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Author Topic: Serious FTP problem with DCS-2132L  (Read 10881 times)

Popovice

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Serious FTP problem with DCS-2132L
« on: February 13, 2013, 10:21:16 AM »


Hi,
 
I'm a brand new owner of two D-Link IP cameras. First I purchased the entry level DCS-930L and when I wasn't exactly happy with the image quality I decided to order the more expensive and feature rich DCS-2132L model.
 
The main reason for the poor image quality of 930L is actually explained in this forum
http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=52088.0 (my camera also had those annoying coloured stripes especially in low light conditions), but this is not why I'm writing this message to this forum.
 
After studying the features of the 2132L model and comparing the image quality to 930L I was initially very happy with my purchase. But then I discovered a very severe problem, that jeopardize my planned IP camera project.
 
On 930L model there is possibility to send still images at regular interval to a selected FTP server in such a way that the target file is constantly being overwritten (see the picture below). I have been planning to use this feature for displaying a static webcam image on my website and it works fine on 930L. Also on 930L model you can select the image file transmission interval in one second range.



On the 2132L model this whole concept is handled completely differently (= poorer IMHO), although in all other respects the features clearly surpass those of 930L. On 2132L model you cannot define a single file at the FTP server where the image is constantly loaded. I tried different settings and resulting individual image files were always named named differently. This will ultimately consume all the storage space at the FTP server and also prevents me from using the same hyperlink to the image file from my web page. Also the periodical event timing granularity is now one minute, which to me is a clear worsening of specification compared to 930L.
 
Could you pls. advice if you have any plans to implement the same FTP capability to 2132L that is currently available with 930L. I must say that I desperately need this feature and if there is no guarantee that it will be implemented to 2132L I might be forced to cancel the camera purchase. I also believe that there are potentially many other people who might be suffering from this same issue as well. I could even live with the one minute event timing limitation, but if you could add that tiny "overwrite" button to the time schedule menu I would be more than happy with my new camera. Of course if you could suggest another way of implementing the static webcam feature on my website that would be appreciated as well.
 
P.S. JavaLawyer: You could probably add this item to the 2132L Firmware Wishlist? Based on brief study on D-Link IP camera specs I think that at least the DCS-942L model suffers from this same issue.
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Popovice

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Re: Serious FTP problem with DCS-2132L
« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2013, 12:48:35 PM »

Luckily I think I found a workaround for this problem.

Instead of asking the camera to send the image to the FTP server I'm now retrieving the still image directly from the camera by using ActiveX and the following URL at my website:

http://Camera_IP:Port/image/jpeg.cgi

Of course in this scenario I must implement the port forwarding at the router and also configure the DDNS server, which makes things a bit more complicated.

Based on my experiments it seems that 2132L stores the jpeg image by using video profile #2 parameters, which means that I can freely modify the still image parameters without affecting the properties of the main (live) stream at profile #1.

Even after this discovery I think it would be better if D-Link could implement the FTP "overwrite" function also for the 2132L model. There are several reasons for that, one most important being that with the direct camera access I must reveal the IP address of the camera to all website visitors. Also a separate guest account is needed meaning that there are much more security issues to be considered.


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DriverVoIP

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Re: Serious FTP problem with DCS-2132L
« Reply #2 on: March 04, 2013, 01:23:03 AM »

I agree with the author of this theme. Do you want to expand the FTP settings and Enable/Disable guest login account, in DCS2132L

in the absence of authorization, complicated by inserting snapshot on web-page
« Last Edit: March 04, 2013, 01:34:24 AM by DriverVoIP »
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