Imou Cruicer 2 LAN connection problem after some time

[JohannesG]

Hi

I have a three cameras for monitoring my cattle in the barn in the winter. Among others I have one Imou Cruicer 2 (IPC-GS7E-3M0WE). But I have now temporarily installed the camera to monitor my yard and encountered a strange phenomenon.

When I first connect to the camera everything works great in SmartPSS, DMSS, Onvier and Unicam. But after some time, don't know exactly, but about 1-3hours I am unable to connect to the camera from the mobile apps (Android). However, SmartPSS still works perfect on my PC. If I restart the camera or router everything works fine again. So I thought it was a network issue. But then I discovered that if I access the camera from the IMOU Life app I can then immediately access the camera from the other apps. IMOU Life works great but I don't want to send my data via Chinese servers. I want to block internet traffic to and from the cameras. This worked perfect last year, and I dont know what have changed since then. I even tried resetting the camera, but no change.

What could be the problem and solution?

Best regards: Johannes

 

[wittaj]

Since it is a wireless camera, it is probably dropping packets until the point that the router just stops responding to it.

Opening up the IMOU app likely restarts the connection, as does restarting the camera or router.

This is a common issue with wifi cams, which is why they are not recommended.

You could set the router to a daily auto reboot and see if that gives you some relief.

And just because it worked perfectly before doesn't mean much - adding another device to your network could have been the final part that caused it to show the issue, or a new appliance or neighbor wifi or anything really. Or maybe the camera simply updated and now uses more bandwidth.

It could be anything, which is why we don't recommend wifi cams or cams connected to a router.

 

[JohannesG]

The camera has good reception. It's plugged in just a couple of meters from the wifi router. And if the issue were with the wireless signal, wouldn't I have problems in SmartPSS to? The camera is always visible and with good connection when I check the router.

 

[wittaj]

So many factors. Maybe the computer is more capable than the mobile device. Maybe the wifi component in the phone isn't as good as the computer. Maybe SmartPSS is streaming a lower bandwidth than to the mobile app.

You can choose not to believe me if you want, but we have countless similar situations posted here all the time and the common denominator is a wifi cam. It's either because of the wifi cam or a bottleneck within your system, but restarting the camera or router and it starts working lends to lost packets due to the wifi cam that are having to resend and they get too great for the android app to receive them.

Cameras connected to Wifi routers (whether wifi or not) are 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 send cameras through a wifi router. At the very least it can slow down your entire system.

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, especially once you start adding distance. 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 NetFlix before it freezes - mine goes 45 seconds. Now do the same with a camera connected to a router and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...