IP Cam & NVR Issues

S

swift.heath

n3wb
Oct 19, 2021
4
1
Australia
Hi,

I purchased 4 IP Cam. Brand Care Cam. They can be wireless or wired. I wired them with Ethernet Cat6 cable to an unmanaged switch box which I connected with Cat6 Ethernet cable to the home router. I downloaded the Care Cam app to my iPhone and they all worked beautifully.completely stable. Each camera is subscribed to the Cloud to upload/download recorded footage.

I then got adventurous and purchased a TP Link VIGI 16 Channel NVR so that I could record 24/7 to the NVR hard drive.

This is when all the problems began.

I have connected the NVR directly to the router and have also tried with it connected directly to the unmanaged switch box. Same issues occur.

I have dynamic IP addresses. I note my router assigns the same IP address to each camera.

The NVR will pick up the 4 IP Cam but after a few hours they will randomly drop off the NVR and the IP Cams will also randomly go offline and I have to restart them all the time. I also note a big problem in the NVR is that when the IP Cam drop off the IP address doesn’t show up with the IP Cam it will just have it as IPC with no IP address showing and this is a big issue as I cannot modify the IP or remove it. If that IP address showed I could just re add the IPC.

I was able to disconnect one IPC from the Care Cam Cloud service and it seemed to work stable on the NVR so I was wondering if the Cloud could be an issue. But Ican’t seem to disconnect the other 3 IPC from the Cloud which have 12 months subscription.

Could it be that the interface of the IPC and NVR are not compatible but then why do they work initially? Or is it the Cloud service causing conflict? Or do I need to ask my Network provider to change my plan to a static IP address?
Hope this all makes sense.

Best regards Paul
 
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The biggest issue is wifi is problematic for surveillance cameras because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to use it through a wifi router. At the very least it can slow down your system.

Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch NetFlix before it freezes - mine goes 45 seconds. Now do the same with a wifi camera and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

The same issue applies if it is hard-wired trying to send all this non-buffer video stream through a router. Most consumer grade wifi routers are not designed to pass the constant video stream data of cameras, and since they do not buffer, you get these issues. The consumer routers are just not designed for this kind of traffic even a GB speed router.
 
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Oh ok that makes a lot of sense even with my very limited knowledge on the subject.

But I am still confused as to why the cameras work perfectly with no issues until I plug in the NVR. Or is it that which is tipping it over the edge?
 
That could be tipping it over the edge because now it is trying to also send video to the NVR.

Connect the NVR and cameras to the same switch and then a cable from that to the router. That doesn't eliminate the cloud based bandwidth, but maybe that would be enough to keep the cameras from wonking out.
 
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sorry I didn’t write that correctly. It assigns a different IP address to each camera so 4 different addresses but it always assigns the same ones after all the times I have reset the cameras. Wasn’t sure if that is normal. I might try to only run the one phone app being the VIGI app and turn off the Care Cam app that comes with the cameras.
 
swift.heath said:
sorry I didn’t write that correctly. It assigns a different IP address to each camera so 4 different addresses
Click to expand...
Oh, OK. It did seem to be an unusual situation.

swift.heath said:
it always assigns the same ones after all the times I have reset the cameras. Wasn’t sure if that is normal.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's normal when the cameras are set for DHCP so the router assigns the network settings.
The router will typically keep the same lease values after a short outage such as a device reboot.
 
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swift.heath said:
sorry I didn’t write that correctly. It assigns a different IP address to each camera so 4 different addresses but it always assigns the same ones after all the times I have reset the cameras. Wasn’t sure if that is normal. I might try to only run the one phone app being the VIGI app and turn off the Care Cam app that comes with the cameras.
Click to expand...
IP address assignment is done by the DHCP Server service on the router. The DHCP server assigns a lease to each device and the default time of the lease could be anywhere between a 1 day to one week depending on make/model of router. The IP lease is designed, in part, to help prevent and address being assigned twice. If the device is removed from the network and returns before the lease expires, the device will receive the same IP address.

Is the NVR a static IP?
 
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No the NVR is not static it gets assigned an IP address from the router via the DHCP. However with the NVR I can modify it’s IP address. Where as with the IP cameras I can’t modify them.

if I just use the cameras as I bought them using the Care Cam App they are fine. But I have to pay a subscription to the Cloud which the cheapest is $20 AUD per camera per year. They don’t have any compatible NVR as theyonly record to the Cloud. It’s not a very good system hence why I wanted to try using an NVR. I figured given it’s a different brandI would have issues.

The NVR and it’s VIGI App work great initially but after a few hours everything crashes. But I notice this is when the cameras are running off both systems or both Apps. So the next trouble shoot I will try is to close the Care Cam App and just try run the NVR VIGI App as I am wondering if the two Apps and their interface of thats the terminology is causing the conflict.

I think the conflict is triggered by the camera sending the motion detection recording to the Cloud for storage. And when it’s triggered it causes some of the cameras to go off line. That’s when I notice that the IP address on one of the cameras drops off the display details for that camera on the NVR and as a result the NVR doesn’t recognise it to pick it up again. I pinged the address once and it re-appeared instantly on the NVR. But now the ping doesn’t do that anymore. It seems as I overcome one problem another arises.

if I knew what I know now I would have spent a bit more and bought a Hikvision package with NVR and 4 cameras as I believe they would have no interface issues as all would have same programming and firmware. But I am determined to keep trouble shooting and get the NVR working stable. The picture quality seems better on the NVR and the App is much more responsive. Plus you have it recording to the large internal HDD 24/7 and it is much easier to access the recording than the Cloud system that comes with the cameras.
 
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