Adding 2nd camera practically kills first

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kirbymurphy

Young grasshopper
Mar 4, 2016
30
3
I have a DS-2CD2032F-IW that works great wirelessly. I added a second and it works fine but almost kills the first camera. Usually no signal and extreme lag using web interface.

When I unplug the 2nd camera the first again works normally. Web interface back to normal speed.

IP addresses are different and I verified in the router.

I tried different RTSP ports but no change.

I'm guessing RF interference or maybe WiFi saturation??

Any other changes or adjustments you can think of?


I want to continue with wireless due to no basement and vaulted ceiling that make access very difficult.
 
You didn't mention what frame rate or bitrate you are running on those cams. I would guess you are running into a bottleneck with wifi. If you adjust the frame rate to 10-15 fps and set the bitrate to 2048 or lower, you might help the problem. I would go as low on both of these settings as you are comfortable with to make the best of the situation.

If that doesn't work, plug em in.
 
It seems that was the problem. No drops in the last 1/2 hour. #2 was set at 25fps and 4096. A real chugger of bandwidth. #1 was already at 10fps but also at 4096. So far so good and looks good!
Thanks!
 
whoa that's outrageous! let me know what mp the cameras are and your download/upload speeds? I set you up with best settings for picture quality without killing your bandwidth.
 
now that you've determined the cause (saturated wi-fi) see if you can improve that by changing channel settings on your wi-fi AP/router.
a smartphone app like 'wireless analyzer' can show you wireless usage in your location to help pick a less-used (and thus hopefully
more constantly reliable) channel. that said, wireless is never as reliable as an ethernet cable...
 
pozzello said:
now that you've determined the cause (saturated wi-fi) see if you can improve that by changing channel settings on your wi-fi AP/router.
a smartphone app like 'wireless analyzer' can show you wireless usage in your location to help pick a less-used (and thus hopefully
more constantly reliable) channel. that said, wireless is never as reliable as an ethernet cable...
Click to expand...

Had already tried that. Channel 10 worked better than the default Charter router Channel 1. Camera 1 is the more essential cam so I tweaked it up a bit and lowered Cam2. So far so good.
 
Just FYI channel 10 really isn't all that good to be on. It overlaps with other channels. Try 1, 6 or 11 to ensure the least amount of overlap with other channels.

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Drop framerate but also bitrate as well. Bitrate defines how saturated your wifi is. Your router counts bits, not fps. Lowering framerate allows you to drop the important part of what you're trying to manage, bitrate, without losing video quality. Try 3k at 10fps or maybe 2.5 or 2k at 7 and see how happy your are.
 
I'd like to also mention that some routers let you choose between a 20 and 40 MHz channel width. You should make sure it is set to 20 MHz if you have the option, because if you choose 40 then you are doubling your chance of interference without any improvement in speed for your cameras.
 
Unless you are familiar with the router settings I would not mess with MHz settings. These should only be adjusted if you are broadcasting 2.4ghz and 5.0Ghz. If your not sure then don't go changing settings you know nothing about. It does increase you chance of overlapping and interference but it does not double it because 40 it double of 20. It all depends on the devices you have connected and the speeds they run at.
 
pghcamman said:
Unless you are familiar with the router settings I would not mess with MHz settings. These should only be adjusted if you are broadcasting 2.4ghz and 5.0Ghz. If your not sure then don't go changing settings you know nothing about. It does increase you chance of overlapping and interference but it does not double it because 40 it double of 20. It all depends on the devices you have connected and the speeds they run at.
Click to expand...

What do you even mean "broadcasting 2.4ghz and 5.0Ghz"? Is that not how all wifi works?

Perhaps I should not have said "double" the chance of interference. Obviously that is an oversimplification. But consider that there are only 3 non-overlapping wifi channels at 2.4 GHz (channels 1, 6, and 11 in the USA and many other countries), as seen in the illustration ruppmeister posted above. Each of those bubbles on the illustration is 20 MHz wide. If you operate with 40 MHz band-width, then you are using at least 2 of those bubbles. Perhaps all 3 if the channel is set poorly. Of course, some (maybe most) wireless cameras may not be capable of operating a band that is 40 MHz wide anyway, and then it doesn't matter if your router is set to 40 MHz or not.

The point is, if the area has a lot of 2.4 GHz interference, it will probably help to explicitly set a 20 MHz channel width. It can always be changed back in the rare event that it makes things worse.
 
It's also recommended to use local access points that are wired to the LAN, rather than the routers wifi.
Remember cheap is not really an option.
 
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