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The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => IP Cameras => DCS-930L => Topic started by: acellier on April 18, 2014, 05:19:31 PM

Title: Camera WiFi/ftp erratic "solved"
Post by: acellier on April 18, 2014, 05:19:31 PM
One of our "newer" DCS-930L cameras has been put to use as a webcam, set to send a jpg by ftp every 10 minutes, to a remote server. Obviously, this should result in 144 images per day. But we can easily see that images go missing; they are not (generally) zerobyte failures. This is about a 33% failure rate.
The actual numbers of stored images per full day are :
# 12 ... Thu, Apr 17 ... 102 images
# 11 ... Wed, Apr 16 ... 89 images
# 10 ... Tue, Apr 15 ... 90 images
# 9 ... Mon, Apr 14 ... 99 images
# 8 ... Sun, Apr 13 ... 98 images
# 7 ... Sat, Apr 12 ... 94 images
# 6 ... Fri, Apr 11 ... 94 images
# 5 ... Thu, Apr 10 ... 98 images
# 4 ... Wed, Apr 09 ... 95 images
# 3 ... Tue, Apr 08 ... 96 images
This camera arrived as an RMA replacement a few months back, but exhibited such poor WiFi operation compared with similar units that this location (only 8 feet from the router) seemed logical.
Very disappointed with this one - should I expect D-Link to re-RMA it?
Title: Re: Camera WiFi/ftp erratic
Post by: acellier on April 20, 2014, 08:21:36 AM
... continuing the trend, connected to a different server ...
Sat, Apr 19 ... 102 images
Fri, Apr 18 ... 100 images
I am willing to bet this camera was a prior return to D-Link, who quick-checked it and thought "it works"
It may be OK if cabled, what a pain.
Title: Re: Camera WiFi/ftp erratic
Post by: acellier on April 20, 2014, 07:12:21 PM
Well, guess what - while this camera does exhibit much lower WiFi signal (as seen by our NetGear R7000 router, using the iOS "Genie" app) compared with our other 930's - a new 930 with strong signal exhibits a similar rate of incomplete ftp transfers!
Again, set for once per 10 minutes, but often missing one or even two in a row. Lately pretty consistent at 20 minutes.
Passive *or* active mode ftp.
Maybe the finger points at the NetGear router, which is relatively new (6 weeks) and suspect (and user forum reporting lots of unhappy people).
I'll try ftp to local next. Maybe have to try old router.
Title: Re: Camera WiFi/ftp erratic
Post by: ReverendTed on April 21, 2014, 08:53:51 AM
I'll be curious to hear what happens.  Might be nice to see the logs of the FTP server, Router, and Camera (if the camera keeps logs) to see where the failure is.
Title: Re: Camera WiFi/ftp erratic
Post by: RYAT3 on April 25, 2014, 02:24:27 PM
Any rhyme or reason to a pattern with the misses?

What if you use the lowest resolution?

Is this ftp server local or remote?  They were complaints before with off site servers. .. Not necessarily this cam.
Title: Re: Camera WiFi/ftp erratic "solved"
Post by: acellier on April 25, 2014, 05:34:53 PM
Very interesting - about 4 hours ago, I changed the ftp interval to 5 minutes - it did not miss a beat !
So the problem may not be the ftp or the wifi, but something about the timer implementation ...
Not really solved, as I would have preferred longer interval for webcam use ...