IP Cams gone from Blue Iris (and network)

C

cjharp1128

n3wb
Jan 19, 2021
6
0
United States
Hi all - I'm not sure if this is the right sub-forum, but the Blue Iris knowledgebase here is profound, so figured this was as good a place to start as any....

The background: I bought a home last year with a FLIR 8 camera NVR system already installed. The NVR system was garbage (loud, slow), so I chucked it, but wanted to keep the camera system, composed of 8 FLIR N133ED eyeball cameras. I swapped in a Hornbill PoE switch, installed Blue Iris on a workstation, and during the camera setup within Blue Iris I simply used the 'Find/Inspect' feature within the BI settings; it found all the connected cameras, and I added them one-by-one to the Blue Iris system. It was easy, and seamless. I never thought to stop and make note of the IP addresses that were established during the setup.

I fooled around with Blue Iris for a couple of weeks, but never got it fully setup the way I wanted (settings, recordings, notifications, etc), so I parked it until I had more time. Fast forward about 6 months, I fire Blue Iris back up, and am getting 'no signal' from all 8 cameras. Nothing of note changed much within my network setup over the course of those 6 months. No new network hardware, no changes which would have impacted any cabling, etc.

To troubleshoot, I downloaded a couple of software tools to try and identify the cameras on my network (Advanced IP Scanner, the FLIR IPConfig too), but the cameras are not appearing within my network. All devices/IP addresses/MAC addresses showing up on my network are verified and accounted for..... but no cameras. Also worth noting that the power & activity LEDs on my PoE switch are all lit up and indicative of good power and network activity.

I'm starting to drive myself a little crazy, and feel like I'm probably missing something obvious. Figured it was time to throw the situation up to a broader group of knowledge for answers (or at least new troubleshooting ideas).

Any thoughts are very welcome and appreciated!
 
Last edited:
FLIR N133ED looks like a turret/eyeball cam to me, not bullet. assuming you've checked the poe and link lights on the switch. have you run the hikvision SADP tool? or maybe the Dahua config tool? (not sure if those are Hik or Dahua re-brand, but if alive on the network, one of those tools shoudl find em.) take a packet capture with wireshark as you reboot one of the cams by unplugging/re-plugging at the swicth. look for ARP's from the cam that may show current IP... failing that, you may need to take one or more cameras down and diagnose on the bench... could be they got hacked due not disabling UPNP & cloud services, thus allowing someone to mess with em...
 
Thank you for the quick response and ideas. The Dahua tool doesn't pick up anything on the network, and I did a quick run with Wireshark and didn't pick up any ARPs when unplugging/re-plugging. So they are definitely gone from the network for some reason, as far as I can tell. Taking them down for closer diagnosis would be an absolute bear, so hoping I can stumble into some other troubleshooting ideas along the way... else I've got 8 very useless pieces of technology hanging on my home.
 
A couple simple ideas...
I would power cycle the POE switch.
I would then try ONVIF Device Manager to see if it detects the cameras.
If still no luck, I would disconnect all of the cameras from the POE switch, and reconnect them one at a time, monitoring between additions to hopefully locate them.
 
EdcFish has point. make sure your Poe switch is still connected to the rest of the network. you really should see ARP's from the cams as they reboot, even if they were hacked to change password or IP. the fact you saw none makes me wonder if you have end-to-end connectivity between the cams and where you took the capture, or possible picked the wrong interface to sniff on in the wireshark app...
 
Good thoughts. While I did run Advanced IP Scanner on a laptop that was directly wired to the PoE uplink, I haven't tried any other utilities. I'll reconnect and try the Dahua tool, Wireshark, etc. Valid point on Wireshark as well, pozzello; it was my first time using the tool, and I found it a bit overwhelming. I'll do my due diligence to make sure I'm sniffing the right connection when I to my next round of testing.

Appreciate you guys sticking with me on this. Glad to have some additional lines of investigation unfolding. I'll report back on what I find with a direct conn to PoE.
 
Keep in mind you can scan multiple segments with Advanced IP Scanner, call it a brute force method. I'm running an experiment right now scanning 1.1.1.1-253.253.253.253 just for laughs. Yeah, it'll take some time, but if your cameras are alive they will show up somewhere in the list.
 
So, I checked all my cabling between my PoE and network, and everything is working as expected. But just for the sake of eliminating all variables, I hooked a laptop directly to the PoE (with Wifi shut off), so that the PC was getting a read directly from the PoE and nothing else.

Wireshark picks up a fair amount of activity, but I don't really know what I'm seeing. My networking knowledge is definitely somewhere between elementary and rudimentary. That said, @pozzello told me I should be seeing ARP protocol, and that was definitely not the case, even when power cycling. Tons of other protocol activity though.... so if there is any other protocol activity i should look at in a wireshark readout, I'd love the guidance.

I also re-tried a number of other scanning utilities when connected directly to the PoE (Dahua IP Config, Advanced IP Scanner, Onvif, FLIR IPconfig), but none of them pick anything up.

Any other ideas, I'm willing to try anything. Is there any way to power-cycle these things manually? I pulled one of the eyeballs and looked it over, and didn't see anything apparent as far as a hard reset, paper clip type hole or anything.
 
well, re-plugging at the poe switch does power cycle the cams, assumign they are alive at all. as for a 'reset' button the turrets tend to have them inside, ie, you need to open it up, find the button and hold it down for 30 sec or so while bring the power up to the unit. Since you have it down, you can try powering with 12v instead of Poe, but i would not try connecting to it directly from laptop (without any switch) as that can be flakey (usually due to Windows port flapping when no switch is present to indicate a live network)

can you tell if a cam that should be getting power over PoE (or 12v dc ) is warmer than one that has been unplugged for some time?
 
Last edited:
I can actually verify power, so that's one more variable off the table. I cracked one open to look for a hard reset button within the eye, and found that this model carries a green LED light on the circuit board. When the PoE is on, green light is on; when the PoE is off, green light is off.

I have to think my only other option is a hard factory reset. Haven't been able to test using a power cycle with the button held down (need a 2nd person to assist).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom