Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam pag

hekg

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I have the latest version of Blue iris and I have 9 Foscam wifi cameras on my system but one of the cameras does not work hardly ever when viewed with Blue Iris. It literally only appears once in a blue moon and I've always blamed it on the fact that it is one of the ones with the weakest wifi signal because it's the furthest from the router. However, there is another camera right next to it and that one always works fine.

Last night, the camera in question appeared once again and I decided to turn off Blue iris and log into the cameras's foscam webpage and it worked just fine, refreshed very quickly and never went out after that.

Then I reopened blue iris and the foscam web interface no longer worked anymore and as soon as I closed blue iris again the the camera appeared fine on the foscam page once again. How can this be? Makes no sense to me.

Is it possible that blue iris gets overloaded with nine cameras and affects the signal somehow since I couldn't log into the foscam interface with BI running??
 

MartyO

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

I recently had to borrow my bridge router which extended my wifi coverage. So now with weak coverage I have one wifi camara dropping out on BI, but not on IP Cam view. So it will be interesting to find out what is the cause. Next week I'll more time to nail down. I don't think your alone on this.
BTW I ran IP cam view at the same time as BI, to see the problem with BI.
 

hekg

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

Glad to hear that I'm not the only one experiencing this issue. Hopefully somebody here has also heard of this and has a solution :)
 

David Messenger

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

I am having the same problem. I upgraded to version 4 last December but reinstalled version 3 because I was having so much trouble with it. I just upgraded to Windows 10 and decided to see if I had better luck with version 4 of BI figuring that most of the bugs were probably worked out by now. I also run IP Camera Viewer so I can see my cameras without putting Blue Iris out there for others (teens etc.) to mess with. I noticed that while I had both Blue Iris running and IP Camera Viewer the cameras were very unreliable in both applications. Running them independently only worked well with IP Camera Viewer. Whenever I had Blue Iris running, cameras would work intermittantly. I am only running 6 cameras and they all worked pretty well most of the time with version 3 in Windows 8.1.
I noticed in the driver selection for my Foscam cameras, the model I had to select was listed as FI9802 with a whole bunch of other models listed in succession. In the IP Camera Viewer, there are many more cameras to choose from. Makes me wonder if there are small differences in these cameras that need to be compensated for with different drivers.
I think I'm going to try going back to version 3 at least until this issue gets resolved. I like the new version but unfortunately it isn't working as well for me. I'll come back later and update how it goes with rolling back to version 3. Who knows, maybe the issue is not with Blue Iris and Foscam cameras, maybe it's with Blue Iris and Windows 10.
 

MartyO

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

Well I played with my setup and this is my conclusion

Ken purposely is sacrificing a WIFI signal connection that either is
1) dropping a certain amount of frames so it may or may not loss connection
2) or reducing the time his software will look for a reconnection.

Why, there are some intensively hungry cameras who prefer the thread associated with reconnecting a working but SLIGHTLY impaired WIFI connection not be given a little CPU time.
 

MartyO

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

Just updated to 4.1.2, my 35% signal level wifi camera is now connected and running, we will see if BI goes back to lying ( says no signal when there is one)
 

David Messenger

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

I just read something elsewhere that mentioned the possibility that maybe Version 4 is causing issues because I'm using the 64 bit version. I think I'll try going to 32 bit Blue Iris version 4 and see if that solves my issue. Maybe the 64 bit drivers aren't working right. When i originally tried version 4 and had problems Ken suggested I try going to the 32 bit app but I still had trouble so I rolled back to version 3.
 

corkangel76

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

There is one thing you guys are overlooking here gentlemen... You are using WiFi! WiFi is *NOT* let me repeat *NOT* inherently stable. You are using radios that constantly fluxuate signal strength based upon ENVIRONMENTAL conditions... Ergo, your 35% signal strength may be reading 35% now, but won't be reading it in .2 microseconds and may be reading 50% or higher.

This is *NOT* BI "lying" to you, this is your network and setup scheme being flaky. WiFi was never designed to handle the continual stream of traffic that IP cameras put on them, its truly geared for short bursts of traffic, and when you have a huge volume of traffic, sustained heavy usage, the data pumps in the radios can only do so much when you have the factor of environmental issues that can impact their ability to send/receive data.

