POE CAT6 Tests OK Yet No Camera Connectivity

If I plug my meter directly into the POE injector with a 5" cable (five inch cable) it reads 55 volts, 5.0 watts. If I plug my meter directly into the full length of CAT6 on my roof, it reads 70 volts, 0.0 watts.

Both tests involved connecting the POE injector with one of the ethernet inputs on the back of the Reolink NVR.

If I test the POE injector WITHOUT having it plugged into the Reolink NVR, I see about 48 volts regardless of where my meter is plugged in. What gives.

I will retest next week when my Ubiquiti GP-V480-032G arrives!
 
wittaj said:
It's one way to pass the WAF to replace a reolink :p
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Don't forget that they just replaced this camera because I mistakenly thought the camera was to blame. And it's the second camera I have had Reolink warranty replace. I legitimately had another camera die about 3.5 months after installation last October. I don't want to scam Reolink if possible.
 
BlaineBug said:
Don't forget that they just replaced this camera because I mistakenly thought the camera was to blame. And it's the second camera I have had Reolink warranty replace. I legitimately had another camera die about 3.5 months after installation last October. I don't want to scam Reolink if possible.
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Why? They certainly scammed you when you purchased their equipment.
 
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looney2ns said:
Why? They certainly scammed you when you purchased their equipment.
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What do you mean? I purchased this equipment for the both of us after asking for POE camera system suggestions on another forum two years ago. The cost wasn't all that substantial either, overall. We are also very satisfied with picture quality, and the camera systems have done their job of keeping the hooligans away for the both of us, which was the primary intent, to act as a security deterrent.
 
Yesterday evening I installed the Ubiquiti GP-V480-032G POE injector on this particular camera's CAT6 cabling and the camera has been online for about 13 hours now. Unlike with the el-cheapo POE injector that I returned from last week, the Ubiquiti POE injector is providing a full 48 volts at the end of the length of CAT6 so I felt comfortable plugging the camera in. I suppose I'll update IF there are any issues? For now, it appears to be working...fingers crossed!
 
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If the NVR is/was providing the POE power. something is wrong with the NVR not the cameras. Surprised Reolink didn't try to determine what items to warranty. Maybe you had some lightning that got in the system.
 
Flintstone61 said:
If the NVR is/was providing the POE power. something is wrong with the NVR not the cameras. Surprised Reolink didn't try to determine what items to warranty. Maybe you had some lightning that got in the system.
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The NVR is still providing power though. Last Sunday when I was testing the camera was working with the NVR without a poe injector and both voltage and wattage was verified with my handheld tester as well. And I have 5 other cameras attached on this 8 camera NVR. So I don't know what the issue is, all I know is that this particular camera is the longest run of any. I'm not sure what the fault is, the thought was potentially intermittent low power due to the long run. Not really sure, the POE injector is just a test, but I have also had no lightning strikes or surges that have damage any other equipment either. It's an odd one to diagnose I suppose (unless I had ultra sophisticated test equipment that would tell me so much more, perhaps.)
 
System has been running for more than 4 days now and I haven't had this camera drop out since adding the Ubiquiti POE injector. I hope this test helps some folks who might otherwise think that they have a defective run of ethernet cable. It certainly saved me from running a new line, as I don't believe that would have solved the problem regardless with intermittent issues such as this.
 
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While the problem of the original poster's camera dropping out seems to be solved, I thought I would share a similar experience, with a different solution, that I had a few years ago.

I had several POE IP cameras (Hikvision) mounted externally on the house and connected up to a Hikvision NVR. There was one camera that was mounted on the side of the roof that catches the morning sun and that camera would sometimes go off-line during periods of very hot weather. Disconnecting it and reconnecting it wouldn't get it back online. Then, as things cooled down and got darker in the evening, the camera would either magically come back online or a disconnect/reconnect would fix it.

During the periods of disconnection, I tried covering up the front of the camera and the infrared red light came on, so clearly the camera was getting power but wasn't getting a proper network connection in the heat.

After battling this problem for a while, I thought I would take a peek inside the junction box that was next to the camera and to my surprise, the network cable had a tight loop in it. I suspect the installer found the cable a bit long, but instead of trimming it, he looped up the little bit of excess length in the junction box. So I stretched out the cable loop a bit so the bends weren't so tight. After I did that, the camera has never dropped out in hot weather again. It seem possible that extreme heat and tight bends in ethernet cable can cause problems. I'm not sure what the exact scientific explanation is.
 
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James-01 said:
While the problem of the original poster's camera dropping out seems to be solved, I thought I would share a similar experience, with a different solution, that I had a few years ago.

I had several POE IP cameras (Hikvision) mounted externally on the house and connected up to a Hikvision NVR. There was one camera that was mounted on the side of the roof that catches the morning sun and that camera would sometimes go off-line during periods of very hot weather. Disconnecting it and reconnecting it wouldn't get it back online. Then, as things cooled down and got darker in the evening, the camera would either magically come back online or a disconnect/reconnect would fix it.

During the periods of disconnection, I tried covering up the front of the camera and the infrared red light came on, so clearly the camera was getting power but wasn't getting a proper network connection in the heat.

After battling this problem for a while, I thought I would take a peek inside the junction box that was next to the camera and to my surprise, the network cable had a tight loop in it. I suspect the installer found the cable a bit long, but instead of trimming it, he looped up the little bit of excess length in the junction box. So I stretched out the cable loop a bit so the bends weren't so tight. After I did that, the camera has never dropped out in hot weather again. It seem possible that extreme heat and tight bends in ethernet cable can cause problems. I'm not sure what the exact scientific explanation is.
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That's unusual. I know my CAT6 has some tight bends as I have split-level home, there's 4 cameras mounted on the highest soffits and 2 cameras mounted on the lower soffit. All of the cables meet up at one point and travel down PVC conduit and into PVC junction boxes, and eventually make their way through the sill plate into the basement. Those bends in the PVC junction boxes are 90 degrees with no room in them to loop the cable. However all 6 cameras follow the exact same paths, and I was only experiencing issues with the one camera that had the furthest CAT6 run of any camera on my system.

Hot weather or not I don't know, last summer was just as hot I'm sure, 90 degrees is quite normal for July-August. In 2017 we experienced 90+ days in October.

Anyway - problem is still solved for now.
 
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