Cameras drop off-line occasionally

[MrCourtney]

Hi -

I have nine HKVision (bullet and turret) cameras connected to the latest version of BI. In the past week random camera have dropped off-line. They can stay "dead" (no signal) for an hour up to several days then pop back up. At one time 4 of the cameras were down at once but all came back on their own over the space of several days.
I'm not sure where to start looking to troubleshoot. It could be a bad Win 10 update or a bad video driver or the phase of the moon. Up until last week the system was rock solid. It's running on an Alienware Area 51 with 12 gig of memory and all SSD. The CPU load is around <20%.

Ideas anyone?

Thanks.

 

[nayr]

next time blueIris has no signal attempt to open the camera directly through its web interface or try to open the RTSP feed in VLC..

If the camera is still providing a feed; yet BlueIris shows no signal.. the problem likely is with your NVR; if the cameras are not providing feeds anymore its nothing to do with your NVR and likely bad cabling or power.. did you use solid copper (no copper clad aluminum) cabling with T568-B pinouts?

 

[MrCourtney]

Thanks for the suggestions. Looking at BI with my iPhone app shows one camera off-line (no signal). This one has been down for about 12 hours. I'll fuss with the cable and see what happens. I'm suspecting the POE unit may be getting tired since almost every one of the 9 cameras has exhibited this behavior over the past week. That would be the common point.
Cabling is standard ethernet with the cameras running off POE.

 

[nayr]

Looking at BI with my iPhone app shows one camera off-line (no signal).

no no, look at the camera directly.. the object is to ensure the problem happens w/out blueiris.. it has its own Web interface that you can connect wiht a browser right?

 

[MrCourtney]

You're correct, thanks.
There is no access through the browser URL. An IP scanner shows that address as "dead". Thinking back I had tried this a couple of times when the other cameras dropped off with the same results but the camera than came back on its own later.
Thanks for the help.

 

[nayr]

if you cant find it on the network with the same address you have in BlueIris, then yeah leave your NVR alone and start suspecting @ your PoE switch.. Check its specs and see how much power it can provide, 9 cameras combined might exceed how many watts it can handle and that could be the problem.

 

[MrCourtney]

Pulling the connector and reconnecting at the camera restored the video. The POE unit is a top-of-the-line that's feeding only 2/3 of its rated output...but I still somewhat suspect it. Things age (like me) and poop out sometimes. I'm going to drop in a spare on the network and split the load between the two units and see what happens. If anything it'll give me another box of blinking lights and impress the grandkids even more

MrCourtney

 

[Keyboard]

Pulling the connector and reconnecting at the camera restored the video...

It doesn't happen often, but I have to do the same thing occasionally when my NVR drops a video feed. I ran my own cabling and terminators, so my problem could be related to the quality of my wiring job.

 

[MrCourtney]

In my case I put in a second PoE switch and split the load between the two. Things have since sttled down. Of course that could be temporary. Who knows