Amcrest Doorbell

[atlantaboi]

I've had this doorbell installed for a week, here are my observations

My entire home is Amcrest'd out and hooked to a MAHA System and using Blue Iris for redundancy. Setup on this shit is a little daunting, but stick with it and you'll be able to integrate into Blue Iris/consume the RTSP stream.

1080p: rtsp://admin:PASSWORD@IP:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0
480p: rtsp://admin:PASSWORD@IP:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=1

You have to use a brand new Amcrest Smarthome app to setup the doorbell. DO NOT USE LEGACY AMCREST APPS, THERE IS A CHANCE IT WILL BRICK YOUR PRODUCT. I know, but...yah know.

You can consume the above rtsp streams in VLC, ffmpeg, or your NVR Software (in my case, MAHA) with clips and last hour footage backed up to AWS.

This is about as good as it gets for a Video Doorbell that you can access the stream outside proprietary software. I will say here are the cons witnessed so far

- The Signal. The signal drops in and out and becomes unavailable at times. I have a ping log and let's say every two minutes, the camera would be unavailable for 30 seconds. That's unacceptable, especially since my house had to endure cosmetic damage to install this item. I installed a 2.4ghz wifi extender today for the doorbell, and I'm still getting the same issues. As I'm writing this, I'm thinking maybe the doorbell transformer isn't powerful enough, but then the doorbell wouldn't be able to work period. Right? Is anyone else getting a very weak signal/packet drops?

- IR Cycle. It seems that cycles IR mode at night. Like if it's dark, it will cycle on and off IR mode like every 30 seconds. It sounds like a physical, motorized IR filter is being used in the Camera as well. so all those cycles should be inducing mechanical wear on a product that is critical for your home....

[xaikar]

I've had this doorbell installed for a week, here are my observations

My entire home is Amcrest'd out and hooked to a MAHA System and using Blue Iris for redundancy. Setup on this shit is a little daunting, but stick with it and you'll be able to integrate into Blue Iris/consume the RTSP stream.

1080p: rtsp://admin:PASSWORD@IP:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0
480p: rtsp://admin:PASSWORD@IP:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=1

You have to use a brand new Amcrest Smarthome app to setup the doorbell. DO NOT USE LEGACY AMCREST APPS, THERE IS A CHANCE IT WILL BRICK YOUR PRODUCT. I know, but...yah know.

You can consume the above rtsp streams in VLC, ffmpeg, or your NVR Software (in my case, MAHA) with clips and last hour footage backed up to AWS.

This is about as good as it gets for a Video Doorbell that you can access the stream outside proprietary software. I will say here are the cons witnessed so far

- The Signal. The signal drops in and out and becomes unavailable at times. I have a ping log and let's say every two minutes, the camera would be unavailable for 30 seconds. That's unacceptable, especially since my house had to endure cosmetic damage to install this item. I installed a 2.4ghz wifi extender today for the doorbell, and I'm still getting the same issues. As I'm writing this, I'm thinking maybe the doorbell transformer isn't powerful enough, but then the doorbell wouldn't be able to work period. Right? Is anyone else getting a very weak signal/packet drops?

- IR Cycle. It seems that cycles IR mode at night. Like if it's dark, it will cycle on and off IR mode like every 30 seconds. It sounds like a physical, motorized IR filter is being used in the Camera as well. so all those cycles should be inducing mechanical wear on a product that is critical for your home....

Oh man just saved me a nightmare of an issue. I just had a buddy brick his doorbell with one of the legacy apps. I have gotten this integrated with Shinobi which is great for all the other Amcrest cameras I have. Except for this Doorbell. Currently my AP is in my living room which is maybe 60 ft from my front door and this Doorbell constantly disconnects. Looks like its happening more at night when the IR is trying to turn on. It just turns on and off and then after about a minute and a half to 3 minutes the doorbell will disconnect from the WiFi. Not sure what I can do here. The product is great and I don't think I am being unreasonable with my requests on this one. I think there might be some kind of bug at night where the IR is turning on. Would love to see a firmware update resolve these issues.

[amcrest168]

hi @atlantaboi and welcome to the forum. a 16v 30va transformer is recommended. regarding the signal, you may have a unit with weaker radio antennas. my first doorbell was working great but i bricked it trying to turn off the infrared at night with the amcrest ipconfig tool. i had signal issues with the second doorbell so it was rma-ed hence now i'm on the third doorbell and very happy. i completely agree the amcrest ad110 doorbell is about as good as it gets for a 1080p single band video doorbell.

a neighbor is so impressed with my doorbell that he ordered one from amazon. i'm helping him install the doorbell this weekend.

