Signal: Restored

[normg002]

Good evening all.

Pulling my hair out with a strange issue.

Running BI 4.8.6.3 on a 3470s in a 2u enclosure with plenty of cooling, 8gb RAM, and plenty of storage on a WD Purple (used only for BI storage). This drive sits around 90% full.

CPU sits between 20 and 30%, and RAM hovers between 50 and 60%.

7 Amcrest 4MP cameras, all set to 24h record, direct to disk. The cameras are POE, powered by a ubiqiti switch, using less than 10% of its POE budget, cable runs are all copper cat 6. All caleras run at 15fps and iframe set to 15.

Recently I have noticed the cameras are getting a handful of Signal:Restored records in the BI log every day. These last around 40 seconds, before coming "back online". There is no "No signal" in the log, but the live feed does display no signal prior to the "signal: restored" log entry. During the time BI reports the camera as offline (no signal on the video feed), I can still access the WEB UI of the cameras. Furthermore, I have run a persistent ping at 1 second intervals, and there is no evidence of the cameras dropping from the network there. Nor is there any inidcation of a reboot or similar in the cameras own logs. Sometimes this happens to all cameras simultaneously, sometimed sparodically throughout the day to individual cameras.

I have disabled the "monochrome" option in watchdog.

I have no idea what is causing the issue, I have spent days trying to solve this! Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Geoff

 

[The Automation Guy]

I'm not sure what the issue may be, but I thought I would point of the 2min clip length setting ("combine or cut video each X hours/min/GB"). What this does is create a unique file for this camera every two minutes. Since you have the camera recording 24/7 this means there are 720 unique files being created for this one camera every day. If you ever need to go back and find footage to export, this is going to create a headache. There is no right or wrong setting here - if you have some reason why you want that many files then keep doing what you are doing. Some people set it to 1 hour so there is one file for each hour of the day. Others may have it set for 8 hours (which may be the default setting). Regardless of how long the file is, you can trim any potential export to just the length you need. So even if the raw capture file is 8 hours of footage, you can export just the "4 minutes of a perp walking around checking your car doors" or any other event that you may have.

 

[The Automation Guy]

Also, is there any particular reason you are creating snapshots every 3 seconds when the camera is triggered? Are you using these images for something?

 

[IAmATeaf]

Isn’t there an option something like interpret black and white picture as no signal?

I used to periodically get this and disabling this setting fixed the issue.

 

[normg002]

I'm not sure what the issue may be, but I thought I would point of the 2min clip length setting ("combine or cut video each X hours/min/GB"). What this does is create a unique file for this camera every two minutes. Since you have the camera recording 24/7 this means there are 720 unique files being created for this one camera every day. If you ever need to go back and find footage to export, this is going to create a headache. There is no right or wrong setting here - if you have some reason why you want that many files then keep doing what you are doing. Some people set it to 1 hour so there is one file for each hour of the day. Others may have it set for 8 hours (which may be the default setting). Regardless of how long the file is, you can trim any potential export to just the length you need. So even if the raw capture file is 8 hours of footage, you can export just the "4 minutes of a perp walking around checking your car doors" or any other event that you may have.

Hi dude, thanks for taking the time to reply! My logic was basically that if a clip failed to save or became corrupted etc, i'd rather lose 2 mins of footage (and maybe still get somnething useful either side of that two mins), than perhaps an hour or so.

In regard to the 3 second interval for snapshots - not really, now disabled, thanks for pointing out!

 

[normg002]

Isn’t there an option something like interpret black and white picture as no signal?

I used to periodically get this and disabling this setting fixed the issue.

Hi mate, thanks for the reply! There is indeed, in the Watch Dog tab, and this is already disabled

 

[Mike A.]

Hi dude, thanks for taking the time to reply! My logic was basically that if a clip failed to save or became corrupted etc, i'd rather lose 2 mins of footage (and maybe still get somnething useful either side of that two mins), than perhaps an hour or so.

I'd agree that's extreme. And not sure it really does much for you as far as what you're trying to accomplish. You're far more likely to have some issue with all clips or how things are detected for a cam than an issue with an individual clip. Even set to an hour or half an hour is on the relatively short side for such things.

But that's not likely to do with your problem. I have some Hikvision cams that seem to have an a problem with that which appeared for whatever reason in more recent versions of BI. Same thing - cameras never really go down. But I've not seen that with my Amcrest cams. Must be something common to all and based on your other tests I think I'd look to BI first. Not sure what though.