Dahua camera freezing on motion detect?

[stefaand]

you know badmop, I have almost the same problem.
My camera 1 is dropping out once a day.
I put in a new hard drive today (WD/2TB/Black/64MBcache/7200rpm).
But same result.
So I changed the fps from 25 to 20 fps and from REGULAR to MOTION.
I change one thing at a time and test then 24 hours to see if it dropouts again.
The other camera's dont do that as there is not a lot of motion on those camera's.
First I thought it was my peephole camera in the door.
That is a thinny camera in the peephole of the front door and it is written on a sticker behind the camera 100W....so I was wondering if he took all the power away as all the camera's are POE.
I unplugged it for a while. But camera 1 kept on dropping out.
when it drops out, it always takes 4 minutes until it comes online again. So I think the camera does a complete reboot ?

So now Im doing like you do and I decreased the fps and the bitrate from 4096 to 1792 and CBR.

im now waiting to see what that gives.
But I think we have almost the same problem ? No ?

 

[stefaand]

Is there maybe a new Firmware version ?
I have a Dahua NVR 4104-P with actual firmware : 3.200.0000.6.R
And the camera is a Dahua DH-IPC-HFW4300-S-V2-0600B with actual firmware : 2.420

 

[stefaand]

in the mean time we read that when its getting darker that the image that the camera picks up might contain more grains.
so it is better to put the camera is VBR (in stead of CBR) so it can send more data when its getting darker.
And you need to increase the bit rate.

The camers runs now more then 24 hours and did not dropout yet.
these are the settings of camera 1 now....

 

[badmop]

I have 4 cameras, 3 of them are the same model, 1 of them isn't the same model, but still 4MP. It also drops out at times, or I'd think maybe firmware..

But it has something to do with the pack duration on my setup, I have it set for 2 hours (max allowed)
If I am reviewing recorded footage, when that 2 hour mark comes up 12am, 2am, 4am, 6am, etc etc... The footage jumps about a second ahead (When a camera doesn't drop out) It's like all 4 cameras are writing new data at the same EXACT moment to the hard drive and it's bogging it down. When there is a time when it's TOO much data, is when it seems to cause a camera to drop out. When a camera drops out, if it doesn't come back within a couple of minutes, when 10 minutes arrives the camera is rebooted, as if you look at the log it shows Camera 01 user logged out, Camera 01 user logged in. It only shows that in the log if the camera is rebooted, soft or hard reboot.

Once I can afford a proper Purple WD hard drive, I will upgrade to that and HOPE it fixes it. I'm just surprised at how it's doing at the moment with only 4 cameras at 2MP and a low bitrate 2048 CBR.

 

[stefaand]

try to increase the bit rate and set the camera on VBR
That solved our problem.
the camera is online and did not dropout yet....
We increased the bitrate to 8192 and we have put it to VBR.

 

[badmop]

I'll see what it does, I used to run it in VBR for a couple days when I first set it up (I can't remember at what bitrate) and the image/pixelation was awful. Considering I need the detail difference of seeing if someone is waving or throwing the middle finger lol.

I will try that in the next few days and see what happens. Thanks

 

[stefaand]

Hope it works fine for your dahua cams as well.
When the camera wants to send too much data and the bitrate is not high enough it crashes...

 

[badmop]

I have done a ping for packet loss on the cameras and NVR, zero packets lost. I thought I'd test just to see what happened, just in case.
I still have to test the VBR thing, I have to find a time to test it, too much going on to chance missing important details.

EDIT: I did test the VBR setting and it didn't change any results... =\

 

[badmop]

HELLO AGAIN!!!!!!! :cheerful:

I bought a 4TB WD Purple Hard Drive and swapped it into my system. It is STILL dropping out.
Let me refresh what I've learned lately and see if anyone has any final thoughts before I replace the NVR (Besides if no other ideas come up before that, I am going to try the cameras on a test Blue Iris system or something alike)


It drops out randomly sometimes. I have 4 Dahua 4MP Cameras. It will drop out from 2-10 minutes.
If I have the PACK DURATION set at 30 minutes, 8 out of 10 times, at 30 minutes exactly a camera or 2 will freeze. It will auto come back in 2-10 minutes.
AGAIN (if I change PACK DURATION to every 5 minutes, it will freeze at that time also. (I always thought that when the pack duration came, it would be writing a good bit of data from all 4 cameras at once to the hard drive and it would be bogging down the hard drive or something)

If I am watching 4 screen split (which is MAINstream) The camera image will FREEZE when the camera drops out.
BUT
If I am watching 9 screen split (which is SUBstream) The cameras will continue and you won't even know the camera has dropped out (unless you are watching the settings screen with the BPS showing 0 Kb/S on whichever camera that has dropped out.


