a doorbell style camera too or one that is good to pick up faces near the door. All the same brand would be preferable too. Dahua seem to be a cost effective option based on my searches but I don't want to spend more money without advise from you guys with the knowledge.

Thanks again all.

 

[sebastiantombs]

I'm not sure of the conversion rates but have a look at this one, about $130USD. Yes, it's only 2MP but chasing megapixels isn't a good chase at all on a tight budget. I have three of these and they work quite well, varifocal and audio. If you have some ambient light they may be able to do color 24/7 with some fine tuning. Andy, empiretcandy, has a thread here and can supply cameras to GB without much of a problem.

3241T-ZAS Review

Review-OEM IPC-T3241-ZAS 2mp AI Lite series Varifocal

IPC-T3241-ZAS from EMPIRETECANDY 2MP WDR Turret Varifocal AI Network Camera Review unit courtesy of Andy (@EMPIRETECANDY) in exchange for a fair and honest review. Purchase in the IPCT Store Andy's ipcamtalk vendor forum: link Andy's AliExpress store: link Andy's Amazon store: link Price...

ipcamtalk.com

Andy
IPCT Thread

EmpireTech Andy

Dahua products

ipcamtalk.com

Andy's Store

Amazon.com

King Security/EmpireTech Store

Amazon.com

Email
Andy Wang kingsecurity2014@163.com

 

[wittaj]

Thank you for the advise all, I'm glad I came across this forum before it was too late - Good new is I've been able to arrange a refund for the two Reolinks. I paid £135 (approx $185 USD) for two RLC-810A, which I thought was good value (for a 4k blah blah). The cameras seemed to work better with the Reolink software but I want to use Blue Iris for the functionality, eitherway I would say the Reolinks didn't work as advertised. I bought them after watching a Youtuber who seemed knowledgable in his videos but perhaps didn't fully explain how the cameras worked and after finding these forums and searching (and reading your helpful links above) I have come to see the error of my ways. I have seen the Youtuber has been named a few times...

Glad you can get a refund!

Yeah do not chase MP, especially for night performance. They need WAY MORE light at night than other MP. An 8MP(4k) needs 4 times the light light of a 2MP. In most instances a 2MP at night will kick the butt all night long of an 8MP. The current king of MP to sensor ratio are cameras with 4MP on a 1/1.8" sensor.

It is simple - do not buy a 4MP camera that is anything other than a 1/1.8" sensor. Do not buy a 2MP camera that is anything other than a 1/2.8" sensor. Do not buy into the 4K hype. Soon we will hopefully see some larger sensors that can truly carry an 8MP on it, but we are not quite there yet.

I repeat, do not chase 4k - at night the 1080 (2MP) cams will be your better bet. Just ask my neighbors with their 4k cameras that didn't provide the money shot to get their stolen belongings back, yet my older 2MP varifocal camera zoomed in to the area I wanted to cover did capture the money shot that ID'd the thief for the police to find and make an arrest and fortunately still had all the stolen stuff...If you have a lot of light, and I mean a lot of light, then maybe 4k, but most of us do not have enough light for 4K. My one neighbor started to replace his 4k cameras with 2MP cameras because mine kicked his butt all night long.

Also, do not be sold by some trademarked night color vision (Full Color, ColorVu, Starlight, etc.) that is a marketing ploy in a lot of ways lol. It is simply what a manufacturer wants to claim for low-light performance, but there are so many games that can be played even with the how they report the Lux numbers. They will claim a low lux of 0.001 for example, but then that is with a wide open iris and a shutter at 1/3 second and an f1.0 - as soon as you have motion in it, it will be crap. You need a shutter of at minimum 1/60 second to reduce a lot of blur from someone walking.

Check out this video at midnight. You see this and it looks like daytime and be like WOW I want that camera. But any motion in the frame and it is crap and will be a ghost blur. You notice they do not show anything with motion. I can make all my cameras look like this at midnight with no other light, but we want good motion video, not still images video. This is a very nice cameras with enough light at night - so do you have enough light at night? All cameras, regardless of what they are called, need light - either white light or infrared. Simple physics.



While this camera is not what we would call a consumer grade camera and this is a really good camera, it is these games that the consumer grade cameras of the world do to their camera to make it look good at night - but then a person walking by is a blur and people simply say well the camera isn't good at night. If you have the ability to change the settings, you can make it work. Just remember that every increase in shutter speed needs more light. So I can set mine to 1/250 second and eliminate blur at night, but then all that is visible is a 5 foot diameter around the camera IF I have enough light.

Yep, everyone is an expert on YouTube LOL...just remember many of those videos are by people being paid promotional dollars by a vendor and/or receiving revenue based on number of hits they get. In the past week we have seen many people come here after being burned by hookup:

I F###ed up... the hook up...

So, after spending a good few hours here over the last day or so I realize I made an error. I like, many others it would seem found the videos from "The Hook Up" and jumped straight onto his review and purchased the ReoLink 820a to replace my horrendous Ring cameras. This was also my first...

ipcamtalk.com

dropped frame in recording & live view with only 1 camera and 1-5% CPU

hi, i'm new to blue iris and i tried the demo version to setup my first camera (RLC-820A latest firmware) following the Hook up video i have setup 2 stream in blue iris, 1 24/7 640x360@15fps recording and 1 AI motion detected 3840x2160@15fps. Both are setup direct to disk recording. In the live...

ipcamtalk.com

And of course the master thread:

dropped frame in recording & live view with only 1 camera and 1-5% CPU

hi, i'm new to blue iris and i tried the demo version to setup my first camera (RLC-820A latest firmware) following the Hook up video i have setup 2 stream in blue iris, 1 24/7 640x360@15fps recording and 1 AI motion detected 3840x2160@15fps. Both are setup direct to disk recording. In the live...

ipcamtalk.com

I would suggest finding the reviews for the cameras here. You will find much better examples here than out on YouTube. The members here put them through their paces. Most of the YouTube videos just use auto settings and many do not show motion, so the images look great. It is motion at night that we are interested in, and every review of cameras here have folks providing video clips of their camera in action at multiple settings and shutter speeds, etc. Auto settings results in blur and ghosts during motion and is useless.

Plus the YouTube videos tend to be full productions for the likes and thus YouTube revenue, where the folks here post videos for the sole sake of letting others know how well or not the cameras perform.