[xaikar]

So I did some more testing, sure enough as soon as the IR needs to turn on around 6PM the camera starts dropping connection non stop. I even separated the 2.4 and the 5GHZ to be on their on SSID vs the Band Shaping I had going. Open to ideas here!

[Revo2Maxx]

Sadly and hate to say it sounds like a Power issue... What a lot of people don't understand is that most of these systems are way under powered and way under wired... Some people have 22 or 24ga wiring for the doorbell... To be honest that isn't enough but because in normal Doorbell setup the time that there is power going though the Wires is so little that it don't matter much...

Then this can be thought about... Say you have the 16vac 30VA power... Issue could be that your doorbell is drawing some of the power by a wiring issue, Or it could be that the Wires are to small and think of the Current that is going from the Transformer to the Camera as a Water line... Over time that water line that was flowing great is connected to Hard Water and the pipes started to fill up with deposits and now the water flow is down to a trickle. Time to replace the water lines to make the flow work better...

So it is going to be to small of Wires or not big enough Power supply aka Transformer if that is what is being used... This is because when the IR lights turn on the power consumption is larger then when there is no IR leds...

[bit8bit]

Hello all, I am new to the forums and very Tech challenged to almost everything in the forums,
I have read the whole thread and admittedly don’t understand many parts of it, I do see some of the same problems talked about that I am having in many places with my Amcrest equipment, At present I have 25 different cameras working in five different places.
But I felt I need to ask or see if anyone has had the latest problem I have run into. It is with the doorbell, I have some of the same problems talked about in the forum ( motion issues) but I have also found that when I have the Motion turned off on the app ( to stop headlights from triggering events) I had over 100 events one night. and the Motion detection zones screen has any parts of the zones filled in that the recording still takes place? It just does not send alerts to my phone
But than with the motion still turned off clearing the Motion detection zones screen, and then formatting the SD card destroys the card and it must be replaced, This has happened three times. Mostly from not knowing what I am doing but after destroying three different SD cards by unknowing hitting this sequence with in the supplied amcrest app it wipes out the installed SD card.
This gets expensive, I have been working with a Amcrest Rep to try and correct the many problems I have having with the other 20 plus cameras I have but we haven’t been able to deal with this latest problem yet that I have found. Anyone having this problem? Also do we know the size of SD card that is supposed to be used in the doorbell cameras

[bit8bit]

Also is EXFat the same as Fat32, I read some place it was an advanced Fat32?
Thanks

[amcrest168]

hi @xaikar and welcome to the forum. looks like you may have a power issue. are you using a 16v transformer with 30va? you also might want to inspect the wires to make sure they have good contacts with the terminals. i have helped a neighbor with his doorbell issue by re-stripping the wires that are connected to his transformer and doorbell button works again.

hi @bit8bit and welcome to the forum. i was getting a lot of false motion detected notifications but i have narrowed down my motion detection zones to six squares right in front of my door with a motion range setting of 3. the setting seems to work now and i rarely get any false motion detection. i still get the occasional false motion detection from incoming hid headlights.

the doorbell supports up to 128gb but i only trust reputable brands e.g. sandisk or lexar. i do not think reformatting the micro sd card with the smart home app destroys the card because i have done it twice during testing but normally i would format a card using an industry standard utility, https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/. i have had bad experiences using off brand or generic sd cards in the past hence i only get sandisk and lexar sd cards.

[Revo2Maxx]

Hello Bit8Bit welcome to the Forum... Sadly motion was tricky.. I can say that I have mine on the 3 lower sets and I changed my Detection level down to the second dot on the level... Sadly I can't say this is good for everyone because I have mine set on my NVR to record and don't really care if I get alerts on my app unless someone presses the button... I was getting loads of alerts but I have a road that points my front door now I get no lights because I also change the Schedule to remove that time when light would set off the camera because it does SHINE right into my camera when they come off the hill...

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[LarryN]

Hello I am new to Amcrest and I just purchased the doorbell camera model AD110. I am having trouble with the MicroSD card. The phone app tells me that it is disabled and the format storage device is not available greyed out. I have double checked that it is installed in the doorbell correctly. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.