Signal Loss In BI - SOLVED!

samplenhold

samplenhold

IPCT+ Member
Aug 8, 2018
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28,846
Spring, Texas
I have a couple of cams that loose signal for just a few minutes, less than 3 minutes for the times I have checked. They are two 5241-z12 that I use for LPR and the other is a B5442 Z4 for LPR overview. This happens a few times a week, and sometimes one cam two or three times a day.

One I noticed today (daylight) as I was sitting at the screen. Lost feed in UI3 and then it came back on.

The BI status has the signal lost at 4:45:18 and restored at 4:46:21.
I checked the recording in BI and it freezes at 4:44:47 and comes back at 4:46:20.
If I go to the SD card in the web GUI, the recording stops at 4:44:42 and a new file shows up at 4:48:34.

The cam log shows a reboot at 4:44:47, an abort at 4:45:58, startup at 4:45:58, a save configuration at 4:46:05, and a hot swap at 4:47:34. Log is below:

1611969312251.png

Any ideas?
 
Regarding Blue Iris - My LPRs did that to, especially at night. I think the black image is mistaken by BI as a lost signal. Like you, I can watch live and playback when it shows signal was lost and it is all present.

Make sure under watchdog that the "interpret monocrome as loss of signal" is unchecked - that just about eliminated mine showing loss of signal.

You can turn watchdog off and that will eliminate it showing those errors if you get annoyed seeing those large numbers.

As far as the actual cams themselves - mine get buggy when the SD card is full as it has trouble overwriting with these little CPUs I think - are yours full? If so, a reformat will likely fix it.
 
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A few more notes:
This is really not a BI issue as I have investigated the Dahua cam log files and see 'Reboot', 'Start Up', 'Abort', 'Save Configuration' and 'Hot Swap' entries at the same times as the signal loss in BI. So something is making the cams reboot.

Interesting that the Dahua cam log files have a maximum of 1024 entries and then rolling delete older entries. So I can only go back a day or two.

SD card is full on one and the other two have about 3MB free space. I will reformat the cards and see if that makes a difference.
 
Well it has been almost 24 hours since I reformatted the SD cards and not a single loss of signal. I will keep monitoring.
 
I am only guessing, but;
It could be a lack of power.
Something caused the reboot initially. If the SD cards were full then the cameras need to do maintenance on the card to try and work out which recording to delete / overwrite. This extra processing and accessing the SD card may push the camera that little bit extra and cause a reboot.
Or
it could also be by design. If the camera can't work out what to do with the SD card in a specific time, then reboot. Thereby causing a human to intervene and find out what is wrong ??

Good luck.
 
Update: It is now February 10th, or 12 days since I reformatted the SD Cards and not once has any of the three cams rebooted or lost signal.

I am marking this as solved.
 
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So the solution is to reformat the SD card when the camera starts rebooting? Do you have to physically remove the SD card to reformat?
I don't have one of these cameras yet, but it seems like an issue Dahua should fix (good luck with that I suppose :) ).
Seems like a pain to deal with.
Alternate solution?: Not use an SD card? Why is a SD card needed? Backup recording?
TIA
 
You usually do not need to remove the SD card - you can reformat it or software "eject" it from the Camera GUI.

In addition to help confirming if it is a camera or BI or NVR issue when troubleshooting an image issue, it also serves as redundant backup in the event the computer or Blue Iris or NVR goes offline or is updating, etc. Some NVRs will pull missing footage from the SD Card if there was an issue with the NVR.
 
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nowandthen said:
So the solution is to reformat the SD card when the camera starts rebooting? Do you have to physically remove the SD card to reformat?
I don't have one of these cameras yet, but it seems like an issue Dahua should fix (good luck with that I suppose :) ).
Seems like a pain to deal with.
Alternate solution?: Not use an SD card? Why is a SD card needed? Backup recording?
TIA
Click to expand...

So I (re)formatted it in the web GUI.
1615783209817.png
The funny thing is that all of my cams have SD cards. But only three of the cams had issues. Once I did the format, I have not had issues since. It's been over a month. And you can see by the above cap, the card is full again but the system deleting of files seems to be working as I have not had the issue and that card has been full for over 2 weeks now.

If that was going to continue to be a problem, I would just remove the card. I have never used it. Yes, it is there as a back up incase the BI server does not record or gets damaged.
 
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@samplenhold - Since that card is full, I would like how far back you have recordings for and set up in system to auto delete files older than X days.

In my experience I have found that when the card is full, the little CPU in these things sometimes bugs out for a second and that can mean getting footage or not. Or do a format and clear it.

I do both if I happen to be in the GUI and notice it full.
 
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wittaj said:
set up in system to auto delete files older than X days.
Click to expand...
No idea where you do that. Record Control just has the option to either Overwrite or Stop if disk is full.
 
^^^ Thanks. But after checking on my two LPR cams, the SD cards fill up in two days. Lots of triggers. I have not had issues since the reformat over a month ago.
 
Wow that is a lot of triggers! As long as it is working! It is my dual cam that really is sensitive to it, I think running the Z12 as a LPR doesn't tax the CPU as hard as some other cams can.
 
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