Which wifi cameras are better for Blue Iris?

molimelight

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Thank you a lot @molimelight
On Ebay I found DS-2CD2442FWD-IW which is cheaper
Hikvision 4MP Wifi IP Camera DS-2CD2442FWD-IW 4mm Two-way Audio Built-in Micro | eBay

Are they the same do you think?

Can it be fixed on the wall or ceiling please?
It looks the same. I think mine was 2 mp when I bought it. I have it mounted on the ceiling. It comes with a template for mounting. Keep in mind, unless you are going wired with POE, you will have to run the power supply cord to it and those cords are usually not very long. Also, be cautious when ordering them on E-Bay. Some are Chinese models and require some hoops to jump through to upgrade the firmware to English.
 
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justthefacts

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Look on Amazon they have a large number of junk wifi cameras.

Please read the cliff notes in the wiki. The wiki is in the blue bar at the top of the page.

Do not use wifi cameras. They overload your home network, they are easily shut down, blocked.
Really ??? I have 8 wifi camera's ,18 devices on my network and it's all working just fine !
 

wittaj

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Really ??? I have 8 wifi camera's ,18 devices on my network and it's all working just fine !
Maybe you haven't noticed or an incident hasn't happened to show the shortcomings.

Are the cameras going 24/7 to a recording device?

You open up a camera on your computer or mobile device and it is instantaneous mainstream and never a pixel mess with motion for a bit?

There are never any dropouts on the recording device?
 

justthefacts

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I agree that your probably better off with a wired network vs wifi but it does not mean it can't be done ! It depends on a lot of things ! How fast your internet connect is,how strong your wifi connection.Material that your house is built with. How good is your computer ? I built my computer for flight simulation so it's fast and has a fast gpu.Only recording events ,no need for 24/7 recording ! I also have an off network backup camera's recording events to an sd card.
 
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wittaj

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I agree that your probably better off with a wired network vs wifi but it does not mean it can't be done ! It depends on a lot of things ! How fast your internet connect is,how strong your wifi connection.Material that your house is built with. How good is your computer ? I built my computer for flight simulation so it's fast and has a fast gpu.Only recording events ,no need for 24/7 recording ! I also have an off network backup camera's recording events to an sd card.
Recording 24/7 would likely show the limitations.

And only recording events on motion can mean events are missed. We see lots of threads where people come here because their wifi cams missed an event trigger or caught the person leaving and not approaching.

Internet speed has nothing to do with the LAN side of the cameras unless the cameras are cloud based and need an internet connection.

Good for you if you think your system is perfect, but that is not the experiences of most here with wifi cameras or having cameras go thru routers.

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 an NVR or Blue Iris, forget about it if you want reliability.


This was a great test that SouthernYankee tried and posted about it here:

I did a WIFI test a while back with multiple 2MP cameras each camera was set to VBR, 15 FPS, 15 Iframe, 3072kbs, h.264. Using a WIFI analyzer I selected the least busy channel (1,6,11) on the 2.4 GHZ band and set up a separate access point. With 3 cameras in direct line of sight of the AP about 25 feet away I was able to maintain a reasonable stable network with only intermittent signal drops from the cameras. Added a 4th camera and the network became totally unstable. Also add a lot of motion to the 3 cameras caused some more network instability. More data more instability.
The cameras are nearly continuously transmitting. So any lost packet causes a retry, which cause more traffic, which causes more lost packets.
WIFI does not have a flow control, or a token to transmit. So your devices transmit any time they want, more devices more collisions.
As a side note, it is very easy to jam a WIFI network. WIFI is fine for watching the bird feed but not for home surveillance and security.
The problem is like standing in a room, with multiple people talking to you at the same time about different subjects. You need to answer each person or they repeat the question.

Test do not guess.

For a 802.11G 2.4 GHZ WIFI network the Theoretical Speed is 54Mbps (6.7MBs) real word speed is nearer to 10-29Mbps (1.25-3.6 MBs) for a single channel


And TonyR recommends this (which is the preferred way IF you want to do wifi)

The only way I'd have wireless cams is the way I have them now: a dedicated 802.11n, 2.4GHz Access Point for 3 cams, nothing else uses that AP. Its assigned channel is at the max separation from another 2.4GHz channel in the house. There is no other house near me for about 300 yards and we're separated by dense foliage and trees.

Those 3 cams are indoor, non-critical pet cams (Amcrest IP2M-841's) streaming to Blue Iris and are adequately reliable for their jobs. They take their turns losing signal/reconnecting usually about every 12 hours or so for about 20 seconds which I would not tolerate for an outdoor surveillance cam pointed at my house and/or property.

