Camera stops transmitting during the day

[CaseyDurfee]

I have a site (cross-country ski area) that has 4 cameras for customers to view conditions before driving up to ski. One of the four consistently cuts out during the day. Yesterday, for instance, it was out most of the day, with a few isolated brief periods, then at 17:34 it came back up and ran pretty consistently all night. Then this morning it stopped at about 7:09. The image from this camera is quite a bit larger than the others (1920 x 1080 vs 1280 x 720 or smaller). Any guesses what could be causing this? It happens to approximately correspond with sunset/sunrise. Cameras are Amcrest the one that does not work is ASH43-W but one of the ones that does work is the same model. Is it image size?

 

[alastairstevenson]

Any guesses what could be causing this? It happens to approximately correspond with sunset/sunrise. Cameras are Amcrest the one that does not work is ASH43-W but one of the ones that does work is the same model. Is it image size?

How are the cameras connected to the streaming server?

 

[CaseyDurfee]

Cameras are WiFi. I am pretty sure the WiFi signal is adequate. The whole setup is four cameras WiFi into Netgear router. My internet service provider set us up with static IP address, and all the cameras are assigned static addresses in the router. This whole thing worked fine last year (we are only operational when the snow is on the ground). I wrote a short Python routine to connect to the rtsp URL of each camera every minute to verify up/down time, and found the information in my OP.

 

[alastairstevenson]

Cameras are WiFi. I am pretty sure the WiFi signal is adequate.

With the repeatable problem, is there the possibility to temporarily connect using an ethernet cable to see if that changes the problem?

Even a good WiFi signal can be impacted by too much competing and colliding traffic using the same channels.
Presumably there are people (therefore devices) around much more during the day than the night.
It might be interesting to do a WiFi signal audit using one of the various WiFi scanner apps available on smartphones.

 

[CaseyDurfee]

Not possible to do direct connect -- the cable would have to be 60+ feet. Do you know a good WiFi scanner app? My phone always shows more than a few bars, but not the max, when I stand by the camera in question.
The thought of competing devices is good, but we do not get crowds of folks up here. You can see on the trail camera, which is up most of the time that there is little activity:

WEBCAMS | OGDEN NORDIC

www.ogdennordic.com

Scroll to the bottom to see the one not working.

 

[TonyR]

Scroll to the bottom to see the one not working.

Is that problem camera the farthest from the Netgear router?
Is that wireless router located outdoors and if so, is it rated for outdoor use?
I see that's 26°F at Eden, UT as of 10:50 am MST

 

[CaseyDurfee]

The non-working camera is slightly further than other cameras from the router. The router is inside but it is not a heated building. Yes the temperature was in the twenties this morning but it is bright sunny out and warms up quickly. So the router is actually the coldest at night when the camera is working! Also last year this same camera was probably 50 ft further from the router and worked fine during the ski season. The router is also the same as last year with all the same settings as far as I can tell. The one thing that has changed is a new building that houses a water treatment filtering system that is very close to the camera in question. I may explore the possibility that there is something in that building that turns on at 7:00 and turns off at 5:00 approximately everyday.

 

[CaseyDurfee]

My phone always shows more than a few bars, but not the max, when I stand by the camera in question.

I just realized those bars in my phone may indicate my phone service and not my Wi-Fi connection! If anybody knows a good Wi-Fi scanner app for a phone let me know

 

[Revo2Maxx]

Phone wifi and camera wifi are not gong to be the same.. What I mean is the Phone will have some extra powers that the camera won't normally.. Then it wouldn't really matter what your scanner says in your phone if there is an Channel issue, Wifi Trashing issue. In the day time there is more traffic I am guessing at the location of cameras, that means more phones, maybe Blue tooth speakers They share wifi channels and other things that can lower the quality of the WIFI in the area.. Plus could be that there is someone there that is trashing wifi in an area that is closest to that camera and just out side the range of the others.. There is so many issues and one reason that Security systems should never be ran over Wifi..

 

[TonyR]

If you make no progress after making the above checks and continue having problems, consider placing a Ubiquiti NSM2 radio outdoors and plug it into a LAN port of that Netgear router, you may even disable the Netgear's wireless unless it's being used indoors. The NSM2 has higher transmit power and greater receive sensitivity than the Netgear and is outdoor-rated for -22 to 167° F.

I would configure the NSM2 as an AP/Access Point (Network Mode: Bridge, Wireless Mode: Access Point), assign it a unique, static IP in the same subnet as the Netgear's LAN (but outside of the Netgear router's DHCP pool), disable DHCP, disable WDS, disable AirMax and set channel width to 20MHz so the Amcrest camera's 2.4GHz wireless can work with the Ubiquiti. The WDS and Airmax settings are to be used when 2 of those radios are configured as a Layer 2 Transparent bridge, which is not what I'm suggesting. If you leave those enabled and/or set the channel width to 40Mhz, the Amcrest camera cannot work with the Ubiquiti's wireless.

The NSM2 is POE-powered by a passive 24VDC injector (not 802.3af/at POE compliant) which is furnished.

 

[tigerwillow1]

Not possible to do direct connect -- the cable would have to be 60+ feet.

Having a couple thousand feet of hand-trenched buried cat6, this doesn't strike me as much of a hardship. Maybe there's something other than distance that's an obstacle?

 

[SouthernYankee]

I have posted this before.

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.

Any other traffic on the same band (1,6,11) will cause collisions. Also other devices like microwaves can impact wifi.

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