Frequently Loosing Signal

rfj

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I replaced a HikVision camera with a Dahua camera. I am monitoring it through BlueIris(BI) but BI about 25% of the time says it lost the signal to the camera. It automatically comes back after some time. I never had this issue with my HikVision which had a similar resolution and was set to 8kbps as I did with the Dahua. Maybe I got some settings wrong but what could cause this?
 

bradner

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Cabling can cause it, or inadequate POE power too - does it happen more at night when the IR light is on (and drawing more power)?

I'd reswap the cameras and see if the other one still does it. If the other cam doesn't do it, I'd maybe blame the camera? But maybe the Dahua draws more power than the Hik and the POE wattage isn't enough?? I have one older Dahua cam that does that - drops signal every few hours for some reason for a split second (other cams using that same feed don't drop signal). Go in to the BI status screen and see how many times it has been doing it - you may need to reset the stats to get a fresh time period.
 
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Almost every time someone has asked this question on here, it has turned out to be either a bad cable/connection or a POE issue. As @bradner stated, if it happens when the IR is on, that may be an indication of a POE power budget issue. It is possible that your new cam uses a little more wattage than the old one and you were right at power budget, either for the port or for the whole switch. This can happen even when the IR is off. Also think about the other cams on this switch. Are their IRs on or coming on when the cam goes off? Does your switch have POE Port Prioritization? If so, that usually means that the switch prioritizes the PoE power that it supplies in ascending port order. If the aggregate power requirements of all attached power devices (PD) exceed the power budget of the switch, the PD on the highest-numbered port is disabled to make sure that the PDs that are connected to the higher-priority, lower-numbered ports are supported first.

You may have smurfed up the connection when you removed the old cam and hooked up the new cam.
 
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rfj

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The camera goes out even during daytime. My switch has 16 PoE ports and I am only using 8 of them for PoE cameras so I would guess I am not at the limit. The old camera still works fine so the cabling seems ok. I am really kind of puzzled with this.
 

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The camera goes out even during daytime. My switch has 16 PoE ports and I am only using 8 of them for PoE cameras so I would guess I am not at the limit. The old camera still works fine so the cabling seems ok. I am really kind of puzzled with this.
I had a similar situation - the PoE may be rated for higher, but may limit it per port, so having a 16 and only uses 8 still could mean a port power problem - either a bad port or the camera is drawing more than the POE port would allow. I fixed that by using a POE injector instead of the POE port for that one particular camera and problem solved...
 

rfj

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@wittaj I ordered a PoE injector and will try it next week. Having said that, the camera stops in bright daylight. In BI I see the timeline advancing but the image is static, i.e. nothing moves, until the camera comes back. So when you had this issue, did you see it with just one camera and all other PoE cameras were still working as before (because that is what mine are doing). My switch supports 250W and I believe all my cams should not pull more than 15.4W. So with only 8 cams that's a max of 124W which is about half of what the switch supports.
 

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I actually have a buddy I helped install on a 2231 bullet that’s just a year old doing the same thing .. Odd....
 
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sebastiantombs

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PoE cameras with built in IR generally use about 7 watts, with the IR on, for reference. A PTZ is a different case entirely and can use as much as 25 watts. A varifocal is no different than a fixed lens, once it's set to focal length. Even then, when setting the focal length it probably only uses an additional half watt.
 

wittaj

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@wittaj I ordered a PoE injector and will try it next week. Having said that, the camera stops in bright daylight. In BI I see the timeline advancing but the image is static, i.e. nothing moves, until the camera comes back. So when you had this issue, did you see it with just one camera and all other PoE cameras were still working as before (because that is what mine are doing). My switch supports 250W and I believe all my cams should not pull more than 15.4W. So with only 8 cams that's a max of 124W which is about half of what the switch supports.
Yes, all my other cams on the POE switch work fine - just the one camera. I am guessing there is some sensor in the POE that manages the power (is the device requesting power or is it simply being used as an unpowered port) or maybe within the camera itself and it bugged out and sending conflicting information about power, so it stops sending power.
 

rfj

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@samplenhold I can ping the cam but I can't get to it's web portal. Does that give any indication what the problem is?