But for me, this works in my situation: dedicated AP, non-critical application and periodic, short-term video loss.... if any one of those 3 conditions can't be achieved or tolerated, then I also do not recommend using wireless cams. :cool:
 

justthefacts

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Recording 24/7 would likely show the limitations.

And only recording events on motion can mean events are missed. We see lots of threads where people come here because their wifi cams missed an event trigger or caught the person leaving and not approaching.

Internet speed has nothing to do with the LAN side of the cameras unless the cameras are cloud based and need an internet connection.

Good for you if you think your system is perfect, but that is not the experiences of most here with wifi cameras or having cameras go thru routers.

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 an NVR or Blue Iris, forget about it if you want reliability.


This was a great test that SouthernYankee tried and posted about it here:

I did a WIFI test a while back with multiple 2MP cameras each camera was set to VBR, 15 FPS, 15 Iframe, 3072kbs, h.264. Using a WIFI analyzer I selected the least busy channel (1,6,11) on the 2.4 GHZ band and set up a separate access point. With 3 cameras in direct line of sight of the AP about 25 feet away I was able to maintain a reasonable stable network with only intermittent signal drops from the cameras. Added a 4th camera and the network became totally unstable. Also add a lot of motion to the 3 cameras caused some more network instability. More data more instability.
The cameras are nearly continuously transmitting. So any lost packet causes a retry, which cause more traffic, which causes more lost packets.
WIFI does not have a flow control, or a token to transmit. So your devices transmit any time they want, more devices more collisions.
As a side note, it is very easy to jam a WIFI network. WIFI is fine for watching the bird feed but not for home surveillance and security.
The problem is like standing in a room, with multiple people talking to you at the same time about different subjects. You need to answer each person or they repeat the question.

Test do not guess.

For a 802.11G 2.4 GHZ WIFI network the Theoretical Speed is 54Mbps (6.7MBs) real word speed is nearer to 10-29Mbps (1.25-3.6 MBs) for a single channel


And TonyR recommends this (which is the preferred way IF you want to do wifi)

The only way I'd have wireless cams is the way I have them now: a dedicated 802.11n, 2.4GHz Access Point for 3 cams, nothing else uses that AP. Its assigned channel is at the max separation from another 2.4GHz channel in the house. There is no other house near me for about 300 yards and we're separated by dense foliage and trees.

Those 3 cams are indoor, non-critical pet cams (Amcrest IP2M-841's) streaming to Blue Iris and are adequately reliable for their jobs. They take their turns losing signal/reconnecting usually about every 12 hours or so for about 20 seconds which I would not tolerate for an outdoor surveillance cam pointed at my house and/or property.

But for me, this works in my situation: dedicated AP, non-critical application and periodic, short-term video loss.... if any one of those 3 conditions can't be achieved or tolerated, then I also do not recommend using wireless cams. :cool:
Since my post I added 2 more camera's and I am now noticing some instability ! Sometimes some of the camera's just do not get triggered ! Fortunately I have back-up camera's that are recording to an sd card and do not need wifi to function. So your are right these wifi systems are not perfect ! I have a block home so wifi is much easier to work with ! I'd like to get some 4k camera's but I think they would have to be wired !
 

TonyR

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Since my post I added 2 more camera's and I am now noticing some instability ! Sometimes some of the camera's just do not get triggered ! Fortunately I have back-up camera's that are recording to an sd card and do not need wifi to function. So your are right these wifi systems are not perfect ! I have a block home so wifi is much easier to work with ! I'd like to get some 4k camera's but I think they would have to be wired !
if you can't wire-up some of them consider at least trying a dedicated wireless AP just for the cams as mentioned in post #25 above by wittaj (toward the end, in italics, he indirectly quoted my earlier recommendation about Wi-Fi cameras and what works for me). :cool:
 

justthefacts

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if you can't wire-up some of them consider at least trying a dedicated wireless AP just for the cams as mentioned in post #25 above by wittaj (toward the end, in italics, he indirectly quoted my earlier recommendation about Wi-Fi cameras and what works for me). :cool:
I think I am gonna do that, I do have a brand new back up router to do that with !
 

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TonyR

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I think I am gonna do that, I do have a brand new back up router to do that with !
Many new wireless routers have a AP-only (Access Point) mode in their configuration. If not, you can log into it's webGUI, disable DHCP and assign it a unique, static IP in the same subnet as the existing router but outside of its DHCP pool. Then you connect a LAN port of the new AP to a LAN port of the existing router.
 

justthefacts

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Many new wireless routers have a AP-only (Access Point) mode in their configuration. If not, you can log into it's webGUI, disable DHCP and assign it a unique, static IP in the same subnet as the existing router but outside of its DHCP pool. Then you connect a LAN port of the new AP to a LAN port of the existing router.
My backup router(tp-link ax1800) does have AP mode. Thank you for your help !
 

Covert One

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