If you want to "prove" the theory of BI "lying" to you, then by all means, get a hardwired camera (something that isn't FosCam, which we all know are constantly problematic and garbage cameras to begin with) and test it out. I'm sure that you won't see the same problems with a Dahua or Hikvision hardwired IP cam.
 

MartyO

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

Corker,

BI says no signal, I got to my IPAD and see the camera with IP Cam View, I access camera's web page and I see camera working. BI is not telling the truth when it says "no signal:. It should say, " Not will to try a little harder to get signal"
 

fenderman

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

Corker,

BI says no signal, I got to my IPAD and see the camera with IP Cam View, I access camera's web page and I see camera working. BI is not telling the truth when it says "no signal:. It should say, " Not will to try a little harder to get signal"
its not about trying to get signal..blue iris is pulling a stream from the camera..its will display it if the camera is sending the stream..to test, use vlc to pull the exact same stream from the camera...the cameras IE interface may not be pulling the same stream that BI is...
You have to contact ken to see if he can resolve it..or look around for a different URL than blue iris is using..you can post here all day, but it wont help..this has been a known issue with foscam cameras and blue iris for years..
 

MartyO

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

Don't have foscam, but I'll check out what you say. IP Cam View, what is that pulling, my chain?
 

fenderman

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

Don't have foscam, but I'll check out what you say. IP Cam View, what is that pulling, my chain?
foscam/wanscam/agasio all the same...
What cameras are you using?
 

bp2008

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

This thread is hilarious. The problem is not Blue Iris. The problem is the abuse of WiFi. You have 9 wifi cameras, some with poor signal. The cameras will all be transmitting continuously as long as Blue Iris is requesting images. This oversaturates the airwaves, and the WiFi is simply not capable of handling the load. When you turn off Blue Iris, the cameras stop transmitting, and the airwaves clear up which allows you to view the problematic camera. This is in no way Blue Iris' fault. Your wireless network cannot handle the load! The camera that is dropping out all the time simply drew the short straw for connectivity.
 

MartyO

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

BP, sorry your wrong, I don't turn off anything. I have 4 devices running simultaneously on my network to view cameras

1)BI on PC
2)IP CAM View on IPAD
3)IP CAM view on IPhone
4) IP Cam View on Nexus droid tablet

Only BI on PC had problems with one camera. It was a BI problem
 

MartyO

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

Fortunately, I was talking to hekg, not you. LOL. I'm not entirely familiar with your problem.
BI is more sophisticated than IP CAM view, therefore its making decisions (IMO) about reconnection of a lost wifi signal or one that's dropping frames. It probably has much tougher algorithm for reconnecting properly, so it misses out as IP camview just keeps displaying.
 

David Messenger

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

I was running the same setup with version 3 that I ran with version 4. The differences were that version 4 was 64 bit vs. 32 bit for version 3, and at the same time, I changed from Windows 8.1 Pro to 10 Pro. I did not have these problems other than some occasional intermittent operation when I was running version 3 with the exact same number of wireless cameras running from the same i7 desktop machine. The video displayed in the IP Camera viewer application works very smoothly with all the cameras updating their clocks together almost all the time unless BI is also running. I'm hoping the switch to 32 bit version 4 will do the trick. If not, I guess I'll try rolling back to version 3.
 

MartyO

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

Ok, so disabled wifi on one of my cameras, then hooked it up to the LAN. Pointed camera at object1 waited for all 4 devices to show object one live.

1) Unplugged LAN connection
2) moved camera to point to object 2
3) Plugged, unplugged, plugged, unplugged LAN connection for 10 seconds.
4) Plugged in LAN and left it there.
5) Droid connected first, followed by IPhone and IPAD all using IPCAM view and all less than one second. These are all WIFI connections. on same network
6) It took BI running on PC, hardwired to LAN, 5 seconds to reconnect.

Corker would conclude LAN connection is worse than WIFI, most others would say BI has a more time consuming reconnection methodology.
 

bp2008

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

Perhaps BI takes longer to reconnect. More likely BI was waiting longer between connection attempts.
 

MartyO

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Re: Camera dropping out when used with Blue Iris but works when viewed through Foscam

Dlink-932L sure its a cheap VGA as you like to say, but it is rock solid WIFI camera. When I start to move up the food chain on cameras for outside (Hik or others) especially these dlink puppies will go in utility rooms, sump pump rooms, ejector pump rooms ect. which are small. This is in response to fenderman asking me what cameras I was using
 
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