Wifi camera interups other wifi camera

[ScratchStick]

Right now I have four Reolink E1 pro in my house.
As of now, Im only using two, but when ever I hook up one of the others, or both, the two that I already have set up, and connected to Blue Iris, looses connection. They pop in to connecting again, but looses it just as fast. If I cut power to the third or forth camera - the two first once acts normal again after a few minutes.

I have checked, and they are not on the same IP-adress, and have no conflict as I can see right now. They are on the same wifi-network, as they must, but other than that, I cant see any reason for the cameras to act like this.

Has anyone else seen this problem, with Reolink, or any other wifi camera?

 

[biggen]

Sounds like airtime contention issues. I'd guess the cameras are connected far away from the AP and at low speeds or the AP is already overloaded with other wireless clients.

 

[sebastiantombs]

WIFi was never meant to handle the constant, never ending, streams of data that surveillance cameras produce. It is not the same as streaming a video from YouTube because there is no buffering in video surveillance, nor can there be. You have hit the "magic brick wall" of WiFi that many encounter. More than two cameras will just not work, especially on the 2.4GHz band. Either bite the bullet and run some CAT cable or plan on experimenting with various APs and locations for them. Even then you can expect dropouts to happen. WiFi and surveillance are mutually exclusive terms.

 

[SouthernYankee]

I have posted this before.

I did a wifi test a while back with multiple 2MP cameras each camera was set to VBR, 15 FPS, 15 Iframe, 3072kbs, h.264. Using a wifi analyzer I selected the least busy channel (1,6,11) on the 2.4 GHZ band and set up a separate SSID and access point. With 3 cameras in direct line of sight of the AP about 25 feet away I was able to maintain a reasonable stable network with only intermittent signal drops from the cameras. Added a 4th camera and the network became totally unstable. Also add a lot of motion to the 3 cameras caused some more network instability. More data more instability.
The cameras are nearly continuously transmitting. So any lost packet causes a retry, which cause more traffic, which causes more lost packets.
Wifi does not have a flow control, or a token to transmit. So you devices transmit any time they want, more devices more collisions.
As a side note, it is very easy to jam a wifi network. Wifi is find for watching the bird feed but not for home surveillance and security.

The problem is like standing in a room, with multiple people talking to you at the same time about different subjects. You need to answer each person or they repeat the question.

Test do not guess.

For a 802.11G 2.4 GHZ wifi network the Theoretical Speed is 54Mbps (6.7MBs) real word speed is nearer to 10-29Mbps (1.25-3.6 MBs) for a single channel

=========
Reolink cameras a pure JUNK. Send them back or toss them in the garbage. There are 100's of post on this Forum about the problems with reolink.

 

[nickh66]

Right now I have four Reolink E1 pro in my house.
As of now, Im only using two, but when ever I hook up one of the others, or both, the two that I already have set up, and connected to Blue Iris, looses connection. They pop in to connecting again, but looses it just as fast. If I cut power to the third or forth camera - the two first once acts normal again after a few minutes.

I have checked, and they are not on the same IP-adress, and have no conflict as I can see right now. They are on the same wifi-network, as they must, but other than that, I cant see any reason for the cameras to act like this.

Has anyone else seen this problem, with Reolink, or any other wifi camera?

Hi,

I have a some questions.

• Do you see this same issue when using the reolink app or only in bi?
• how/where did you confirm the cameras are on different ip's?
• how did you create each camera in bi?

Cheers

 

[wittaj]

Reolink is your problem for one as they do not work well with Blue Iris.

Wifi is your second problem...wifi is problematic for surveillance cameras because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to use it through a wifi router. Add a few wifi cameras and the wifi will be unusable...and at any distance through walls, if you do not have full bars, you will have trouble. Try a speed test from your mobile device at the proposed camera location and see what speed you get.

Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch before it freezes. Now do the same with a wifi camera and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

 

[TonyR]

+1^^ to all the above re: W-Fi and surveillance cams. But I do have a few questions:

1) Are you streaming the top resolution of these 4MP cameras?
2) Are you using the 5GHz wireless and not the 2.4?
3) Are other devices utilizing the same wireless band as the 4 cams?

I ask because a 2560 x 1440 image at 30 FPS uses a LOT of bandwidth; try a 1920 x 1080 (2MP) at 15 FPS and see if that works better.
If the cam(s) that experiences more frequent dropouts is on 5GHz, try using it @ 2.4GHz; 2.4 can travel better around corners and through drywall.
Lastly, place the 4 wireless cams on their own 2.4GHz wireless AP (Access Point), with no spouse, kids or grand kids, smart TV's, TV satellite receivers, IOT, etc. with them...nothing but cams on their own wireless and see if it improves.

FWIW, a quality wireless router can easily be made into an AP-only by disabling the AP router's DHCP server, assigning it a static IP on the same subnet as the functioning router but is an IP that is outside the functioning router's DHCP pool. You then plug the new wireless AP's LAN port into the functioning router's LAN port.

A Ubiquiti UniFi makes a pretty good dedicated AP for cams as it is higher powered than many wireless routers, especially those furnished by ISP's like AT&T, Comcast, CenturyLink, etc.