FOSCAM camera issue.

[KentM]

My first question is this: Does Foscam have any real support?
I have three Foscam cameras , two of which are R4S units and the other is an HT2 which is an outdoor PTZ model. They all appear to be working as they have good images on my phone app. However, I am unable to get them to show up in my BI5 system. In fact, I can not get them to show up in the Foscam VMS app on my Win11 pc. The VMS lists them under the My Device tab. The names also show in the thumbnails of the main screen but when I click on the "Reconnect" button of each one, all I see is the spinning dot and then "Connect Failed. These cameras have been working fine for the past several years until I recently replaced the win10 computer with a pc running Win 11. This computer is running the BI5. Currently there two other cameras working with the BI5 but they are different brands. I have screenshots of the individual BI5 camera settings that I made several years ago to make it easy to make sure the settings were correct. I have tried the FOSCAM VMS on another Win11 pc and get the same results on both machines.
Any and all ideas greatly appreciated.

 

[TonyR]

Let's begin by fact-finding:

Do you know the IP address of one of the R4S cameras?
If so and assuming the BI server is on the same LAN subnet, open a browser on the BI server to that IP address to access the camera's embedded webGUI.
Most Foscams use 88 as the default HTTP port so you may have to append :88 at the end of the IP address like this:

http://camera-ip:88

Let me know if you are able to access the webGUI.

I'm thinking the IP addresses changed since by default the cameras are set to DHCP and BI cannot locate the cameras.

 

[KentM]

Thanks for the reply.
Prior to the introduction of the new pc, this whole thing worked great and has for several years.
Let me lay down the design here that I should have done in the first place. All cameras are on the same subnet. The three cameras that will not connect are connected via wifi. The two cameras that do work are connected via ethernet/POE. Using the old Foscam "finder", you can see the I/P addresses. All of my cameras had static IPs that were all in the .115-.125 range. The one that is showing .89 is one of the R4S cameras that I did a reset on and that was assigned via DHCP. When you try to go directly to the camera by entering the "IP:88" in a browser, you immediately get notice from Foscam that you have to use the VMS software to do that. When you try to enter just the IP it says "can't be found". Therefore, I am unable to reset the IP back to a static until I can get it to connect into the VMS software. So moving to the VMS gets the results shown in the other screenshot. On a very rare occurrence, the camera called "backyard" will open when I select reconnect and I can gain access to the settings of that camera. This intermittent connection might lead one to believe that the wifi signal is marginal. However, both of those units are within ten feet of the main router. One is in the same room and the other right outside the window. My wifi analyzer shows a-20dbm signal.
I am using two different pc's running win11 pro. Both of these computers are exhibiting the same problem at this point. BI5 was running Win10 and all was well then. But moving things to another Win11 machine resulted in this issue. It seems to me that I might need to turn my attention to the pc. My primary pc never did have BI5 on it. But what I would really prefer to do is to be able to get into the settings of these three wifi cameras and reset some items such as user name/pswd. All three of these cameras connect to my phone and I can see some of the settings and control their operation, but I can not make any changes.
I hope this information hasn't made the subject any cloudier, but I just need some fresh eyes on the subject.

 

[TonyR]

Insure that a recent Windows update did not change the properties of your Wi-Fi NIC or Ethernet NIC (whichever is not working any more) from "private" to "public".

 

[KentM]

Thanks for the suggestion. I changed them both to "public" but the whole thing had always worked when it was set to private. Something like that would have made sense as the faulty cameras are all all connected via wifi. Foscam support finally replied to my cry for help. They sent a link to a new version of the VMS software which I installed and now nothing works. I have reset the two R4S cameras and can see them on the phone but neither will work on the VMS software. It you can not get them to open on that software , you can't make any changes to anything. I am at a standstill for the moment and tired of looking at the issue.
If you can come up with any ideas, I would sure appreciate hearing them.

 

[KentM]

HELP ..Two weeks has gone by with no resolution to this problem. The real problem is that I can not get video from any of the three cameras. They work fine with my phone. But they will not connect to the VMS software. The VMS software knows they are there because it shows the names of the cameras. When I click on the ADD +sign , that window shows all three cameras are there and if I highlight one and click , the reply "Device is already added" the table also show the small green circle for each one. AND all three cameras work fine in Blue Iris. The problem is that I need to change some settings on the cameras and there as no way to do that other than through the VMS software. I have attached three screenshots for clarity.

Any help greatly appreciated