Connecting Wyze V2 via RTSP to Lorex NVR

gt5oh

n3wb
Feb 28, 2021
9
2
US
I have an 8 channel Lorex kit featuring a N841 NVR and 4 E891AB cameras. Considering I have 4 open slots left in my NVR and I have a few Wyze V2 cams around I decided to try and use RTSP to forward the stream to my Lorex NVR.

I was able to successfully do this by going to my Lorex settings, remote device, click manual add, choose Protocol Customized, In main stream box put the rtsp::/XXXXXX/live, username from RTSP wyze, same for password. Decode buffer choose real time, then choose Auto for tcp/udp. Then Apply and Ok.

That pulled in my Wyze cam stream.. However now I have two issues.

Issue #1 - The Wyze v2 cam displays fine when its the sole cam on my monitor or in display mode of 1-4 or 5-8. Once you increase the multi view matrix to display more cameras such as View 9 which shows a small preview of all 8 cameras the Wyze V2 camera box says the IP Address and "The login return time is up."

Issue #2 - The Wyze v2 cam on the Lorex NVR occasionally blinks for a second, the box goes black and it comes back online. This happens every 30 seconds or so. I have a wifi6 Verizon gigabit mesh network throughout the house with 1GB speeds so I doubt its a wifi issue but I can't figure out why the stream goes blank randomly and comes back online.

Anyone know the solutions to these issues or how to troubleshoot. In general, am I doing this efficiently or is there a better way to connect the Wyze cams to my Lorex NVR?
 
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You will find it problematic when trying to mix-match brands of cameras with an NVR unless they are all OEM from one manufacturer.

Regarding the camera blanking out when seeing the multi-view, that is because the mult-view is pulling the substream which either the camera doesn't have or you didn't enable it in the camera, or you cannot bring the substream into the NVR...

Cameras and wifi are not a good match regardless of your speeds. Surveillance cameras do not buffer video like a NetFlix does...which is why it works with watching a movie, but not these cameras....

@SouthernYankee says it best:

wifi is crap for security cameras.

================================================
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 SSID and 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 you devices transmit any time they want, more devices more collisions.

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.

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.

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

 
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You will find it problematic when trying to mix-match brands of cameras with an NVR unless they are all OEM from one manufacturer.

Regarding the camera blanking out when seeing the multi-view, that is because the mult-view is pulling the substream which either the camera doesn't have or you didn't enable it in the camera, or you cannot bring the substream into the NVR...

Cameras and wifi are not a good match regardless of your speeds.

@SouthernYankee says it best:

wifi is crap for security cameras.

================================================
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 SSID and 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 you devices transmit any time they want, more devices more collisions.

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.

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.

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



Thanks, my main security system is hardwired. Hence the E891AB running on POE, hardwired to the NVR. Considering I have 4 extra ports on the NVR I decided to use some cameras I had around the house. Not so much for security as is keeping an eye on kids and other areas of the home while I am working.

The substream is probably what the issue is. Anyone know if Wyze v2 cams spit out a substream, I don't see the option anywhere or would that setting be controlled through my Lorex NVR settings?
 
I do not know if that camera supports substream, but you can get around it by making the larger camera in the multiview that camera and it may pull the mainstream then instead of substream. Now if you have more than two of these you are using it for, then you have to deal with the screen not showing it.
 
I do not know if that camera supports substream, but you can get around it by making the larger camera in the multiview that camera and it may pull the mainstream then instead of substream. Now if you have more than two of these you are using it for, then you have to deal with the screen not showing it.

Thanks I did realize that works, however since I got this up and running my plan was to connect the other Wyze cams but that brings me back to problem #1 with not being able to see them all in the grid-view/matrix view.
 
I guess the other option would be to see if you can force the multi-view screen to show mainstream, but that may result in bandwidth issues within the NVR itself and make a worse problem than you have now.
 
I guess the other option would be to see if you can force the multi-view screen to show mainstream, but that may result in bandwidth issues within the NVR itself and make a worse problem than you have now.

Looking all over Lorex options for that but do not see it. Know how to fix the login return time is up error? That's my second issue I am having.
 
I am thinking that login return time is up error is a result of it trying unsuccessfully to pull a substream. If you select that image, will the camera then pull up the mainstream? If so, then that is the likely reason.
 
I am thinking that login return time is up error is a result of it trying unsuccessfully to pull a substream. If you select that image, will the camera then pull up the mainstream? If so, then that is the likely reason.

I was thinking the same but even if I set the Wyze cam as the only viewable camera on the Lorex monitor it still happens. I feel if its set as the primary full screen cam I am watching it should not be trying to pull a substream, but I could be wrong.

It only happens for a split second and then it goes away. I don't have to click anything, the stream blinks to a black screen sometimes, or sometimes to a screen with that error message and then in the next second it goes back to the camera stream.
 
I seem to have fixed the second issue by deleting the Wyze cam from the Lorex NVR and re-adding it, and this time leaving the sub-stream field blank.

Now if I can only figure out issue #1 and getting the stream to show up in multi-view mode.
 
Bump, still can't figure out issue #1. Is there anyway to force the Wyze V2 cams to send the substream feed to the Lorex NVR?

If not, what other wifi cameras have a substream feed?
 
Has anyone figured this out? Wyze V2 Camera's sub-stream showing up in mutli-view mode on Lorex monitor.

Looks like when using RTSP the continuous stream AND the sub stream are both coming in at HVGAW 640x360 max resolution. Is that the max that Wyze V2 allows when viewing the stream through RTSP?

PS. I am using the "Customized" protocol to stream the Wyze camera (with RTSP firmware) to my Lorex monitor, should I be using another type of protocol?