Many many No Signals

[venture996]

I've been running Blue Iris for years, and I recently noticed a giant volume of No Signals on my cameras (system has i7 processor, lots of memory, 6 cameras, 4 wired, 2 on wifi, and generally runs at under 7% CPU usage). After tracking this down I confirmed the cameras were not rebooting, so I thought maybe it was the version (3.65) of Blue Iris and downgraded (first one version, then two versions down). Still happening. Now upgraded to 3.66. Still occurring. Cameras would always come back online without any intervention so I was baffled. Tried tweaking a few blue iris settings but no luck.

I did observer that typically several cameras would go No Signal around the same time, but no pattern to it (not like all the cameras on a switch, or all the wifi cams). Recalling that I had upgraded to the new version of Trend Micro recently, I disabled that a few days ago. No failures yet, although I have to wait a few more days to be sure that is it.

Any thoughts or advice? I'd like to be running antivirus (I do have the New and Storage directories excluded in Trend Micro, although not the DB directory).

 

[Zxel]

You should set the watchdog tab in BI on each cameras properties page to mitigate this issue (it is a good idea to do it anyway, even on a "stable" system). Normally the problem you are describing is caused by network interruption, which can be caused by many things, hardware and software alike.

If it is a short interruption then a time of 5 seconds will be good, if not the 30 seconds default is fine. You can force a camera restart if it wont reconnect after x number of times (i usually set this to 3).

Firewalls and anti-virus programs are a good place to start (if you are good on the hardware side), though any software with network access can cause this.

Hope that helps.

 

[venture996]

Thanks for your reply. The cameras do go back online, and I do have Watchdog set. But I am open to suggestions about how to track down a firewall or anti-virus problem. The firewall is definitely not going offline, although that doesn't mean its not cause the problem. But since not all the cameras experience the issue every time, I'm thinking its likely not the firewall. From my note you can see I'm thinking it is anti-virus, but I am open to suggestions about how to track down what feature of Trend Micro might cause this type of problem.

 

[Zxel]

Not specific to Trend Micro, here are a few of the basics for cameras and anti-virus programs:

1. Exclude the *.bvr file type (assuming you are using that - if not substitute the format you are using) from being scanned in the location you write the files to. Do not exclude the folder itself, although more of a pain do it by file type/location instead of folder/universal.

2. Exclude the port protection for the ports you are using for streaming if your software supports this feature (although if your streaming from port 80 from the camera - it is not recommended to turn of port 80 scanning.

3. Setup auto scans to be at a time when temporary loss of camera signals is OK, scans can cause network/program interruptions.

Backup programs can also cause this issue, although it does not sound like this is your problem (it is an easy one to peg - because of the timing of the loss).

It would be helpful if you specify the frequency of the no signal loss and its duration (short vs long), for WiFi cameras loss of the signal is a common issue. It would also be helpful to know what mode of streaming you are using (RTSP...) and if the cameras are individually password protected or wide open.

A good thing to look at is also the Windows Event Viewer (in administrative tools), look for a correlation between the loss of video and any messages, this can be a big help.

If it happens often enough you can also capture your network stream for analysis to peg it, although I only mention this for completeness, it is over the heads of most people (and it should be - no need to know how to do this unless you have a job that requires it). And no I don't want to go into details on how to do that (although there may be peeps here that will) as it is a leangthy subject (not so much on the capture but on the analysis part).