Okay, now if you see a camera has dropped out, while it is still dropped out/frozen on the NVR; if you connect to that camera with your web browser or VLC RTSP stream, the MAINstream comes in no problem, while the image is still dropped out.

I can leave the VLC RTSP stream playing on my computer with audio from camera 01 in the background or watching it, and will witness camera 01 on the NVR drop out/freeze and the VLC stream is still going strong without a hiccup or pause. It again brings it down to something with the NVR. WTF?



I'm just posting an update to let everyone know what's going on still since I've got the new WD Purple Hard Drive. My next step is to see if it drops out just as much now or not for the next few days. If it continues to drop out, I will work out a way to do a test computer NVR with a demo of blue iris or something else and see if the cameras act up. (They are 3 turrets and 1 dome)



Anybody have some info with Blue Iris, if there is a network screen that shows the data flow of the cameras, so I can watch it to see if the stream drops to 0. (I'm going to assume on any camera window you watch that it will be MAINstream, or can be configured as such. Because the odd thing with the Dahua NVR, when the cameras drop out/freeze, the SUBstream is NEVER affected. (So unless I have the settings window open on BPS with the Resolution and Kb/S displayed, I would have no idea the cameras dropped out/froze if I'm viewing the SUBstream... Atleast until I go to play back footage and their are non recorded gaps)





.....breathe, haha

 

[fenderman]

Anybody have some info with Blue Iris, if there is a network screen that shows the data flow of the cameras, so I can watch it to see if the stream drops to 0. (I'm going to assume on any camera window you watch that it will be MAINstream, or can be configured as such. Because the odd thing with the Dahua NVR, when the cameras drop out/freeze, the SUBstream is NEVER affected. (So unless I have the settings window open on BPS with the Resolution and Kb/S displayed, I would have no idea the cameras dropped out/froze if I'm viewing the SUBstream... Atleast until I go to play back footage and their are non recorded gaps)





.....breathe, haha

yes you can view the current bitrate and frame rate being send from each camera. Blue iris only pulls the main stream (unless you specifically enter a path for the substream)

 

[badmop]

Okay, say I have 4 cameras total.
I have 3 hooked up POE and recording, say I plug the 4th one in powered by POE. 1 of the 3 cameras will drop the moment the 4th camera comes online. WTF?

I'm getting ready to setup a demo Blue Iris PC install tonight, as today the cameras dropping out have become worse and I'm getting real tired of it now.

 

[fenderman]

Okay, say I have 4 cameras total.
I have 3 hooked up POE and recording, say I plug the 4th one in powered by POE. 1 of the 3 cameras will drop the moment the 4th camera comes online. WTF?

I'm getting ready to setup a demo Blue Iris PC install tonight, as today the cameras dropping out have become worse and I'm getting real tired of it now.

Duplicate ip addresses?

 

[badmop]

Duplicate ip addresses?

Nope, I wish it were something simple lol. I have set static IPs for the cameras and the NVR. It doesn't cause a drop out EVERYTIME by what I described above, just sometimes.