My switch is a trendnet TPE-S160. It is supposed to support 802.3af and up to 250W. My @EMPIRETECANDY IPC-T5442T-ZE is complying with 802.3af so it should work and I only have 7 other cameras neither of which should draw more than 15.4W. So I am at about half of my power budget of the switch.
 
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I can ping the cam but I can't get to it's web portal. Does that give any indication what the problem is?
I am by no way a networking expert. But most every post that I have read here where a cam repeatedly goes offline has been the connection. I know you stated that you swapped the old cam back and it is OK. But that is a different cam and has different firmware and POE requirements. To me, the only way you can determine if the cam is faulty is to take it down and plug it directly into your POE switch with a short, pre-made cable. Use Port #1 on the switch. If your switch does port prioritization, port #1 is probably the highest priority port.

Another thing to try would be to use a POE injector and connect it to a non-POE port, even on a different switch.

If still not working, then a hardware reset using the POE injector and a short pre-made cable.
 

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Are you sure you don’t have a device with a duplicate IP, from that fact that you can ping it but not connect that sounds like it.

Try the command arp to check if the MAC for the cam changes when the problem occurs. So record it when it’s working fine then run the arp -s command to see if it’s the same after pinging the device.
 

rfj

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@samplenhold I took your advice and connected the new camera with a short ~3' cable to the PoE switch. I also just got a PoE injector from Amazon today. So I used that one and connected the camera to another 2 month old non-PoE managed 48 port switch. In both cases when I go to the website of the camera, when I can get in, no video is shown. Also when I got to BlueIris and add a new camera and click on Find/Discover the camera only shows up about 25% of the time. My old camera (and all other cameras) show up each time.

@IAmATeaf I did go to the camera's web portal and checked the MAC address. Then when the camera didn't work I did an arp -g and it showed the IP address I have to the cam showed the cam's MAC address. That is with my old cam disconnected. I then changed the static IP address on the new camera to a different that I know isn't being used and that is in the static IP address range of my router. After that I connected my old cam. when I do an arp -g I see that the MAC address associated with the IP address I used before for the new camera changed to the MAC of my old cam (as expected). arp -g also now listed the IP address of my new cam with the new IP address and it showed the MAC address of my new cam.
 
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In both cases when I go to the website of the camera, when I can get in, no video is shown
What browser are you using? For recent 5442 cams I am using EDGE and have no issues.

Also when I got to BlueIris and add a new camera and click on Find/Discover
Are you inserting the IP address? If not, put the IP address in the proper spot. Make sure you are using http:// and not https://

Also make sure the password is correct. You can click and hold on the eyeball to the right of the password field to view it.

1600633848994.png

Have you tried a hard reset of the cam?
 

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What is the IP of the camera? Never use 192.168.1.108. Can you ping the camera IP address successfully. If so disconnect the camera, can you now ping the ip address successful. Are you sure you have a unique IP address. Are you using a static IP address for the camera ?
 

rfj

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I am using Edge. Before I just hit Find/inspect to see if the camera shows up which it did not most of the time. I also tried to enter the IP address incl. user and password but no success. I then did a hard reset and the camera now shows up at 192.168.1.108. I used the Dahua ConfigTool but most of the time the cam doesn't show up in the list. Sometimes it does. Same happens with BlueIris with find/inspect. Sometimes it shows up and sometimes it doesn't . When it did show up I added the camera incl. user and pwd (admin/admin) but I don't get a signal. The IP address 192.168.1.108 is not used by any other device. I checked for that in the router before resetting the camera.
 
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You need to get the cam set up properly BEFORE messing with BI.

Plug the cam in with a short, pre-made cable to your POE switch or a non-POE switch and a POE injector. Do a hard reset on that cam by holding down the reset button on the cam for at least 30 second once the cam is powered up. This will reset everything to factory defaults, including the password and IP address. Make sure that the switch is on the subnet 192.168.1.xxx and then use the config tool to initialize the cam and give it a new password. Exit the config tool. Use EDGE to log in to the cam and then change the IP address to something not used.

What is the IP subnet you are using?
 
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