Help ! wifi cameras

Kiefer

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Dear,

I have 6 wifi cameras from dahua and an 8 channel nvr.
If i connect 4 of them the signal is very unstable, some cameras goes offline of " can not find network host " for a couple of minutes.

What do i have to change? Is it my wifi router that is to weak? Or my internet connection.
 

alastairstevenson

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You are going to get a lot of comments to the effect that WiFi and IP cameras are not a viable mix, even with smaller numbers of them than you'd like to connect.
 

Will.I.Am

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It won't be your Internet connection - the communications between your cameras and nvr are all local, so they never leave your house (in theory)
It's not even necessarily your router. WiFi is notoriously spotty and a speciality in itself. Some houses a setup might work perfectly.
Stick the same house, with the same WiFi setup but different microwaves, wireless landline phones etc into a different area and it just might not work.

A more powerful WiFi access point isn't necessarily the answer even if it is a signal strength issue.
You could stick in a mega powerful router that can shout its signal to 5 miles away. But the devices trying to send their data back can only whisper theirs for about 50ft, and not through walls.

Start at the beginning. Bring all your cameras into the same room as your router. If they work there, then the problem is signal.

Depending on their install location and how close they are to each other, you could install some more WiFi access points that can communicate with them more reliably and link them back to your router with an ethernet to power line adapter. A decent one should have more than enough bandwidth to cope with 6 cameras and you can use the same adapter at the router to bring in signals from several remote adapters, with an additional WiFi access point connected to each one to increase the WiFi signal in the area of the cameras.
 

archedraft

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The only WiFi camera I use is for my door bell. I had to put a WiFi extender 3 feet away from the darn thing to even get it to stay mostly working. I get notifications every 2-3 days with the picture that is all blurry because it lost signal. At that point I have to restart the extender and WiFi router to get it to stop sending me the notifications.

[RANT]
I’m so fed up with the thing. I will never buy another WiFi only camera again. I am hoping to replace it with a wired doorbell camera one day if a reliable one gets made but I am not holding my breath. Honestly, I may consider going back to a regular doorbell and installing one of the small DAHUA dome ones...
[/RANT]
 

Will.I.Am

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Is it a proper extender wired back to the main router or a repeater that you connect to your existing network wirelessly?

If it's a full wireless link, then they're not really the best solution. You can get some that are decent if they're dual chain but you're always better with a wired link back, even if it's a powerline adapter.
 

Kiefer

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Thanks for the advice! When i get home i will try this!

Now something i just thought about. I connected them all with wps, isn’t it possible the wps connects with the 5.0 wifi? And the camera struggles with this? Something i can easily check ofcourse
 

SouthernYankee

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Calculate your band width load. Reduce your frame rate to under 8fps and an Iframe of 2x the fps. Set up multiple access points, No more than 3 cameras assigned to each access point. Use two different non overlapping channels for the access points. Use channels 1,6,11. I would use two different SSIDs.

On 2.4ghz you will have three networks, 2 for cameras and one for home use.

If wifi is required then go to 5GHZ cameras. Or hardwire the cameras to a 5ghz access point.
 

Will.I.Am

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Your camera will be using 2.4ghz. No proper camera uses 5ghz because the range isn't as good as 2.4 and the extra bandwidth just isn't required for one camera.

The issue will likely be a range one.
 

SouthernYankee

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I have use 5ghz in a house with a distant of 80 ft (24M) through 3 sheet rock walls no problem. I use 5 GHZ for streaming recorded video no problem. It is mostly what the walls are made of and the number of walls. His problem is bandwidth or network overload. If he lives in an apartment block then 5GHZ is the way to go do to interference.

Just hardwire the camera to an access point, a few feet of wire. One camera one access point
 

Will.I.Am

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I use 5ghz in my house but the range of 2.4 is at least 25% better.
It's also highly dependent on the device you're connecting with.
My pc and laptop are fine upstairs. One of my phones is also fine. The other one will connect but it won't be able to communicate with anything because the phone itself doesn't have the oomph to send packets back to the AP even though the signal strength from the router is showing around the same level as the pc/laptop are.
2.4ghz is no problem even when I go right to the top floor.

Agreed about the apartment block though, if there are a lot of other networks in the area it'll affect the quality of the communications, but given the "cannot find network host" I think the issue is signal strength rather than bandwidth.

Even a mediocre 2.4ghz link, as long as it's stable, is more than capable of coping with 6 wifi cameras.

That's before you start doing anything with the rest of your wifi devices though. You'd definitely want the cameras on a separate AP wired back to the main router, or even straight into the nvr - even with a powerline adapter.
I've had 8 cameras running on powerline adapters before (not 8 separate ones, iirc there were 3 total) without an issue.
 

Will.I.Am

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Bring the cameras to the same area as the wifi access point (your router)

If everything works OK then the problem is likely the strength of the signal in their locations.

If that's the case then local access points wired back to the router would be an improvement.

Are the cameras and nvr both wireless or are the cameras connecting to the nvr through the main network?
 

Will.I.Am

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Ideally, you need to keep the wireless distance as short as possible and keep most of the path cabled.
 
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