It seems like when there is some kinda of data transfer or action, it causes a camera or 2 to drop out.
See if Camera 3 has a motion alert from a smart line detection, the BPS screen, Camera 3 will have a quick spike on the graph for a second, while at the same moment unrelated Camera 1 will drop out. It does not happen EVERY time, it happens sometimes, and sometimes not. Sometimes any camera or even 2 or 3 cameras will drop out without any motion alerts (even cameras that have no motion alerts setup)

There is almost no way to replicate the problem, atleast not that I have found yet. It is completely random, I have swapped out EVERYTHING but the NVR it self. It is something to do with the NVR, not the hard drive in the NVR, but the actual NVR. I've swapped cables, removed the router from the equation on multiple tests, nothing solves it. Some days it is BAD, where cameras will drop out and stay out for 10 minutes and come back on there own, to drop out again a couple minutes later. Usually unplugging the POE powered camera that is dropped out will bring it back. Now say Camera 1, 2, and 3 are dropped out. If I unplug POE powered Camera 3, Camera 1 & 2 will come back after a couple seconds. Some days when it's really bad, As soon as I unplug the dropped out POE powered cameras, they will again drop out a minute or so later, and will do it for hours.

I've tried having the power plugged into different outlets in the house, nothing else is powered on in the house at the time besides the Fridge and the TV the cameras and NVR are hooked up to. No desktop PC is on, except for sometimes a laptop.

I know it's a lot of reading, and hard to follow, but this is just crazy, I have NEVER, in over 25 years of working with electronics, run into a problem that I could not replicate on the spot in order to find the problem and solution.

It comes down to the NVR physically damaged in some weird way, to a strange FW bug or camera incompatibility. Luckily I found the camera dropping out/missing footage a couple days after I set up the system, when I went back to just review how the footage looked and found the drop outs. Ithen found in the menus the BPS screen with the networking graph of each camera and I keep that open 24/7 so I can see when a camera has dropped out so that I may step in and unplug it to fix it.


Anyone want a mystery and a nightmare, come over for a couple days and experience this, lol
The next step is updating the FW (which I've found a revision that is 2 or 3 times newer than what the NVR shipped with) I am just waiting to make sure it is compatible and if it bricks, what my options are for fixing it. If the FW doesn't fix it, I'm going to test with Blue Iris to see if it still happens, and then proceed from there!
Happy New Year! New Year, same old problems!

 

[badmop]

Also, sometimes if you go from a 4 camera split window, and double click a camera to make it full screen, if you do it quickly from 1 camera to another, it will make that camera drop out. Weird

 

[badmop]

Okay, odd, My new POE Dahua 3mp camera, hooked up to POE it will cause other cameras to drop out for a few minutes, like usual. BUT it appears when powered by the 12v pigtail, no dropouts.. I have 2 different POE switches I've tested with, the main one is a 4 POE port TP Link from Amazon.

 

[3dogpottery]

I don't know if this will help you, but when I had cameras losing video, powering them via the 12 volt pigtail seemed to alleviate the problem a bit. However I was eventually able to isolate the problem to Homeplug devices. At one time, I had six cameras connected with these nasty wall warts. For some unknown reason, they even caused cameras that were hard wired to the Ethernet to lose video! Are your cameras connected to your NVR or directly to your router? If not, I would suggest that you connect your cameras individually to your router along with the NVR. Use switches to give you more hard wire connections. I use my NVR for 24/7 recording, and Blue Iris for alerts and off site viewing.

 

[badmop]

Cameras are powered by a POE switch, which that is plugged directly into the router.
The NVR is connected directly to the router.

Now, the problem still exists if the POE switch is directly connected to the NVR (eliminating the router)
It's an f'd up problem lol!

 

[3dogpottery]

At this point, I would advise you to contact your local pastor and have him perform some incantations to exercise ghosts. Yes. Ghosts- evil spirits that may be living in your Ethernet.

 

[badmop]

I said earlier in this thread there are some gremlins about lol!

 

[CountZero]

I have 3 cameras going in to a switch and then down to a powerline adaptor and its rock solid. I've never had a dropout from them. So it was probably the specific brand of homeplug device you were using. Mine have been as solid as a wired connection since the day I put them in.

I don't know if this will help you, but when I had cameras losing video, powering them via the 12 volt pigtail seemed to alleviate the problem a bit. However I was eventually able to isolate the problem to Homeplug devices. At one time, I had six cameras connected with these nasty wall warts. For some unknown reason, they even caused cameras that were hard wired to the Ethernet to lose video! Are your cameras connected to your NVR or directly to your router? If not, I would suggest that you connect your cameras individually to your router along with the NVR. Use switches to give you more hard wire connections. I use my NVR for 24/7 recording, and Blue Iris for alerts and off site viewing.